lores 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 eating 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 inftances of this kind. 
Tuat this practice likewife prevailed in Eurape, as well 
as in Afia and Africa, may be collected from various authors. 
The Greeks had their bloody feafts and facrifices where 
they ate living flefh; thefe were called Omophagia.  Ar- 
nobius + fays, “ Let us pafs over the horrid f{cenes prefented 
at the Baccahanlian feaft, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, 
though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number 
of ferpents around you, and, pretending to be pofleffed with 
fome god, or f{pirit, 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 Abyflinians eating live animals at this day, was 
very far from being new, or, what was nontenfically faid, 
impofible. And I fhall 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 ‘criticifms attended to, fhould furnith 
them{elves with a more decent ftock of reading than, in 
| this 
* Levit: ous Xvil. ver. 7. 
+ Arnob. adv. Gent. Clem. Alexan. Sextus Impiricus, lib. iii. cap, 25. and Selden. de Jur. 
aatur..and Gent, cap. 1, lib. vii. Page’. 
