Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ...nicotiana was offered, with hymns and genuflections, have been discovered, in many instances, under the earth-heaps and artificial mounds and places of sepulture of the ancient inhabitants. Intelligent Indians yet living among the North American tribes, point out the symbol of the sun, in their ancient muzzinabikons or rock-inscriptions, and also amid the ideographic tracery and bark-scrolls of the hieratic, or priestly inscriptions, and of the magical medicine-songs. AMAZON SUN-WORSHIP. We turn away to the savage tribes of South America and find many of the forms of faith and worship which we have seen among the Northern Indians and among the nations of the Eastern world at about the time of the dispersion of the nations. Thus-among the Amazon Indians of Western Brazil, we find the same worship of the sun that we have seen in Egypt, in Assyria, in Japan, and among the Indians of North America. A traveler among them says: "A sound fell upon our ears that seemed to issue from the depths of a distant cavern. We could tell it to be a chorus of voices, chanting some sad or solemn refrain. As we listened it grew louder, as if the chanters were drawing nearer; and in the same degree, it was becoming more joyful. All at once a procession appeared approaching the spot, men marching two and two, with files of women intermingled. "As its head emerged from among the thick-standing tree-trunks, we recognized our old Zummate friends, dressed in all the gala of a grand holiday, with plumed circlets upon their heads, feather armlets, and garters of j the same, girt just below the knee. "On reaching the malocca, they broke ranks, at the same time bursting into peals of joyous laughter. Then surrounding they embraced us, the chief in a...
