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HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
lawyers theologians. There is much to be learnt from the manner 
in which such law is administered, and. the devices are interesting 
by which codes framed under past conditions of society are practically 
accommodated to a new order of things, without professedly violating 
laws held to be sacred, and therefore unchangeable. Ordeals, which have 
now disappeared from legal procedure among European nations, are 
often to be met with elsewhere. Thus in Arabia the ordeal by touching 
or licking hot iron is still known (the latter is an easy and harmless 
trick, if the iron is quite white-hot). In Burma, under native rule, the 
ancient trial of witches by “ swimming ” went on till lately. In many 
countries also symbolic oaths invoking evils on the perjurer are to be 
met with, as when the Ostyaks in Siberia swear in court by laying their 
hand on a bears head, meaning that a bear will kill them if they lie. It 
shows the carelessness with which Europeans are apt to regard the 
customs of other nations, that in English courts a Chinese is called upon 
to swear by breaking a saucer, under the entirely erroneous belief that 
this symbolic curse is a Chinese judicial oath. 
The most undeveloped forms of government are only to be met with in 
a few outlying regions, as among some of the lower Esquimaux or Rocky 
Mountain tribes, where life goes on with hardly any rule beyond such 
control as the strong man may have over his own household. Much 
oftener travellers have opportunity of studying, in a more or less crude 
state, the types of government which prevail in higher culture. It is of 
especial interest to see men of the whole tribe gathered in assembly (the 
primitive agora) to decide some question of war or migration. Not less 
instructive are the proceedings of the council of old men (the primitive 
senate ), who, among American tribes or the hill tribes of India, transact 
the business of the tribe; they are represented at a later social stage by 
the village-elders of the Hindus or the Russians. Among the problems 
which present themselves among nations below the civilised level is that 
of the working of the patriarchal system, still prevailing among such tribes 
as the Bedaween, while often the balance of power is seen adjusting itself 
between the patriarchal heads of families and the leaders who obtain 
authority by success in war. The struggle between the hereditary chief 
or king and the military despot, who not only usurps his place but seeks 
to establish hereditary monarchy in his own line, is one met with from 
low to high levels of national life. The traveller’s attention may be 
