Divination by means of bones--generally the shoulder bones of rams--is quite common among the Mongols and Tongoose, and the custom seems to have remained unchanged through centuries. For Purchas already quotes from the "Journal" of the Minorite monk Guillaume de Rubruguis, written in 1255, a description of the manner in which the Great Khan of Mongolia tried to ascertain the result of any great enterprise which he might contemplate. Three shoulder bones of rams were brought to him, which he held for some time in his hands, while deeply meditating on the subject; then he threw them into the fire. After they were burnt black they were again laid before him and examined; if they had cracked lengthways the omen was favorable, if crossways the enterprise was abandoned. Almost identically the same process is described by the great traveler Pallas, who witnessed it repeatedly and obtained very startling communications from the Mongol priests. But here also violent dancing, narcotic perfumes, and wild cries had to aid in producing a trance. The Laplanders have, perhaps, the most striking magic powers which seem to be above suspicion. At least we are assured by every traveler who has spent some time among them, from Caspar Peucer ("Commentaries," etc., Wittebergae, 1580, p. 132) down to the tourists of our days ("Six Months in Lapland," 1870), that they not only see persons at the greatest distance, but furnish minute details as to their occupation or surroundings. After having invoked the aid of his gods the magician falls down like a dead man and remains in a state of trance for twenty-four hours, during which foreigners are always warned to have him carefully guarded, "lest the demons should carry him off." During this time the seer maintains that his "soul opens the gates of the body and moves about freely wherever it chooses to go." When he returns to consciousness he describes accurately and minutely the persons about whom he has promised to give information. In the East Indies it is well known clairvoyance has existed from time immemorial, and the kind of trance which consists in utter oblivion of actual life and perfect abstraction of thought from this world is there carried out to perfection. The faithful believer sits or lies down in any position he may happen to prefer for the moment, fixes his eyes intently upon the point of his nose, mutters the word One, and finally beholds God with an inner sense, in the form of a white brilliant light of ineffable splendor. Some of these ascetics pass from a simple trance to a state of catalepsy, in which their bodies become insensible to pain--but this kind of _ecstasis_ is not accompanied by divination.