INHABITANTS OF PERU. 279 



tomed to lay at his side a copper hatchet, or an arrow, that 

 he may make his entry triumphantly. Others are persuaded 

 of a transmigration, not only into other human bodies, but 

 likewise into those of brutes. The caciques, warriors, and 

 faithful wives, constantly pass into the animals that are deemed 

 the most estimable, such as the monkey, the tiger, &c. ; and 

 as the certain inference is drawn by these Indians, that the 

 soul of their father, or of the cacique, entered into this mon- 

 key with a tail, or into that one with a beard, they make a 

 thousand genufleclions to the animal, and worship him as if 

 he were a patriarch. Quintus Ennius could not have passed 

 more efFe6lually, when he was in the body of the peacock ; nor 

 the brachmanes, the progenitors of the modern brahmins, 

 whose highest satisfadtion it was, when they found their disso- 

 lution approaching, to be so near to a cow or a horse, as to 

 be enabled to drag it by the tail, and thus find a ready en- 

 trance for their spirit by the posterior opening. Notwith- 

 standing, in imitation of the Greeks and Romans, the Indians 

 in question fancy that certain spirits flutter in the air, or are 

 pent up in the bottom of the rivers, either on account of par- 

 ticular crimes, or until they can meet with a body which may 

 be adapted to them ; still, generally speaking, they have not 

 any idea of sins, or of an abode of torments in a future state. 

 To a Jesuit who reproached an old man with the former, and 

 endeavoured to persuade him of the existence of the latter, he 

 replied in a very serious tone : " take notice, there is nothing 

 in all this ; my sins are very good ; I find them about me, 

 and shall not go, neither do 1 wish to go, to burn my-, 

 self." 



Proceeding from the soul to the body, it is to be observed, 



that 



