*CHAP. ii.] WEST INDIES. 49 



dinary and incredible, but it is too well attested to be 

 denied. On the birth^f his first son the father retired 

 to his bed, and fasted with a strictness that often en- 

 dangered life. J Lafitau, observing that the same cus- 

 tom was practised by the Tybarenians of Asia, and the 

 Iberians or ancient inhabitants of Spain, and is still in 

 use among the people of Japan, not only urges this 

 circumstance as a proof, among others, t^at the new 

 world was peopled from the old, but pretends to dis- 

 cover in it also, some traces of the doctrine of original 

 sin: he supposes that the severe penance thus volun- 

 tarily submitted to by the father, was at first institu- 

 ted in the pious view of protecting his issue from the 

 contagion of hereditary guilt; averting the wrath of 

 offended Omnipotence at the crime of our first pa- 

 rents, and expiating their guilt by his sufferings. 



The ancient Thracians, as we are informed by He- 

 rodotus, when a male child was brought into the world, 

 lamented over him in sad vaticination of his destiny, 

 and they rejoiced when he was released by death from 

 those miseries which they considered as his inevitable 

 portion in life: but, whatever might have been the 

 motives that first induced the-Charaibes to do penance 

 on such occasions, it would seem that grief and de- 



' O 



jeetion had no great share in them; for. the ceremony 



| Du Tertre, torn. ii. 371, 373. Rochefort, liv. ii. c. xxiii. p. 550. 

 Labat, torn. iv. p. 368. Lafitau, torn. i. p. 49. NieubofF relates, that 

 this praftice prevails likewise among the natives of Brasil, Churchill's 

 Voyages, vol. ii. p. 133. 



Lafitau, torn. i. p. 257, 

 Vol. I. G 



