THETB OAITNIBAL TASTES. 415 



tnd laborious ; but suffer them to take part in an incursion 

 (entrada) to bring in the natives, ana you can scarcely 

 prevent them from murdering all they meet, and hiding 

 some portions of the dead bodies." In reflecting on the 

 manners of these Indians, we are almost horrified at that 

 combination of sentiments which seem to exclude each other ; 

 that faculty of nations to become but partially humanized ; 

 that preponderance of customs, prejudices, and traditions, 

 over the natural affections of the neart. We had a fugitive 

 Indian from the Guaisia in our canoe, who had become 

 sufficiently civilized in a few weeks to be useful to us in 

 placing the instruments necessary for our observations at 

 night. He was no less mild than intelligent, and we had 

 some desire of taking him into our service. What was our 

 horror when, talking to him by means of an interpreter, 

 we learned, " that the flesh 01 the marimonde monkeys, 

 though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human 

 flesh." He told us "that his relations (that is, the people 

 of his tribe) preferred the inside of the hands in man, as 

 in bears." This assertion was accompanied with gestures 

 of savage gratification. We inquired of this young man, 

 so calm and so affectionate in the little services which he 

 rendered us, whether he still felt sometimes a desire to eat 

 of a Cheruvichahena. He answered, without discomposure, 

 that, living in the mission, he would only eat what he saw 

 was eaten by the Padres. Eeproaches addressed to the 

 natives on tne abominable practice which we here discuss, 

 produce no effect; it is as if a Brahmin, travelling in 

 Europe, were to reproach us with the habit of feeding on 

 the flesh of animals. In the eyes of the Indian of the 

 Guaisia, the Cheruvichahena was a being entirely different 

 from himself; and one whom he thought it was no more 

 unjust to kill than the jaguars of the forest. It was merely 

 from a sense of propriety that, whilst he remained in the 

 mission, he would only eat the same food as -the Fathers. 

 The natives, if they return to their tribe (al monte), or tind 

 themselves pressed by hunger, soon resume their old 

 habits of anthropophagy. And why should we be so much 

 astonished at this inconstancy in the tribes of the Orinoco, 

 when we are reminded, by terrible and well-ascertained 

 examples, of what has passed among civilized nations in 



