398 MYSTIC ISLES 



dramas, pantomimes, and dances, their religious rituals 

 and the extraordinary flights to which their merriment 

 and ecstasy went. Says Ellis: 



These, though the general amusements of the Ariois, were not 

 the only purposes for which they were assembled. They in- 

 eluded : 



"All monstrous, all prodigious tilings." 



And these were abominable, unutterable ; in some of their 

 meetings, they appear to have placed invention on the rack to 

 discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man 

 to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most 

 revolting practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and acts of 

 more than bestial degradation, to which they were at times 

 addicted, must remain in the darkness in which even they felt it 

 sometimes expedient to conceal them. I will not do violence to 

 my sensibilities or offend those of my readers, by details of 

 conduct, which the mind cannot contemplate without pollution 

 and pain. 



In these pastimes, in their accompanying abominations, and 

 the often-repeated practices of the most unrelenting, murderous 

 cruelty, these wandering Ariois passed their lives, esteemed by 

 the people as a superior order of beings, closely allied to the 

 gods, and deriving from them direct sanction, not only for their 

 abominations, but even for their heartless murders. Free from 

 care or labor, they roved from island to island, supported by 

 the chiefs and priests ; and were often feasted with provisions 

 plundered from the industrious husbandman, whose gardens 

 were spoiled by the hands of lawless violence, to provide their 

 entertainments, while his own family were not infrequently de- 

 prived thereby for a time, of the means of subsistence. Such 

 was their life of luxurious and licentious indolence and crime. 



Yet each Arioi had his own wife, also a member of the 

 society. Improper conduct toward an Arioi's wife by 

 an Arioi was punished often by death. To a woman 



