94 



CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



eventually become as wrinkled and flabby as the 

 ugliest man in the village ; and the careless little 

 maiden, not many years later, almost as soon as her 

 shape and limbs were rounded and perfected, would 

 begin to acquire that grossness that mars maidenly 



beauty, and, if mar- 

 ried at eighteen, at 

 twenty-five or thirty 

 she would be old, 

 though vigorous, 

 and resemble those 

 middle-aged females 

 about her. 



A writer thus de- 

 scribes the Domin- 

 ica Caribs in 1795 : 

 "They are of clear 

 copper color, and 

 have sleek, black 

 hair ; their persons 

 are stout and well 

 made, but they dis- 

 figure their faces by 

 flattening their fore- 

 heads in infancy. 

 They live chiefly by fishing in the rivers and the sea, 

 or by fowling in the woods, in both which pursuits 

 they use their arrows with wonderful dexterity. It is 

 said they will kill the smallest bird with an arrow at 

 a great distance, or transfix a fish at a considerable 

 depth in the sea. They display also very great in- 

 genuity in making curious-wrought panniers, or bas- 

 kets, of silk-grass or the leaves and bark of trees." 



^.ncient Caribs. 



