THE CARIB LANGUAGE. 75 



Carib women are less robust and good-looking than the men. 

 On them devolves almost the whole burden of domestic 

 work, as well as much of the out-door labour. They asked 

 us eagerly for pins, which they stuck under their lower lip, 

 making the head of the pin penetrate deeply into the skin. 

 The young girls are painted red, and are almost naked. 

 Among the different nations of the old and the new worlds, 

 the idea of nudity is altogether relative. A woman in some 

 parts of Asia is not permitted to show the tips of her fingers; 

 while an Indian of the Garib race is far from considering 

 hersell unclothed if she wear round her waist a guajuco two 

 inches broad. Even this band is regarded as less essential 

 than the pigment which covers the skin. To go out of the 

 hut without being painted, would be to transgress all the 

 rules of Carib decency. 



The Indians of the missions of Piritu especially attracted 

 our attention, because they belong to a nation which, by its 

 daring, its warlike enterprises, and its mercantile spirit, has 

 exercised great influence over the vast country extending 

 from the equator towards the northern coast. Everywhere 

 on the Orinoco we beheld traces of the hostile incursions 

 of the Caribs: incursions which heretofore extended from 

 the sources of the Carony and the Erevato as far as the 

 banks of the Ventuari, the Atacavi, and the Bio Negro. 

 The Carib language is consequently the most general in this 

 part of the world ; it has even passed (like the language of 

 the Lenni-Lenapes, or Algonkins, and the Natchez or Mus- 

 koghees, on the west of the Alleghany mountains) to tribes 

 which have not a common origin. 



"When we survey that multitude of nations spread over 

 North and South America, eastward of the Cordilleras of 

 the Andes, we fix our attention particularly on those who, 

 having long held dominion over their neighbours, have acted 

 an important part on the stage of the world. It is the bu- 

 Mm'ss of the historian to group facts, to distinguish masses, 

 to ascend to the common sources of many migrations and 

 popular movements. Great empires, the regular organiza- 

 tion of a sacerdotal hierarchy, and the culture which that 

 organization favours in the first ages of society, have existed 

 11 the hii^h mountains ol the western world. In Mexico 

 we see a vast monarchy enclosing small republics ; at Cun- 



