Mercury was a favourite god with the heathens, and had various employments; one of which was to be god of the roads, to direct travellers aright—from which the ancient Romans derived their _Dii Compitales_, or _Dei Viales_, which they likewise placed at the meeting of roads, and in the high ways, and esteemed them the patrons and protectors of travellers. The early heathens placed great heaps of stones at the dividing of {184} the roads, and consecrated those heaps to him by unction[XLVII], and other religious ceremonies. And in honour to him, travellers threw a stone to them, and thus exceedingly increased their bulk: this might occasion Solomon to compare the giving honour to a fool, to throwing a stone into a heap, as each were alike insensible of the obligation; and to cause the Jewish writers to call this custom a piece of idolatrous worship. But the Indians place those heaps of stones where there are no dividings of the roads, nor the least trace of any road[XLVIII]. And they then observe no kind of religious ceremony, but raise those heaps merely to do honour to their dead, and incite the living to the pursuit of virtue. Upon which account, it seems to be derived from the ancient Jewish custom of increasing Absalom’s tomb; for the last things are easiest retained, because people repeat them oftenest, and imitate them most.[81] {185} Footnote XLVII: They rubbed the principal stone of each of those heaps all over with oil, as a sacrifice of libation; by which means they often became black, and slippery; as Arnobius relates of the idols of his time; Lubricatum lapidem, et ex olivi unguine fordidatum, tanquam inesset vis presens, adulabar. _Arnob. Advers. Gent._ Footnote XLVIII: Laban and Jacob raised a heap of stones, as a lasting monument of their friendly covenant. And Jacob called the heap _Galeed_, “the heap of witness.” Gen. xxxi. 47. Though the Cheerake do not now collect the bones of their dead, yet they continue to raise and multiply heaps of stones, as monuments for their dead; this the English army remembers well, for in the year 1760, having marched about two miles along a wood-land path, beyond a hill where they had seen a couple of these reputed tombs, at the war-woman’s creek, they received so sharp a defeat by the Cheerake, that another such must have inevitably ruined the whole army.