



(C 



52 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK, u 



says Rochefort, " that the eartk was their bountiful 

 " parent, which yielded them all the good things of 

 life, out they were so lamentably sunk in darkness 

 and brutality, as to have formed no conception of 

 (( its beneficent Creator, through the continual ener- 

 " gy of whose cfivine influence alone it yields any 

 " thing. They had not even a name for the Deity. " 

 Other writers, however, of equal authority,|| and even 

 the same writer elsewhere,* present us with a diffe- 

 rent representation in this respect, and allow that the 

 Chavaibes entertained an awful- sense (perplexed in- 

 deed and indistinct) of one great universal cause, erf 

 a superior, wise, and invisible Being of absolute and 

 irresistible power, f Like the ancient heathens, they 

 admitted also the agency of subordinate divinities. 

 They even supposed, that each individual person had 

 his peculiar protector or tutelary deity.J Nor is it 

 true, as affirmed by some authors, that they had no 

 notion of practical worship; for, besides the funeral 

 ceremonies above-mentioned, which arose surely from 

 a sense of mistaken piety, they had their Lares and 

 Penates, gods of their own creating, intended as sym- 

 bols probably of their invisible deities, to whom they 

 offered sacrifices, similar to those of the ancient Ro- 



Rochefort, c. xiii. p. 469. 



|| Du Tertre, torn. ii. p. 364.. 



* Rochefort, c. xiv. 



f The Galibis Indians, or Charaibes of South America, from whom 

 I have supposed the insular Charaibes to have been immediately descend- 

 ed, stiled the Supreme Being Tamoussi^ or Universal Father. Barrere. 



t Rochefort, c. xiii. p. 471. 



