ROBINSON CRUSOB. 447

no motion among them, any more than if they had been all logs
of wood, like the idol, and at first I - reall thought they had
been so; but, when I came a little nearer, hay started up upon
their feet, and raised a howling cry, as if they had been so many
deep-mouthed hounds, and walked away, as if they were dis- ©
pleased at our disturbing them, A little way off from the idol,
and at the door of a 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, for I found they had long
knives in their hands; and in the middle of the ten appeared
three sheep killed, and one young bullock or steer. These, it
seems, were sacrifices to that senseless log of an idol ; the three
men were prists 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
worship 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 honor his Maker, and be honored by Him, sunk and .
degenerated to a degree so very stupid as to prostrate itself to
a frightful nothing, a mere imaginary object, dressed up by ~
themselves, and made terrible to themselves by their own con-
trivance, adorned only with clouts and rags,—and that this
should be the effect of mere ignorance, wrought up into hellish
devotion by the devil himself, who, envying his Maker the hom.
age and adoration of his creatures, had deluded hem into such
sordid and brutish things as one would think would shock nature
itself !

But what signified all the astonishment and reflection of
thoughts? And thus it was, and I saw it before my eyes, and
there was no room to wonder at it, or think it impossible ; all
my admiration turned to rage, and I rode up to the image or
monster—call it what you will— and with my sword made a
stroke at the bonnet that was on its head, and cut it in two ‘
and one of our men that was with me took hold of the sheep-
skin that covered it, and pulled at it, when, behold, a most
hideous outcry and howling ran through the village, and two or
three hundred people came about my ears, so that 1 was glad
to scour for it, for we saw some had bows and arrows ; but I
resolved from that moment to visit them again,

Our caravan rested three nights at the town, which was