698 A TARTAR IDOL.

there stood out upon an old stump of a tree, an idol made of wood,
frightful as the devil, at least as anything we can think of to
represent the devil can be made. It had a head certainly not so
much as resembling any creature that the world ever saw; ears as
big as goats’ horns, and as high; eyes as big as a crown-piece; a
nose like a crooked ram’s horn; and a mouth extended four cor-
nered like that of a lion, with horrible teeth, hooked like a parrot’s
under bill. It was dressed up in the filthiest manner that you
vould suppose; its upper garment was of sheep-skins, with the
wool outward, a great Tartar bonnet on the head, with two horns
growing through it; it was about eight feet high, yet had no feet
or legs, or any other proportion of parts.

‘This scarecrow was set up at the outer side of the village, and
when I came near to it, there were sixteen or seventeen creatures,
whether men or women I could not tell, for they make no dis-
tinction by their habits, either of body or head. These lay all
flat on the ground, round this formidable block of shapeless wood.
I saw no motion among them any more than if they had been
logs of wood like the idol, and at first really thought they had
been so; but when I came a little nearer, they started up upon
their feet, and raised a howling cry, as if it had been so many deep-
mouthed hounds, and walked away as if they were displeased at
our disturbing them. A little way off from the idol, and at the
door of that tent or hut, made all of sheep-skins and cow-skins,
dried, stood three butchers: I thought they were such; when I
came nearer to them, I found they had long knives in their hands,
and in the middle of the tent appeared three sheep killed, and one
young bullock or steer. These, it seems, were sacrifices to that
senseless log of an idol, and these three men priests belonging to
it; and the seventeen prostrated wretches were the people who
brought the offering, and were making their prayers to that stock.

I confess I was more moved at their stupidity and brutish wor-
ship of a hobgoblin, than ever I was at anything in my life; to
see God’s most glorious and best creature, to whom he had granted
so many advantages, even by creation, above the rest of the works
of his hands, vested with a reasonable soul, and that soul adorned
with faculties and capacities adapted both to honour his Maker and