

GENERAL USE OP PJGMLNT8. 20? 



they be born with a forehead little raised, and the head flat, 

 they endeavour to depress the foreheads of their children. 

 If they be distinguished from other nations by a thin beard, 

 they try to eradicate the few hairs that nature has given 

 them. They think themselves embellished in proportion as 

 thev heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of 

 their national conformation. 



We were surprised to *ee, that, in the camp of Pararuma, 

 the women far advanced in years were more occupied with 

 their ornaments than the youngest women. We saw an 

 Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs employing two 

 of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair with 

 the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato 

 and caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice- 

 work formed of black lines crossing each other on a red 

 ground. Each little square had a black dot in the centre. 

 It was a work of incredible patience. We returned from 

 a very long herborization, and the painting was not half 

 finished. This research of ornament seems the more singu- 

 lar when we reflect that the figures and marks are not 

 produced by the process of tattooing, but that paintings 

 executed with so much care are effaced,* if the Indian ex- 

 poses himself imprudently to a heavy shower. There are 

 some nations who paint only to celebrate festivals ; others 

 are covered with colour during the whole year : and the latter 

 consider the use of anato as so indispensable, that both 

 men and women would perhaps be less ashamed to present 

 themselves without a guayuco^ than destitute of paint. 

 These guayucos of the Orinoco are partly bark of trees, and 

 partly cotton-cloth. Those of the men are broader than 

 those worn by the women, who, the missionaries say, have 

 in general a less lively feeling of modesty. A similar ob- 

 servation was made by Christopher Columbus. May \ve 

 not attribute this inoifference, this want of delicacy in 



* The black and caustic pigment of the caruto (Genipa americana) 

 however, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with regret, 

 having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused our faces to be marked 

 with spots and strokes of caruto. When we returned to Angostura, in 

 the midst of Europeans, these marks were still visible. 



f A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma of the Indirni 

 of the Orinoco b rather a band 'Jhan an apron. 



