chooses, — the hunter, of a lion or fox, the fisherman, of certain fish, — and idols of every human action or passion: the sun, the moon, and the earth are the chief gods; the manner of making oath is to touch the ground while looking at the sun; and they eat flesh and fish raw. (c) Where the most binding oath is to swear by the name of some dead man who bore a good reputation in the country, placing the hand on his tomb;[1] where the annual gift that the king sends to the princes his vassals is fire; when the ambassador who brings it arrives, the old fire is everywhere put out in the house, and all the people are required to come and supply themselves from this new fire, or be adjudged guilty of lèse-majesté;[2] where, when the king, in order to give himself entirely to religion, as they often do, abdicates his sovereignty, his next successor is obliged to do likewise, and the right of kingship passes to the third in succession; where they vary the form of government as circumstances require: they depose the king when it seems well, and substitute for him elders of the state, to take the helm, and sometimes, too, leave it in the hands of the commonalty; where men and women are circumcised, and likewise baptised; where the soldier who, in one or several battles, has succeeded in presenting to his king the heads of seven foes is ennobled.[3] (b) Where men live under the unusual, uncivilised doctrine of the mortality of the soul; where the women lie in without complaint and without fear. (c) Where the women wear copper rings on both legs, and, if a louse bites them, are bound by the duty of courage, to bite back, and dare not marry until they have offered their virginity to the king if he desires it.[4] (b) Where men salute each other by putting the
- ↑ See Herodotus, IV, 172. At this point Montaigne wrote on the Bordeaux copy of 1588: Ou le peuple adore certeins Dieus[,] Mars[,] Bacchus[,] Diane[;] Le Roy un dieu particulier pour soi[,] Mercure, which he afterwards struck out, and inserted in chapter 42 of this Book: see infra, page 343.
- ↑ See Goulard, Histoire du Portugal, for this and most of the following examples.
- ↑ See Lopez de Castaneda, Histoire de la decouverte et de la conquête des Indes par les Portugais (book XIV), from which Goulard derived most of his material.
- ↑ See Herodotus, IV, 168.
