XL] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 433 



better than any other human group to the old saying, homo 

 homini lupus. They roam the forests like wild beasts, living 

 almost entirely upon game, in which is included man himself. 

 " When one of them is pursuing the chase in the woods and 

 hears another hunter imitating the cry of an animal, he imme- 

 diately makes the same cry to entice him nearer, and if he is of 

 another tribe kills him if he can and (as is alleged) eats him." 

 Hence they are naturally " in a state of hostility with all their 

 neighbours 1 ." 



These Cashibos, i.e. " Bats," are members of a widespread 

 linguistic family which in ethnological writings bears 

 the name of Pano, from the Panos of the Huallaga FamHy!* 

 and Maranon, who are now broken up or greatly 

 reduced, but whose language is current amongst the Cashibos, 

 the Conibos, the Karipunas, the Pacaouaras, the Setebos, the 

 Sipivios (Shipibos) and others about the head-waters of the 

 Amazons in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, as far east as the Madeira. 

 Amongst these, as amongst the Moxos and so many other riverine 

 tribes in Amazonia, a slow transformation is in progress. Some 

 have been baptized, and while still occupying their old haunts 

 and keeping up the tribal organization, have been induced to 

 forego their savage ways and turn to peaceful pursuits. They 

 are beginning to wear clothes, usually cotton robes of some vivid 

 colour, to till the soil, take service with the white traders, or even 

 trade themselves in their canoes up and down the tributaries of 

 the Amazons. 



In this boundless Amazonian region of moist sunless wood- 

 lands, fringed north and east by Atlantic coast Ethnical 

 ranges, diversified by the open Venezuelan llanos, Relations in 



, . . ' . 11 i i Amazonia. 



and merging southwards in the vast alluvial plains 

 of the Parana-Paraguay basin, much light has been brought to 

 bear on the obscure ethnical relations by the recent explorations 

 especially of Dr Paul Ehrenreich and Karl von den Steinen 

 about the Xingu, Purus, Madeira and other southern affluents of 

 the great artery. Excluding several isolated that is, not yet 



as Germans, with long beards," while "the missionary Girbal was astonished 

 at the beauty of their women" (Markham, List of Tribes etc., p. 249). 

 1 Markham, ib. 



K. 28 





