Note 294 — Chapter II · ORIGIN OF THE JUDICIAL DUEL.
Reading edition
An outlying fragment of the same belief is to be seen in the ancient Japanese practice of deciding knotty questions by the judicial duel (Griffis’s Mikado’s Empire, New York, 1876, p. 92). Even the most savage of existing races, the aborigines of Australia, have a kind of duel under certain rules by which private controversies are settled, and among the Melanesians the custom prevails, champions even being sometimes employed (Patetta, Le Ordalie, Torino, 1890, pp. 55, 60).