84 COMPRESSION or CIHLDIII,S*S LIMBS. 



among half savage hordes, as in the most civilized part of 

 Europe, those inveterate animosities which have caused the 

 names of hostile nations to pass into their respective lan- 

 guages as insulting appellations. 



The missionary of the village of Cari led us into several 

 Indian huts, where extreme neatness and order prevailed. 

 We observed with pain the torments which the Carib 

 mothers inflict on their infants, for the purpose not only 

 of enlarging the calf of the leg, but also of raising the 

 flesh in alternate stripes from the ankle to the top of the 

 thigh. Narrow ligatures, consisting of bands of leather, or 

 of woven cotton, are fixed two or three inches apart from 

 each other, and being tightened more and more, the muscles 

 between the bands become swollen. The monks of the mis- 

 sions, though ignorant of the works or even of the name of 

 Rousseau, attempt to oppose this ancient system of physical 

 education : but in vain. Man, when just issued from the 

 woods, and supposed to be so simple in his manners, is far 

 from being tractable in his ideas of beauty and propriety. I 

 observed, however, with surprise, that the manner in which 

 these poor children are bound, and which seems to obstruct 

 the circulation of the blood, does not operate injuriously on 

 their muscular movements. There is no race of men more 

 robust, and swifter in running, than the Caribs. 



If the women labour to form the legs and thighs of their 

 children so as to produce what painters call undulating out- 

 lines, they abstain (at least in the Llanos), from flattening 

 the head, by compressing it between cushions and planks 

 from the most tender age. This practice, so common hereto- 

 fore in the islands and among several tribes of the Caribs of 

 P arima and French Guiana, is not observed in the missions 

 which we visited. The men there have foreheads rounder than 

 those oi the Chaymas, the Otomacs, the Macos, the Maravi- 

 tans, and most of the inhabitants of the Orinoco. A syste- 

 rnatizer would say, that the form is such as their intellectual 

 faculties require. "We were so much the more struck by this 

 tact, as some of the skulls of Caribs engraved in Europe, 

 for works on anatomy, are distinguished from all other 

 human skulls by the extremely depressed forehead and acute 

 facial angle. In some osteological collections, skulls supposed 

 to be those of Caribs of the island of St. Vincent are in fact 



