COCHINCHINA. 331 
in all places and under all circumstances. A little casket 
not larger than a snufF-box frequently enshrines a favourite 
divinit}^ Solitary devotion, it is true, requires not the space 
that is necessary for congregational worship. A tutelar deity 
may be placed in any corner of the house, or carried about 
in the pocket. 
The Cochinchinese are extremely superstitious, and their 
devotional exercises, like those of the Chinese, are more fre- 
quently performed with the view of averting an ideal evil 
than with the hope of acquiring a positive good ; or, in other 
words, the evil spirit is more dreaded than the good one 
revered. In various parts of the country are large wooden 
stakes or pillars erected, not only for the purpose of marking 
the spot where some great calamity either of a public or u. 
private nature may have happened, as the loss of a battle, 
the murder of an individual, or other unfortunate event, 
but as a propitiation to the evil spirit by whose influence it is 
supposed to have been occasioned. So also when an infant 
dies, the parents are supposed to have incurred the displeasure 
of some malignant spirit, which they endeavour to appease by 
offerings of rice, oil, tea, money, or whatever they may 
itnagine to be the most acceptable to the angry divinity. 
Prom such sentiments one may venture to hope that the 
horrid practice of infanticide is not among the bad customs 
' they have retained of the Chinese. 
Beside the spontaneous offerings which individuals conceive 
it necessary to make on various occasions, it seems that a 
u u 2 
