As my eye fell listlessly on the manuscripts, I saw they
contained only _the Spanish language_ written in _the Greek
characters_--a mode of writing that, I easily conceived, must have been
as unintelligible to the officers of the Inquisition, as the
Hieroglyphics of the Egyptian priests. Their ignorance, sheltered by
their pride, and that still more strongly fortified by the impenetrable
secresy attached to their most minute proceedings, made them hesitate to
entrust to any one the circumstance of their being in possession of
manuscript which they could not decypher. So they returned the papers to
Adonijah, and, in his own language, “Behold, he abode in safety.” But to
me this was a task of horror unspeakable. I felt myself as an added link
to the chain, the end of which, held by an invisible hand, was drawing
me to perdition; and I was now to become the recorder of my own
condemnation. “As I turned over the leaves with a trembling hand, the towering form of
Adonijah seemed dilated with preternatural emotion. “And what dost thou
tremble at, child of the dust?” he exclaimed, “if thou hast been
tempted, so have they--if thou hast resisted, so have they--if they are
at rest, so shalt thou be. There is not a pang of soul or body thou hast
undergone, or canst undergo, that they have not suffered before thy
birth was dreamt of. Boy, thy hand trembles over pages it is unworthy to
touch, yet still I must employ thee, for I need thee. Miserable link of
necessity, that binds together minds so uncongenial! I would that the
ocean were my ink, and the rock my page, and mine arm, even mine, the
pen that should write thereon letters that should last like those on the
written mountains for ever and ever--even the mount of Sinai, and those
that still bear the record, “Israel hath passed the flood(6).” As he
spoke, I again turned over the manuscripts. “Does thy hand tremble
still?” said Adonijah; “and dost thou still hesitate to record the story
of those whose destiny a link, wondrous, invisible, and indissoluble,
has bound to thine. Behold, there are those near thee, who, though they
have no longer a tongue, speak to thee with that eloquence which is
stronger than all the eloquence of living tongues. Behold, there are
those around thee, whose mute and motionless arms of bone plead to thee
as no arms of flesh ever pleaded. Behold, there are those who, being
speechless, yet speak--who, being dead, are yet alive--who, though in
the abyss of eternity, are yet around thee, and call on thee, as with a
mortal voice. Hear them!--take the pen in thine hand, and write.” I took
the pen in my hand, but could not write a line. Adonijah, in a transport
of ecstasy, snatching a skeleton from its receptacle, placed it before
me. “Tell him thy story thyself, peradventure he will believe thee, and
record it.” And supporting the skeleton with one hand, he pointed with
the other, as bleached and bony as that of the dead, to the manuscript
that lay before me. (6) Written mountains, _i. e._ rocks inscribed with characters
  recordative of some remarkable event, are well known to every oriental
  traveller. I think it is in the notes of Dr Coke, on the book of
  Exodus, that I have met with the circumstance alluded to above. A rock
  near the Red Sea is said once to have borne the inscription, “Israel
  hath passed the flood.”

“It was a night of storms in the world above us; and, far below the
surface of the earth as we were, the murmur of the winds, sighing
through the passages, came on my ear like the voices of the
departed,--like the pleadings of the dead. Involuntarily I fixed my eye
on the manuscript I was to copy, and never withdrew till I had finished
its extraordinary contents. Tale of the Indians. “There is an island in the Indian sea, not many leagues from the mouth
of the Hoogly, which, from the peculiarity of its situation and internal
circumstances, long remained unknown to Europeans, and unvisited by the
natives of the contiguous islands, except on remarkable occasions. It is
surrounded by shallows that render the approach of any vessel of weight
impracticable, and fortified by rocks that threatened danger to the
slight canoes of the natives, but it was rendered still more formidable
by the terrors with which superstition had invested it. There was a
tradition that the first temple to the black goddess Seeva(7), had been
erected there; and her hideous idol, with its collar of human sculls,
forked tongues darting from its twenty serpent mouths, and seated on a
matted coil of adders, had there first received the bloody homage of the
mutilated limbs and immolated infants of her worshippers. (7) Vide Maurice’s Indian Antiquities. “The temple had been overthrown, and the island half depopulated, by an
earthquake, that agitated all the shores of India. It was rebuilt,
however, by the zeal of the worshippers, who again began to re-visit the
island, when a tufaun of fury unparalleled even in those fierce
latitudes, burst over the devoted spot. The pagoda was burnt to ashes by
the lightning; the inhabitants, their dwellings, and their plantations,
swept away as with the besom of destruction, and not a trace of
humanity, cultivation, or life, remained in the desolate isle. The
devotees consulted their imagination for the cause of these calamities;
and, while seated under the shade of their cocoa-trees they told their
long strings of coloured beads, they ascribed it to the wrath of the
goddess Seeva at the increasing popularity of the worship of Juggernaut. They asserted that her image had been seen ascending amid the blaze of
lightning that consumed her shrine and blasted her worshippers as they
clung to it for protection, and firmly believed she had withdrawn to
some happier isle, where she might enjoy her feast of flesh, and draught
of blood, unmolested by the worship of a rival deity. So the island
remained desolate, and without inhabitant for years. “The crews of European vessels, assured by the natives that there was
neither animal, or vegetable, or water, to be found on its surface,
forbore to visit; and the Indian of other isles, as he passed it in his
canoe, threw a glance of melancholy fear at its desolation, and flung
something overboard to propitiate the wrath of Seeva. “The island, thus left to itself, became vigorously luxuriant, as some
neglected children improve in health and strength, while pampered
darlings die under excessive nurture. Flowers bloomed, and foliage
thickened, without a hand to pluck, a step to trace, or a lip to taste
them, when some fishermen, (who had been driven by a strong current
toward the isle, and worked with oar and sail in vain to avoid its
dreaded shore), after making a thousand prayers to propitiate Seeva,
were compelled to approach within an oar’s length of it; and, on their
return in unexpected safety, reported they had heard sounds so
exquisite, that some other goddess, milder than Seeva, must have fixed
on that spot for her residence.