good state of health. Their faces have no expression whatever, that of a placid good-nature and content excepted; and their features are beautifully regular, with small black eyes, thin lips, and very white teeth. However, all the Guiana Indians disfigure themselves more or less by the use of arnotta or rocow, by them called cosowee, and by the Dutch orlean. The seeds of the arnotta being macerated in the juice of lemon, and mixed with water, and gum that exudes from the mawna tree, or with the oil of castor, composes a scarlet paint, with which all the Indians anoint their bodies, and even the men their hair, which gives their skin the appearance of a boiled lobster; they also rub their naked bodies with caraba or crab-oil. This, it must be allowed, is extremely useful in scorching climates, where the inhabitants of both sexes go almost naked. One day, laughing at a young man who came from the neighbourhood of Cayenne, he answered me in French, saying, "My skin, sir, is kept soft: too great perspiration is prevented, and the musquitoes do not sting me as they do you: besides its beauty, this is the use of my painting red. Now what is the reason of your painting white" meaning the powder in the hair: you are, without any reason, wasting your flour, dirtying your coat, and making yourself look grey before your time." 66 These Indians also make use of a deep purple blue, which they call tapowripa; but this is purely for orna ment, and is absolutely indelible for about nine days. It is the juice of a fruit in size like a small apple that grows on the lawna-tree, and which is bruised and macerated in water. With this, these people make figures on their faces, and all over their bodies, resembling hieroglyphics, like those that were a few years since called à la Greque in Europe, and are still cut in coal grates, fenders, &c. So very permanently does this paint adhere to the skin, that one of our officers, who could not believe the fact, having, by way of frolic, made a pair of enormous whiskers with it on his face, was obliged, to our great amusement, to stay at Paramaribo with them for above a week, and wait till they gradually disappeared. The only dress worn by these Indians consists of a slip of black or blue cotton, worn by the men to cover their nakedness, and called camisa; something like that of the negroes. Being wound round their loins, it passes through between their thighs, and the ends of it, which are very long, they either throw over their shoulders, or negligently let them trail on the ground. For the same purpose, the women wear an apron of cotton, with party-coloured glass beads strung upon it, which they call queiou. This covering is of no great size, being only about one foot in breadth by eight inches in length, ornamented with fringes, and fastened round the waist with cotton strings; but being heavy, though of no larger dimensions, it answers all the purposes for which it was intended. In pronunciation, the language of the Indians in general much resembles the Italian, their words being sonorous and harmonious, mostly terminating with a vowel, as may be observed by the few specimens above. They have no calculation of time, a string with some knots being the only calendar they are acquainted with. Their musical instruments consist of a kind of flute called tootoo, and made of a single piece of thick reed, on which they make a sound no better than the lowing of an ox, without either measure or variety. Another instrument is also used by them to blow upon, called quarta, (by Ovid a syrinx; by some poets Pan's chaunter) and consists of reeds of different lengths, that are joined together like the pipes of an organ, but even at the top, which they hold with both hands to the lips, and which, by shifting from side to side, produces a warbling of clear but discordant sounds, agreeable to none but themselves; nor have I seen a better representation of the god Pan playing on his chaunter, than a naked Indian among the verdant foliage playing upon one of those reedy pipes. They also make flutes of the bones of their enemies, of which I have one now in my possession. Their dancing, if such it may be called, consists in stamping on the ground, balancing on one foot, and staggering round in different attitudes for many hours, as if intoxicated. The Indians are a very sociable people among themselves, and frequently meet together in a large wigwam or carbet that is in every hamlet for the purpose, where, if they do not play or dance, they amuse each other with fictitious stories, generally concerning ghosts, witches, or dreams, during which they frequently burst into immoderate fits of laughter. They greatly delight in bathing, which they do twice at least every day, men, women, boys, and girls, promiscuously together. They are all excellent swimmers without exception. Among these parties not the smallest indecency is committed, in either words or actions. The Indian