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Stephen's gate, and, a little out of the city, the place where Stephen was stoned: and the monks fancy that there is the print of his hands, face, and knees when he fell down."l Ibn Batuta, an Arabian traveller of the fourteenth century, says that "outside of Damascus on the way of the pilgrimage is the Mosque of the Foot, which is held in great estimation, and in which is preserved a stone, having upon it the print of the foot of Moses. In this mosque they offer up prayers in times of distress." Mr Cooley remarks on this passage, that "the stone bearing the impression of a foot merits some consideration. Monuments of this kind are generally supposed to be remains of Buddhaïsm; yet it is possible, although they seem at present to belong properly to that religion, that they may have claims to a much higher antiquity. The mark of a foot, seen by Herodotus near the river Tyras, was ascribed to Hercules. A similar impression in Ceylon, or among the Burmese, would be called the foot-of Buddha: in Damascus it was thought to be the foot of Moses. The great distance between the countries in which this singular sort of monument has been found, and

Two Journies to Jerusalem, &c. Collected by R. Burton, and beautified with pictures. The ninth edition, p. 97. London, 1738, 12mo.

its existence at Damascus, tend equally to prove its great antiquity."

Of all these footprints the most famous by far is that of Adam in CEYLON. A description of it is given by Robert Knox, who was nearly twenty years a prisoner in the country, of which he published an account at London in 1681. "On the south side of Conde Uda," he says, " is a hill supposed to be the highest on this island, called in the Chingulay language, Hamalell ; but by the Portuguese and the European natives Adam's Peak. It is sharp like a sugar-loaf, and on the top is a flat stone with the print of a foot like a man's on it, but far bigger, being about two feet long. The people of this land count it meritorious to go and worship this impression; and generally about their new year, which is in March, they, men, women, and children, go up this vast and high mountain to worship." The print of the foot is supposed to be that of Buddha, which he left when ascending to heaven. He has no temple on this mountain according to Knox, but "unto this footstep they give worship, light up lamps, and offer sacrifices, laying them upon it as upon an altar.” There was in Knox's time a tree in the north of the island, which was annually resorted to at the same time with the footstep, and was held in equal honour:

1 Cooley's History of Maritime and Inland Discovery, vol. i. p. 177. Lond. 1830.

it was said to have flown over from the mainland, and to have planted itself: when Buddha was on earth he loved to sit under its branches.1

Colonel Syme met more than one of these monuments in Ava. "In the course of our walks," he says, "not the least curious object that presented itself was a flat stone of coarse gray granite laid horizontally on a pedestal of masonry six feet long and three feet wide, protected from the weather by a wooden shed. This stone, like that of Pouoodang, was said to bear the genuine print of the foot of Guadma; and we were informed that a similar impression is to be seen on a large rock situated between two hills one day's journey west of Memboo."2

Near the town of Boukhtarma, on the Irtisch, in WESTERN SIBERIA, Captain Cochrane accompanied his guide" to view what was deemed an object of curiosity in that part of the world. It was a large stone near the bank of the river, on which are imprinted the marks of the feet of a man and of a horse; they are in a perfect state, and to all appearance have been formed by nature. The heels are towards the river, the feet of the man in advance of those of

1 Penny Cyclopædia, vol. i. p. 111.

2 Syme's Embassy to Ava, vol. i. p. 286. Constable's Mi scellany, vol. viii.

the horse, very well representing the situation of a man holding the horse. I could gather nothing of its origin beyond the silly tradition of the place."

I have mislaid a reference to the volume in which the footprint is described of a god worshipped in one of the islands of the PACIFIC OCEAN; but two instances may be cited of the existence of the superstition in the NEW WORLD.

Dr Benjamin Smith Barton, in a tract on American antiquities published about 1783, quotes the work of Mr Kalm, a traveller in Canada, who saw, "in two or three places, at a considerable distance from each other, impressions of the feet of grown people and children in a rock."2 And Mr Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, written in 1781, recites an Indian "tradition handed down from their fathers, that in ancient times a herd of Mammoths came to the Big-bone-licks on the river Ohio, and began an universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals which had been created for the use of the Indians that the Great Man above (so they

:

1 Cochrane's Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, vol. i. p. 131. Constable's Miscellany, vol. xxxvi.

2 "Observations on some parts of Natural History, to which is prefixed an account of several remarkable vestiges which have been discovered in different parts of North America. Part I. London: Printed for the Author." n. d.

call their chief Deity) looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring mountain on a rock, on which his seat and the prints of his feet are still to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell, but missing one at length, it wounded him in the side, whereon springing round he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day."

XXXII.

LIBELS ON THE FAIR SEX.

MENAGE makes mention of one Gratian du Pont, Sieur de Drusac, nicknamed Gabriel par la Croix du Maine, who published at Lyons, in 1537, a poem with the title, Les Controverses des Sexes masculin et feminin. He maintains, that at the resurrection every male soul will be restored to a perfect body; that as Adam will resume the rib whence Eve was made, Eve must become a rib, and so cease to be a woman; that as all men came from Adam, they will return into him, and as all women came from

Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, quoted by Mr Campbell in the notes to Gertrude of Wyoming.

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