142 INDIANS PAINTING. 



unacquainted with the passage of the rapids of the Ori- 

 noco, and would not undertake to conduct their bark 

 any farther. They were obliged to conform to his will. 

 Bappily for them, the missionary of Carichana consented 

 to Bell them a line canoe at a very moderate price: and 

 Father Bernardo Zea, missionary of the Atures and May- 

 pures near the great cataracts, offered, though still un- 

 well, to accompany them as far as the frontiers of Brazil. 



Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Ori- 

 noco permitted the Indians of their Missions to paint 

 their skins; some of them even speculated on this bar- 

 barous practice of the natives. In their huts, pompously 

 called convents, Humboldt often saw stores of chica, 

 which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To 

 form a j ust idea of the extravagance of the decoration of 

 these naked Indians, he tells us that a man of large 

 stature gains with difficulty enough by the labour of a 

 fortnight, to procure in exchange the chica necessary to 

 } »aiiit himself red. Thus as we say in temperate climates, 

 of a poor man, " he has not enough to clothe himself," 

 the Indians of the Orinoco say, " that man is so poor, 

 that he has not enough to paint half his body." 



Humboldt was surprised to see, that, the women far 

 advanced in years, were more occupied with their orna- 

 ments than the youngest women. He saw an Indian 

 female of the nation of the Ottomacs employing two of 

 her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair w r ith 

 the oil of turtles' eg^^ 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, lie returned from 



