Pagan yurisprudence. mentary to the legal profession, clearly indicate the popular sentiment concerning courts and their attaches. " To win a law suit," declares an ancient maxim, " reduces a person to penury." " Better live on dung," so goes another, " than have recourse to law;" while a third affirms that "he who has to do with magistrates becomes a pauper." Among some heathen tribes the legal forms are exceedingly primitive. They are more : they are excessively curious. Among some of these benighted people any injury may be condoned by the payment of a com pensation for the tears shed as well as for the blood spilt; and the ramifications of this peculiar system extend to cases not ordi narily embraced within the limits of juridical procedure. If, for example, an Indian among the Goajiras (United States of Colombia) acci dentally wound himself, break a limb, or meet with any similar misfortune, his mother's family immediately demand of him "the pay ment of blood, as it is termed. This novel claim proceeds upon the theory that as his blood is also their blood, the supposed culprit has no right to shed it, without making just compensation therefor. The father's relatives must also receive payment for their tears. But these latter, for some reason surpassing ordinary comprehension, are generally es teemed of less value than the maternal lachrymation. Even the friends of the un fortunate person come in for their share. Indeed, all who may have witnessed the catastrophe are entitled to indemnity of some sort for the grief into which they
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were plunged at beholding their companion suffer. The amount of this payment depends upon the character of the injury sustained. A trifling cut on the finger calls for a little corn, a kid, or some commodity of equal value. If the matter be more serious, noth ing less than a goat or a sheep — perhaps, even a cow — can assuage the sorrow of these sympathetic mourners. If an Indian borrow a horse from a friend, and is thrown or in any way injured, the relatives of the wounded man instantly demand compensation from the owner of the animal, alleging with logic as undeniable as it is irresistible, that the accident could not have happened but for the supposed act of kindness on the part of the friend. In case a person is injured by his own horse, he himself must compensate his friends, in accordance with the pleasant program to which reference has already been made. Pronouncing the name of a decedent in the presence of his surviving relations, also, constitutes an offence of considerable enormity. Such a misdemeanor can only be condoned by large payments of money. Among the natives of Alaska, the Mosaic law of " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth " is preserved inviolate. Here, when any person is injured, the wrongdoer must suffer identically the same. If this be physically impossible, he must make suitable compensation in blankets, — the currency of the country; and it is alleged that almost every offence, ranging all the way from the slightest misdemeanor to the most revolting homicide, has its value determined in this highly respectable mean of exchange.
