They imagined incense also to be a sure means to banish the devil; though asafœtida, or the devil’s dung, might have been much better. On Cant. iv. 6. “I will get me to the hill of incense,” the Chaldee paraphrast says, that, while the house of Israel kept the art of their holy fore-fathers, both the morning and mid-day evil spirits fled away, because the divine glory dwelt in the sanctuary, which was built on Mount Moriah; and that all the devils fled when they smelled the effluvia of the fine incense that was there. They likewise believed that herbs and roots had a power to expel dæmons. And Josephus tells us, that the root _Bara_, immediately drives out the devil. I suppose it had such a physical power against fevers and agues, as the jesuit’s bark. The church of Rome, in order to have powerful holy things, as well as the Jews, applies salt, spittle, holy-water, and consecrated oil, to expel the devils from the credulous of their own persuasion; and the oil alone is used as a viaticum, on account of its lubricous quality, to make them slippery, and thereby prevent the devil from laying hold, and pulling them down when they ascend upward. They reckon that observance a most religious duty, and an infallible preservative against the legions of evil spirits who watch in the aerial regions; and also necessary to gain celestial admission for believers. In the Summer-season of the year 1746, I chanced to see the Indians playing at a house of the former Missisippi-Nachee,[76] on one of their old sacred musical instruments. It pretty much resembled the Negroe-Banger in shape, but far exceeded it in dimensions; for it was about five feet long, and a foot wide on the head-part of the board, with eight strings made out of the sinews of a large buffalo. But they were so unskilful in acting the part of the Lyrick, that the _Loache_, or prophet who held the instrument between his feet, and along side of his chin, took one end of the bow, whilst a lusty fellow held the other; by sweating labour they scraped out such harsh jarring sounds, as might have been reasonably expected by a soft ear, to have been sufficient to drive out the devil if he lay any where hid in the house. When I afterward asked him the name, and the reason of such a strange method of diversion, he told me the dance was called _Keetla Ishto Hoollo_, “a dance to, or before, the great holy one;” that it kept off evil spirit, witches, and wizards, from the red people; and enabled them to ordain elderly men to officiate in holy things, as the exigency of the times required.