[328] In the above extract from Montfauçon it should have been added, that when the Romans sent one of their fecials to declare war he went in sacerdotal habit—“Arrivant au confins de la ville, il appelloit à temoins Jupiter et les autres dieux comme il alloit demander réparation de l’injure au nom des Romains, il faisoit des imprécations sur lui et sur la ville de Rome, s’il disoit rien contre la vérité, et continuoit son chemin ... s’il rencontroient quelque citoien quelque payisan (paysan) il repétoit toujours ses imprécations,” &c.
[329] A somewhat similar scene is also indistinctly traced in the following:—“Wood relates that on his visit to St Julian in 1670, in walking inland he ‘met seven savages, who came running down the hill to us, making several signs for us to go back again, with much warning and noise, yet did not offer to draw their arrows. But one of them who was an old man came nearer to us than the rest, and made also signs we should depart, to whom I threw a knife, a bottle of brandy, and a neckcloth, to pacify him; but seeing him persist in the same signs as before, and that the savageness of the people seemed incorrigible, we returned on board again.’” Quoted by R. O. Cunningham, “Natural History of the Straits of Magellan and West Coast of Patagonia,” 1871, p. 143. A similar scene is described by Roggerwsen in his voyage, I think, to Easter Island.
This, in connection with the scene at Bolabola, recalls the mode of procedure in the Odyssey, ix. 95 (Pope), when Ulysses reaches
“The land of Lotus and the flowering coast.
We climbed the beach and springs of water found,
Then spread our hasty banquet on the ground.
Three men were sent deputed from the crew
(A herald one) the dubious coast to view,
And learn what habitants possessed the place.
They went and found a hospitable race,