The defence, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the
third day's bombardment.
They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the
curious temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were
accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They
particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building, which,
having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they
had as matter of duty sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites
of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed, and various
sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well constructed, they
believed, with a dreadful design. Besides these, they led me to see a
large and deeply chiselled marble vase, or basin, supported upon twelve
oxen, also of marble and of life size, and of which they told some
romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were
emigrants from a great distance, believed their deity countenanced their
reception here of a baptism of regeneration as proxies for whomsoever
they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come:
that here parents "went into the water" for their lost children,
children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons
for their lovers: that thus the great vase came to be associated with
all their most cherished memories, and was therefore the chief object of
all others in the building, upon which they bestowed the greatest degree
of their idolatrous affection.
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