Bryant ("Mythology," ii. 219) speaking of Egypt ("the priests of Ammon who at _particular seasons_ used to carry in procession a boat," concerning which refer to page 254), says--"Part of the ceremony in most of the ancient mysteries consisted in carrying about a kind of ship or boat, which custom upon due examination will be found to relate to nothing else but Noah and the Deluge." He adds that the name of "the navicular shrines was _Baris_, which is very remarkable; for it is the very name of the mountain, according to Nicolaus Damascenus, on which the ark of Noah rested, the same as Ararat in Armenia." Herodotus speaks of "_Baris_" as the Egyptian name of a ship, l. 2, 96; Eurip. "Iphig. in Aulis," v. 297; Æschylus, Persæ, 151; Lycophron, v. 747, refer to names of ships in connection with Noah. _Sup._, p. 196. Query--is our word barge a corruption of baris? or perhaps of _baris_ in connection with "_argus_," also a term for the ark. (With reference to this etymology _vide_ my remark, p. 116, and d'Anselme, p. 196, and Bryant, ii. 251.) But the closest connection is in the nature and order of the ceremonies on the fourth day at Dahome and among the Mandans. Among the latter, interrupting the bull-dance on that day, there is an apparition of "the evil spirit,"[210] graphically described by Mr Catlin (p. 22), and at Dahome (Burton, ii. 18), there intervenes between the fourth and fifth days' ceremonies what is called "the evil night" (there are two "evil nights") which is the night of the horrible massacre. But on this night also, at the close of the fourth day's ceremonies among the Mandans, the infliction of tortures (very horrible, but mild in comparison with the African butchery) commence. Now, I have already ventured the opinion that these tortures were originally of an expiatory character, and this gains confirmation by the assurance made to Captain R. Burton that the victims on "the evil night" were only "criminals" and prisoners of war, the people of Dahome, on all occasions (_vide infra_), preferring a vicarious mode of expiation. Captain R. Burton (ii. 19) says of these massacres:--"The king takes no pleasure in the tortures and death or in the sight of blood, as will presently appear. The 2000 killed in one day, _the canoe_[211] paddled in a pool of gore, and other grisly nursery tales, must be derived from Whydah, where the slave-traders invented them, probably to deter Englishmen from visiting the king. It is useless to go over the ground of human sacrifice from the days of the wild Hindu's Naramadha to the burnings of the Druids, and to the awful massacres of Peru and Mexico. In Europe the extinction of the custom _began_ from the time of the polite Augustus," _i.e._ commenced with the advent of our Lord. [_Vide_ a reference to MS. of Sir J. Acton in Mr Gladstone's address to the University of Edinburgh,