5 oo TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



the blood, was from motives of religion, and for the pur- 

 pofes of idolatry, and fo it probably had been among the 

 Jews ; for one of the reafons given in Leviticus for the pro- 

 hibition of earing blood, or living flefh, is, that the people 

 may no longer offer facrifices to devils, after whom they 

 have gone a whoring *. If the reader choofes to be further 

 informed how very common this practice was, he need only 

 read the Halacoth Gedaloth, or its tranflation, where the 

 whole chapter is taken up with inflances of this kind. 



That this practice likewife prevailed in Europe, as well 

 as in Alia and Africa, may be collected from various authors. 

 The Greeks had their bloody feails and facrifices where 

 they ate living flefh ; thefe were called Omophagia. Ar- 

 nobius | fays, " Let us pafs over the horrid fcenes prefented 

 at the Baccahanlian feail, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, 

 though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number 

 of ferpents around you, and, pretending to be pofTeffed with 

 fome god, or fpirit, you tear to pieces, with bloody mouths, 

 the bowels of living goats, which cry all the time from the 

 torture they fuffer." From all this it appears, that the prac- 

 tice of the Abyuinians eating live animals at this day, was 

 very far from being new, or, what was nonfenfically faid, 

 impojftbk. And I Ihall only further obferve, that thofe of my 

 readers that wifh to indulge a fpirit of criticifm upon the 

 great variety of cuftoms, men and manners, related in this 

 hiftory, or have thofe t criticifms attended to, mould furnifh 

 themfelves with a more decent flock of reading than, in 



this 



* Levit. chap. xvii. ver. 7. 

 t Arnob. adv. Gent. Clem. Alexan. Sextus Impiricus, lib. iii. cap. aj. and Selden. de Jur. 

 nafiir. and Gent. cap. i.lib. vii. 



