PAINTED BODIES OF THE INDTAJfS. 200 



naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If painted 

 nations had been examined with the same attention as 

 those who are clothed, it would have been perceived that 

 the most fertile imagination, and the most mutable caprice, 

 have created the fashions of painting, as well as those oi 

 garments. 



Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the 

 New or the Old World, to one race or one zone only. These 

 ornaments are most common among the Malays and Ame- 

 rican races ; but in the time of the Romans they were also 

 employed by the white race in the north of Europe. As the 

 most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found 

 in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of 

 beauty in painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders 

 of the Pacific. Some clothed nations still paint their hands, 

 their nails, and their faces. It would seem that painting 

 is then confined to those parts of the body that remain 

 uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind the 

 savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe, 

 in some towns of the province of Peru the ladies think 

 they embellish their delicate skins by covering them with 

 colouring vegetable matter, starch, wnite-of-egg, and flour. 

 After having lived a long time among men painted with 

 anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these re- 

 mains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages 

 of civilization. 



The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity 

 of examining several animals in their natural state, which, 

 till then, we had seen only in the collections of Europe. 

 These little animals form a branch of commerce for the 

 missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin called mani, 

 the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange mon- 

 keys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in 

 great request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fish- 

 nook a, and pins. The productions of the Orinoco are bought 

 at a low pnce from the Indians, who live in dependence on 

 the monks; and these same Indians purchase ishing and 

 gardening implements from the monks at a very high 

 price, with the money they have gained at the egc-harvest. 

 We ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with 



VOL. n. p 



