102 INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 



life. They go to bed at seven, and rise at half after 

 four. The inside of their huts is kept very clean, 

 and their hammocks, utensils, and weapons are ar- 

 ranged in the greatest order. They bathe every 

 day, and, being generally naked, are thus exempted 

 from the filth principally caused by clothing. Be- 

 sides their cabin in the village, they usually have a 

 smaller one, covered with palm or plantain-leaves, 

 in some solitary place in the woods, to which they 

 retire as often as they can ; and so strong is the 

 desire among them of enjoying the pleasures of 

 savage life, that the children sometimes wander en- 

 tire days in the forests. In fact, the towns are often 

 almost wholly deserted. As in all semi-barbarous 

 nations, the women are subjected to privation and 

 suffering, the hardest labour falling to their share. 



The Indians learn Spanish with extreme difficulty ; 

 and even when they perfectly understand the mean- 

 ing of the words, are unable to express the most 

 simple ideas in that language without embarrass- 

 ment. They seem to have as httle capacity for 

 comprehending any thing belonging to numbers ; the 

 more intelligent counting in Spanish with the ap- 

 pearance of great effort only as far as thirty, or per- 

 haps fifty, while in their own tongue they cannot 

 proceed beyond five or six. The construction of the 

 American dialects is so different from that of the 

 several classes of speech derived from the Latin, 

 that the Jesuits employed some of the more perfect 

 among the former instead of their own ; and had this 

 system been generally followed the greatest benefit 

 would have resulted from it. The Chayma appeared 

 to Humboldt less agreeable to the ear than that of 

 the other South American tribes. 



The Pariagotoes, or Parias, formerly occupied the 

 coasts of Berbice and Essequibo, the peninsula of 

 Paria, and the plains of Piritoo and Parima. Little 

 information, however, is furnished respecting them. 



The Guaraounoes are dispersed in the delta of the 



