204 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



They have a kind of a priest called a Pee-ay-man, 

 who is an enchanter. He finds out things lost. 

 He mutters prayers to the evil spirit over them 

 and their children when they are sick. If a fever 

 be in the village, the Pee-ay-man goes about all 

 night long, howling, and making dreadful noises, 

 and begs the bad spirit to depart. But he has 

 very seldom to perform this part of his duty, as 

 fevers seldom ^dsit the Indian hamlets. However, 

 when a fever does come, and his incantations are 

 of no avail, which I imagine is most commonly the 

 case, they abandon the place for ever, and make 

 a new settlement elsewhere. They consider the 

 owl and the goatsucker as familiars of the evil 

 spirit, and never destroy them. 

 "^ I could find no monuments or marks of an- 

 tiquity amongst these Indians ; so that after pene- 

 trating to the Rio Branco, from the shores of 

 the Western Ocean, had any body questioned me 

 on this subject, I should have answered, I have 

 seen nothing amongst these Indians which tells 

 me that they have existed here for a century; 

 though, for aught I know to the contrary, they 

 may have been here before the Redemption, but 

 their total want of civilization has assimilated 

 them to the forests in which they wander. Thus, 

 an aged tree falls and moulders into dust and you 

 cannot tell what was its appearance, its beauties, 

 or its diseases amongst the neighbouring trees; 

 another has shot up in its place, and after nature 

 has had her course, it will make way for a suc- 

 cessor in its turn. So it is with the Indian of 

 Guiana; he is now laid low in the dust; he has 

 left no record behind him, either on parchment, 



