previously, perished by thousands on the altars. The palpitating flesh
was distributed amongst the assistants, and a horrible custom compelled
the priests to clothe themselves in the still bleeding skins of the
unfortunate wretches, and to wear them until they rotted to pieces.

Without going back to an antiquity so remote, in how many different
regions of Africa and America, and in how many islands of Polynesia
have not our sailors and missionaries reported the practice
of cannibalism in our own day? It is difficult, therefore, not to
believe, although the fact cannot perhaps be very distinctly proved,
that the first inhabitants of Europe degraded as were the conditions
of their existence, did eat human flesh and acquire a depraved taste
for it; impelled thereto not only by the pangs of hunger, but also
by a revolting superstition.

Animals, however, were very plentiful all around. Stags, elks, aurochs,
horses, and the large pachyderms multiplied very rapidly in the wide
solitudes, the pasture lands of which afforded them a constantly
renewed supply of food, and the beasts of prey in their turn found an
easy prey in the ruminants.[63] The ways of animals do not change, and
the travellers who are exploring the interior of Africa tell us that
now, as in the day we are trying to recall, hundreds of elephants and
rhinoceroses congregate in a limited area, whilst innumerable herds
of giraffes, zebras, and gazelles graze peacefully in the presence
of man, whose destructive powers they have not yet learnt to dread.

Delegorgue speaks of one lake peopled by more than one hundred
hippopotami, and of a region less than three miles in diameter
containing six hundred elephants. Livingstone tells us that he
saw troops of more than four thousand antelopes pass at a time,