Ethiopian Superstition--Sacred Bread--Customs of Ethiopian Monks--Heathen Indian Gods--Paraxacti and her three Sons--Thirty thousand millions of Gods--Fate of a Child written on its Forehead--Transmigration of Souls--Seven Seas--Mountain of Gold--Adder of monstrous size with a Hundred Heads--Vixnu--Dispute between Bruma, Vixnu, and Rutrem--Curse pronounced against the Thistle--Iranien the Giant--Transformation--Morning Star--Vixnu's different Forms--A King's Head kicked into the lowest Abyss--Prediction by Soothsayers--A Tyrant's Intentions frustrated--Vixnu's Guilt and Punishment; his Marriages and supposed future Appearance--Rutrem--A Son with Seven Heads--The Seven Stars as Nurses--Parvardi's Loss of her Husband and Birth of a Son--Rutrem's Revenge and its Consequences--The Indians' Offering to the Sun--The Ganges--The Giant Piamejuran--Superstitious Observances at Marriages--Disposal of Dead Bodies--Different degrees of Glory after Death--Reverence for the Cow--Ways of detecting Criminals--Addressing Oracles--Astronomy--Eclipse of the Moon--Magic--John Gondalez. In Ethiopia, superstition was general over the entire empire. The Ethiopians used a sacred bread, called the corban. While this bread was being made, the baker was obliged to repeat seven psalms. Upon every loaf there were twelve impressions of the cross, and each cross was within a square. Ethiopian monks slept on a mat spread on the ground, and before lying down they stretched out their hands one hundred and fifty times in the form of a cross. Baptism was understood by the people of this empire to be a solemn ceremony that washed away all impurities; but the rite was observed by nearly all the ancient nations, in memory of the Deluge. In an account of the empire of the Great Mogul, we find no end of superstitious observances. Each heathen Indian tribe had a separate god. Some tribes even worshipped boiled rice; after the same manner the Egyptians paid homage to leeks. Indian writers say that, in the beginning, a woman, whose name was Paraxacti (brought into existence by the great Creator), had three sons,--the first named Bruma, who came into life with five heads. He was endowed with the power of creating all inferior beings. The name of the second was Vixnu, appointed lord of providence and preserver of all things formed by Bruma. The third was named Rutrem, whose function or inclination was to destroy all things his other two brothers had made and preserved. Rutrem, like his brother Bruma, had five heads. Bruma assumed the form of a stag; and, to punish him for a serious crime he committed when in that shape, his brothers and thirty thousand millions of gods punished him by cutting off one of his heads.