CHAP, ii.] WEST INDIES. 53 



mans in their days of simplicity and virtue. It was 

 their custom to erect in every cottage a rustic altar, 

 composed of banana leaves and rushes, whereon they 

 occasionally placed the earliest of their fruits, and the 

 choicest of their viands, as humble peace-offerings 

 through the mediation of their inferior deities to in- 

 censed Omnipotence: || for it is admitted, that their 

 devotions consisted less in the effusions of thankful- 

 ness, than in deprecations of wrath ; but herein nei- 

 ther were they distinguishable from the rest of man- 

 kind, either in the old world or the new. We can 

 all forget benefits though we implore mercy. Strange 

 however it is, that the same authors who accuse them 

 of atheism should accuse them likewise, in the same 

 moment, of polytheism and idolatry. 



i 



Atheists they certainly were not ; and although 

 their system was not that of pure theism, yet their 

 idolatry was probably founded on circumstances, the 

 moral influence of which has not hitherto, I think, 



Mr. Hughes, in his History of Barbadoes, makes mention of many- 

 fragments of Indian idols dug up in that island, which were composed of 

 the same materials as their earthen vessels above-mentioned. *' I saw the 

 head of one" (continues he) " which alone weighed above sixty pounds. 

 " This, before it was broken off, stood upon an oval pedestal about three 

 tl feet in height. The heads of all the others were very small. These 

 " lesser idols were in all probability their Penates^ made small for the 

 ease and conveniency of being carried with them in their several joxir- 

 nies, as the larger sort were perhaps designed for some stated places of 

 worship." Natural History of Barbadoes, p. 7. 



fl 



ft 



I) Lafitau, torn. i. p. 179. Rochefort, c. xiii. p. 4.72. Du Tertre, 

 torn. ii. p. 366. 



