340 Mr. Ranking on the Origin 



with pincers, they bore their ears and nostrils, and the richer 

 sort deck them with jewels of gold, the common people with 

 shells ; and cut the hair to half the ear. At puberty they chew 

 leaves of trees and nuts in either cheek all the day, which 

 blackens their teeth. They reproach Europeans for keeping 

 their beards and hair^ and having white teeth, with being like 

 wild beasts. The Chiribichenses cultivate the leaves, which 

 are greater than myrtles, in well-ordered trenches, watered, in 

 fields inclosed by a cotton line three feet high, and think that 

 whosoever passes that sacred line, shall shortly perish. They 

 pick up exceeding plenty of shells and snails in the woods and 

 mountains, heap them up, and with certain wood they put them 

 into a furnace, make lime, and mix it with the powdered leaves. 

 The powder thus mixed and tempered, they put up close in 

 maunds and baskets of marish canes, curiously wrought." The 

 merchants flock to them, as to a fair, to buy it, for which they 

 give slaves, golden jewels, and maize. These people spit out 

 and change the old leaves for new, every hour. Peter Martyr, 

 (who died in 1525,) Decade viii. c. vi. in Hakluyt, vol. iv. p. 

 665. Those who have been in India will read all this with 

 great interest ; the use of the word maund is exceedingly re- 

 markable. A maund in Hindostan is from twenty-four to seven- 

 ty-five pounds English, (^Rees''s Cyc. Mamid.) This English 

 translation from the Latin (the latter has not been met with,) 

 appears to have been published before 1588, (See Rees's Cyc. 

 Uakl.) and the first ship from England to the East Indies, was 

 the Rere Admiral, Master, (afterwards Sir) James Lancaster, 

 in 1591. This w^ord maund was, therefore, not probably 

 known in England, and if it be the same in the original Latin, 

 as the word used in America before 1525, it is a very curious 

 circumstance. — JVote. The writer of this has seen a kiln of 

 such shells burning in the Sunderbunds, for the like use in 

 Bengal. See Wars and Sports, p. 288. 



The Caribs are well-made, have a full round face ; the nose 

 and forehead are pressed and flattened by their mothers while 

 infants. They blacken round their eyes. If the first-born be 

 a male, the husband keeps his bed, as if suffering from child- 

 birth. They have ChemeenSy and follow their devilish magic. 



