Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/174

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ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

races. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 471.) Fathers offered up their children for a like purpose, as among the Carthaginians.

The poisoned arrows of America had their representatives in Europe. Odysseus went to Ephyra for the man-slaying drug with which to smear his bronze-tipped arrows. (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 237.)

"The bark canoe of America was not unknown in Asia and Africa" (Ibid., p. 254), while the skin canoes of our Indians and the Esquimaux were found on the shores of the Thames and the Euphrates. In Peru and on the Euphrates commerce was carried on upon rafts supported by inflated skins. They are still used on the Tigris.

The Indian boils his meat by dropping red-hot stones into a water-vessel made of hide; and Linnæus found the Bothland people brewing beer in this way—"and to this day the rude Carinthian boor drinks such stone-beer, as it is called." (Ibid., p. 266.)

In the buffalo dance of the Mandan Indians the dancers covered their heads with a mask made of the head and horns of the buffalo. To-day in the temples of India, or among the lamas of Thibet, the priests dance the demons out, or the new year in, arrayed in animal masks (Ibid., p. 297); and the "mummers" at Yule-tide, in England, are a survival of the same custom. (Ibid., p. 298.) The North American dog and bear dances, wherein the dancers acted the part of those animals, had their prototype in the Greek dances at the festivals of Dionysia. (Ibid., p. 298.)

Tattooing was practised in both continents. Among the Indians it was fetichistic in its origin; "every Indian had the image of an animal tattooed on his breast or arm, to charm away evil spirits." (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 156.) The sailors of Europe and America preserve to this day a custom which was once universal among the ancient races. Banners, flags, and armorial bearings are supposed to be survivals of the old totemic tattooing. The Arab woman still tattoos her face, arms,