Native Dress. — '-'■John BulV 67 



medicine man of the Red Indian of America, or the Ach-Itz 

 of tlie Indian races among the highlands of Guatemala, 

 exercises the utmost influence over all the affairs of life. 

 Here, as elsewhere, most of the natives had disappeared on 

 our approach. We found but five men, who were all at least 

 partially clad ; some wore shirts, trowsers, and caps ; another 

 had enveloped his person in an immense, and by no means 

 over-clean, piece of linen. One of this number, who acted as 

 our guide through the island, and called himself '' John 

 Bull," was not a regular resident in Pulo Milu, but in Lesser- 

 Nicobar, and had only come over to the island for the pur- 

 pose of constructing canoes of trunks of trees hollowed out. 

 He spoke English with tolerable fluency, and displayed quite 

 child-like satisfaction, as often as any English word, no 

 matter what, was recalled to his recollection, which had 

 slipped his memory from want of practice. John Bull soon 

 became very insinuating, and expressed a wish to accompany 

 us to Great Nicobar, where, as he assured us, at Hinkvala, 

 one of the villages on the southern shore, he had several 

 relatives, among others one named '' London," who could be 

 of the utmost service to us. For his kind offices we promised 

 him a present, upon which he asked with the most naive 

 simplicity: ''You not talk lie?" from which we may con- 

 jecture that not every promise made to him by a stranger 

 was duly fulfilled. The huts of the natives were constructed 

 of beams, exactly like those in the central island ; and the 

 internal arrangements were precisely identical. Here also 



P2 