girls are married when they are twelve years old. The ceremony consists simply in the young man's offering a quantity of game and fish of his own catching, which if she accepts, he next proposes the question," Will you be my wife ?" If she answers in the affirmative, the matter is settled, and the nuptials celebrated in a drunken feast, when a house and furniture is provided for the young couple. Their women are delivered without any assistance, and with so little inconvenience or suffering, that they seem exempt from the curse of Eve. Most of these people esteeming a flat forehead a mark of beauty, they compress the heads of their children, it is said, immediately after their births, like the Chactaws of North America. : No Indian wife eats with her husband, but serves him as a slave for this reason they can take but very little care of their infants, which nevertheless are always healthy and undeformed. When they travel they carry them in small hammocks slung over one shoulder, in which sits the child, having one leg before and the other behind the mother. For an emetic they use the juice of tobacco, which they seldom smoke. When the Indians are dying, either from sickness or old age, the latter of which is most frequently the cause, the devil or yawahoo is at midnight exercised by the peii or priest, by means of rattling a calabash filled with small stones, peas, and beads, accompanied by a long speech. This office is hereditary, and by these pretended divines, no animal food, as I have before said, is publicly tasted, and yet, on the whole, they live better than all the others. When an Indian is dead, being first washed and anointed, he is buried naked, in a new cotton bag, in a sitting attitude, his head resting on the palms of his hands, his elbows on his knees, and all his implements of war and hunting by his side; during which time his relations and neighbours rend the air by their dismal lamentations; but soon after, by a general drunken riot, they drown their sorrow till the following year. This practice, by the way, bears some affinity to Dr. Smollett's description of a burial in the highlands of Scotland. At the expiration of the year, the body, being rotten, is dug up, and the bones distributed to all the friends and acquaintance; during which ceremony the former rites are repeated for the last time, and the whole neighbourhood look out for another settlement. Some tribes of Indians, having put their deceased friends in the above posture, place them naked for a few days under water, where the bones being picked clean by the piree and other fish, the skeleton is dried in the sun, and hung up to the ceiling of their houses or wigwams; and this is done as the strongest instance of their great regard for their departed friend. Notwithstanding the Guiana Indians are upon the whole a peaceable people, they sometimes go to war among themselves, purely for the sake of capturing prisoners, to which they are too much encouraged by the Christians, who receive them in exchange for other commodities, and make them slaves, which is too frequently practised. But these kind of slaves are only for shew and parade, as they absolutely refuse to work, and if at all ill-treated, or especially if beaten, they pine and languish like caged turtles, even refusing food, till by affliction and want they are exhaust ed and finally expire. The Indians always fight their battles by midnight: indeed their contest resembles more a siege than battle, as these broils consist only in surrounding the hamlets of their enemies while they are asleep, making prisoners of the women, boys, and girls, while they shoot the men with poisoned arrows, or with their clubs or apootoos divide their skulls when they come to close quarters; they also scalp their male prisoners, bring home their hair, and even their bones, as trophies of war, and presents to their wives, unless they intend to sell them to the Europeans at Paramaribo. In their open rencounters, which happen very seldom, the bows and barbed arrows are their principal weapons of offence; with those they often kill at the distance of sixty paces; nay, the swiftest bird in its flight, provided it has the magnitude of a crow, seldom escapes them. In truth, such is the skill of these people at these manly exercises, that the best archers at Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, must have yielded to their superiority. "Now with full force the yielding bow he bends, I shall only add further on this subject, that when these Indians go to war they choose one general commander, whom they distinguish by the title of Uill. CAPTAIN STEDMAN. SECT. CXXIII. WONDERFUL EFFECT FROM THE BITING OF A BAT. I CANNOT here forbear relating a singular circumstance respecting myself, viz. that, on waking about four o'clock this morning in my hammock, I was extremely alarmed at finding myself weltering in congealed blood, and without feeling any pain whatever. |