Now, if the reader will turn to Boulanger, i. 90, 91, he will find this identical custom in Persia, Pegu, China, and Japan. But I relinquish the details, as I fear I shall have exhausted the patience of the few readers I shall have carried with me to this point; and because the King of Dahome has a custom perhaps still more demonstrably cognate to not only the ancient Grecian ceremonies on the shores of the ocean and on the banks of rivers, but with widely diffused tradition. I shall here place four writers in juxtaposition, and with this testimony I shall conclude:-- BOULANGER. The ancient inhabitants of Italy repaired once a year to the Lake Cutilia, where they made sacrifices and celebrated secret mysteries or ceremonies (Dion. Halicarnassus, i. 2). The pontiffs in ancient Rome also went annually to the banks of the Tiber, "là ils faisoient des sacrifices _expiatoires_ à Saturne, ce Dieu chronique," &c. (Dion. Hal. i. 8.) In the kingdom of Saka in Africa their greatest solemnity was celebrated on the banks of the rivers; the king himself presides at it (Hist. Gener. des Voy., iii. 639). The same custom has been already (_supra_, p. 252) noticed on the Indus. In all these cases human sacrifices were offered, or substitutes.--Boulanger, i. pp. 110-11. Compare _supra_, p. 243, lines from Dionysius Periegesis. BURTON. At Whydat the youngest brother of their triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. [Compare with Assyrian Hoa, _supra_, p. 194, and Chinese Yu, p. 68.] "The Hu-no, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all.... At times the king sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agborne a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a Caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. The custom for this element is made at Whydat, in a place near the greater market, and called Hu-kpa-man. It is a _round_ hut, with thatch and chalked walls: outside is a heap of bones, whilst _skulls_, carapaces of the _tortoise_, and similar materials, cumber the _interior_. The priest is a fetish woman, who _offers water_ and kola nuts to, and expects rum from, white visitors."--ii. p. 141. Compare also _supra_, in Preface, extract from Davies' "Celtic Researches" on the Celtic god Hu. CATLIN.