From Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts.

The life of a man [50] is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore: the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the Dumatians; [51] and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian.
[52] A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels.

In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; [53] they circumcised [54] their children at the age of puberty: the same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes.

It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen.

It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.
[Footnote 44: Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p.