66 PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES. 



even among those who exhibited some sort of Christian 

 profession. Sometimes the children brought for baptism 

 proved t() be bound with magic cords, to which the mothers, 

 as an additional security from evil, had fastened beads, 

 relics, and figures of the Agnus Dei. The chiefs, in like 

 manner, while they gladly availed themselves of the protec- 

 tion promised from the wearing of crucifixes and images of 

 the Virgin, were unprepared to part with the enchanted 

 rings, and other pagan amulets, with which they had been 

 accustomed to form a panoply around their persons. In 

 case of dangerous illness, sorcery had been always contem- 

 plated as the main or sole remedy ; and those who rejected 

 its use were reproached as rather allowing their «ick rela- 

 tions to die than incur the expense of a conjurer. But the 

 most general and most pernicious application of magic 

 w'as made in judicial proceedings. When a charge was 

 advanced against any individual, no one ever thought of in- 

 quiring into the facts, or of collecting evidence ; every case 

 was decided by preternatural tests. The magicians pre- 

 pared a beverage, which produced on the guilty person, ac- 

 cordmg to the measure of his iniquity, spasm, fainting, or 

 death, but left the innocent (juite free from harm. It seems 

 a sound conclusion of the missionaries, that the draught was 

 riiodified according to the good or ill will of the magicians, 

 or the liberaUty of the supposed culprit. This trial, called 

 the bolimgo, was indeed renounced by the king, but only to 

 substitute another, in which the accused was made to beni 

 over a large basin of water, when, if he fell in, he was con- 

 cluded guilty. At other times, a bar of red-hot iron was 

 passed along the leg, or the arm was thrust into scalding 

 water; and if the natural eflects followed, the person's 

 head was immediately struck oflT. Snail-shells, applied to 

 the temples, if they stuck, inferred guilt. When a dispute 

 arose between man and man, the plan was to place a shell 

 on the head of each, and make them stoop ; when he from 

 off whose head the shell first dropped had a verdict found 

 against him. While we wonder at the deplorable ignorance 

 on which these practices were founded, we must not forget 

 that the ^^ judgments of God,^^ as they v/ere termed, em- 

 ployed by our sage ancestors during the middle ages, were 

 founded on the same unenlightened views, and were in some 

 ca^es absolutely identical. 



