70 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



to some distant spot the seat of a felicity denied to him on 

 earth. 



On the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons no idols are 

 \vorshipped, but the Botuto, the holy trumpet, is the great 

 object of veneration. The Piaches, priests or medicine-men 

 who have taken it under their care, and who, to be initiated in 

 its mysteries are obliged to submit to fasts, scourging, and 

 other painful or self-denying religious practices, carry it under 

 the palm trees where, as they pretend, its sound ensures a rich 

 harvest for the following year. Sometimes the great spirit 

 Cachimana blows the trumpet himself, at others he makes 

 known his will through the guardians oi the sacred instrument. 

 No woman is allowed to see it on pain of death, but hurries 

 jaway when the sound of it is heard approaching through the 

 woods, and remains invisible till after the ceremonj^ is over, when 

 the instrument is taken away to its hiding-place, and the 

 women come out of their concealment. Some of these Botutos 

 are particularly renowned and venerated by more than one 

 tribe. Sometimes offerings of fruits and palm-wine are 

 deposited near them, and prove, no doubt, very acceptable to 

 the Piaches. 



The wild Indians who people the vast forests and llanos of 

 Brazil and Guaiana generally live in small hordes, separated 

 from each other by mutual distrust, and often by open war. 

 Their enmity is aggravated by the circumstance that even the 

 neighbouring tribes speak totally different languages. Though 

 when they first settled along the river-banks of tropical America 

 they probably spoke one tongue ; yet, lost in interminable 

 woods, where sometimes a single mountain or a few miles of 

 forest are an almost impervious barrier between hordes which, 

 to communicate with each other, would require a few days' navi- 

 gation through a labyrinth of streams, mere dialects in process 

 of time became separate languages, which from their dissimilarity 

 perpetuate discord and hatred. The Indians avoid each other 

 because' they do not understand each other, and a mutual dis- 

 trust and fear is the cause of their mutual animosity. Some 

 of the Orinoco tribes, as for instance the Ottomacas and the 

 Yaruras, are nomadic savages, the outcasts of humanity ; others, 

 like the Maquiritani and the Macos, are of milder manners, and 

 live in fixed settlements, on the products of the soil. 



