As the good spirits, from the very nature of the case, will not harm them, the Alaskans pay but little attention to them. They give their chief attention to propitiating the evil spirits, so that their religion practically resolves itself into devil-worship or demonolatry. This is called Shamanism, or the giving of offerings to evil spirits to prevent them from doing mischief to the offerer. It is said to have been the old religion of the Tartar race before the introduction of Buddhism, and is still that of the Siberians. Indeed, Paul long ago declared, “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to _devils_ and not to God.” The one whose office it is to perform these rites is called a shaman, and is the sorcerer or medicine-man of the tribes. The shaman has control, not only of the spirits, but, through the spirits, of disease, of the elements, and of nature; he holds in his power success or misfortune, blessing or cursing. “The honor,” says Dali, “with which a shaman is regarded depends on the number of spirits under his control, who, properly employed contribute largely to his wealth.” INDIAN SUN-WORSHIP. We are informed that the worship of the sun lies at the foundation of all the ancient mythologies, deeply enveloped as they are, when followed over Asia Minor and Europe, in symbolic and linguistic subtleties and refinements. The symbolic fires erected on temples and altars to Baal, Chemash and Moloch, burned brightly in the valley of the Euphrates long before the pyramids of Egypt were erected, or its priestly-hoarded hieroglyphic wisdom resulted in a phonetic alphabet. In Persia these altars were guarded and religiously fed by a consecrated body of magical priesthood, who recognized a Deity in the essence of an eternal fire and a world-pervading light. [Illustration: AMAZONIAN INDIANS WORSHIPING THE SUN.] The same dogma, derived apparently from the east and not from the west, through Europe, was fully installed at Atacama and Cuzco, in Peru, at Cholulu, on the magnificent and volcano-lighted peaks of Mexico, and along the fertile deltas of the Mississippi valley. Altar-beds for a sacred fire, lit to the Great Spirit, under the name and symbolic form of Cuzis, or the sun, where the frankincense of the nicotiana was offered, with hymns and genuflections, have been discovered, in many instances, under the earth-heaps and artificial mounds and places of sepulture of the ancient inhabitants. Intelligent Indians yet living among the North American tribes, point out the symbol of the sun, in their ancient muzzinabikons or rock-inscriptions, and also amid the ideographic tracery and bark-scrolls of the hieratic, or priestly inscriptions, and of the magical medicine-songs. AMAZON SUN-WORSHIP.