When a Siamese student was asked by the writer whether the rite of blood-covenanting was known in his land, he replied: "There is no 'blood covenant' so far as I know. The custom is, if two persons are desirous to become firm friends or brothers they drink together _salted water_; then each takes an oath." He also suggested that he had heard that in former times they drank _a fowl's blood_ in this rite. Again, the mode of making a covenant of salt in some portions of the East coincides with this suggested identification of salt with blood in the primitive mind. In the Lebanon region, where the blood covenant, as a bond of union, is still recognized and practised,[58] the covenant of salt is also well known, not only as between new comers who are to enter into a mutual alliance, but as bringing into union friends who would be as one. In such cases a sword is taken, and salt is laid on its blade. The two friends in turn lick of the salt that is to unite them, as if they were tasting of common blood after the fashion of the "blood-lickers" in Mecca.[59] [58] See _Blood Covenant_, pp. 5-7. [59] See Smith's _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 48. Another illustration of this mode is given by Sir Frederick Henniker, in his notes of a journey in the East in 1819-20.[60] It was a shaykh of the Arabs who escorted him from Mt. Sinai northward, who cut this covenant with Sir Frederick. On the request being made for such an assurance of fidelity from the shaykh, "he immediately drew his sword," says Sir Frederick, "placed some salt upon the blade, and then put a portion of it into his mouth, and desired me to do the same; and 'Now, cousin,' said he, 'your life is as sacred as my own;' or, as he expressed himself, 'Son of my uncle, your head is upon my shoulders.'" Before this act the two were as cousins; now they were as one, the head of one being upon the shoulders of the other. The similarity of this rite with that of the blood covenant, in both its form and meaning, is obvious. [60] _Visit to Egypt, Nubia_, etc., p. 242. This correspondence of salt and blood in primitive thought, and in fact, will perhaps throw light on a disputed reference in a fragment of Ennius[61] to "_salsus sanguis_" (salted blood, or briny blood). It would seem that as the Jews held that the blood is the life, and the life is in the blood, similarly Greeks and Romans recognized the truth that salt is in the blood, and the blood is salt. [61] Cited in _Macrobius_, 6, 2. In the second century there were Christian ascetics who refused to take wine in the eucharist. Among these the Elkesaites and the Ebionites employed bread and salt instead of bread and wine. This seems to have been a recognition of the fact that salt, like wine, represented blood.[62] [62] See Clementine, _Homilies_, IV. 6; XIII. 8; XIV. 1, 8; XIX. 25, cited in art. "Elkesai" in Smith and Wace's _Dict. of Christian Biog._