flesh served up with that of the hare and fox. Virgil recommends that the fatted dog should be served up with whey or butter, and Dioscorides the physician says that they should be fed on the whey that remains after the making of cheese.
Before Christianity was established among the Danes, on every ninth year at the winter solstice, a monstrous sacrifice of 99 dogs was effected. In Sweden the sacrifice was still worse. On each of 9 successive days, 99 dogs were destroyed. This sacrifice of the dog, however, gave way to one as numerous and as horrible. On every 9th year, 99 human victims were immolated, and the sons of the reigning tyrant among the rest, in order that the life of the monarch might be prolonged.[1]
On the other hand, the dog was frequently the executioner; and, from an early period, whether in the course of war or the mock administration of justice, thousands of poor wretches were torn to pieces by animals trained to that horrible purpose.
Many of the Indians of North America, and almost of the present day, are fond of the flesh of the dog.
Captain Carver, in his Travels in North America in 1766, 1767, and 1768, describes the admission of an Indian into one of the horrible societies of that country. "The dishes being brought near to me," says he, "I perceived that they consisted of dog's flesh, and I was informed that at all their grand feasts they never made use of any other food. The new candidate provides fat dogs for the festival, if they can be procured at any price. They ate the flesh; but the head and the tongue were left sticking on a pole with the front towards the east. When any noxious disease appeared among them, a dog was killed, the intestines were wound between two poles, and every man was compelled to pass between them."
The Nandowepia Indians also eat dog's flesh as an article of luxury, and not from any want or scarcity of other animal food; for they have the bear, buffalo, elk, deer, beaver, and racoon.
Professor Keating, in his interesting work on the expedition to Peter's River, states that he and a party of American officers were regaled in a large pavilion on buffalo meat, and tepsia, a vegetable boiled in buffalo grease, and the flesh of three dogs kept for the occasion, and without any salt. They partook of the flesh of the dogs with a mixture of curiosity and reluctance, and found it to be remarkably fat, sweet, and palatable, divested of any strong taste, and resembling the finest Welsh mutton, but of a darker colour. So strongly rooted, however, are the prejudices of education that few of them could be induced to eat much of it.
The feast being over, great care was taken to replace the bones in their proper places in the dish, after which they were carefully washed and buried, as a token of respect to the animals generally, and because there was the belief among them that at some future time they would return again to life. Well-fattened puppies are frequently sold; and an invitation to a feast of dog's meat is the greatest distinction that can be offered to a stranger by any of the Indian nations east of the Rocky Mountains.
As a counterpart to much of this, the ancient Hyrcanians may be mentioned, who lived near the Caspian Sea, and who deemed it one of the
- ↑ Histoire du Chien, p. 200. The Voyage of Dumont d'Urville, vol. ii. p. 474.
