We went again a-shore on the 18th, and would have taken the advantage of Tupia's company, in our perambulation; but he was too much engaged with his friends. We took, however, his boy, whose name was _Tayeto_, and Mr Banks went to take a farther view of what had much engaged his attention before; it was a kind of chest or ark, the lid of which was nicely sewed on, and thatched very neatly with palm-nut leaves: It was fixed upon two poles, and supported on little arches of wood, very neatly carved; the use of the poles seemed to be to remove it from place to place, in the manner of our sedan chairs: In one end of it was a square hole, in the middle of which was a ring touching the sides, and leaving the angles open, so as to form a round hole within a square one. The first time Mr Banks saw this coffer, the aperture at the end was stopped with a piece of cloth, which, lest he should give offence, he left untouched; probably there was then something within, but now the cloth was taken away, and, upon looking into it, it was found empty. The general resemblance between this repository and the ark of the Lord among the Jews is remarkable; but it is still more remarkable, that upon enquiring of the boy what it was called, he said, _Ewharre no Eatua_, the _house of the God_: He could however give no account of its signification or use.[41] [Footnote 41: Mr Parkhurst, in his Hebrew Lexicon, takes notice of this circumstance, and admits the resemblance. But in fact, there is no need to have recourse to the Jews in particular, for something similar to what is here mentioned. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, Euter. 63, kept their god in a case or box, and at certain times carried it about or drew it on a four-wheeled carriage. Diodorus Siculus says the same thing of them, in his first book. Both these writers, it is remarkable, use the same word for this containing vehicle; it is [Greek] or [Greek], the temple, shrine, or sacred dwelling. The reader may have heard of the horrid god at Juggernaut, who is drawn on a wheeled carriage, as described in such dreadful terms by Dr Buchanan, in the account of his travels and researches in India. The Israelites, it is very probable from a passage in the prophet Amos, v. 26, copied the example of some of their idolatrous neighbours, in _bearing_ a temple of Moloch and Chiun. See Raphelius on Acts vii. 43. where mention is made of the same offence against the positive commands of God. It may be distinctly proved, that the gods and goddesses of the heathens were accustomed to have their _tabernacula_ and _fana_, and that some of them were _portable_. Thus the Greeks had their [Greek], and the Romans their _thensa_. Virgil, we see in the Eneid, speaks of the Errantesque deos, agitataque numina Trojæ, as a great misfortune. It would be idle to enter here on the question discussed by different men of learning, whether the practice of having temples or places of abode for their gods