roTH] DEFORMATION, DECORATION, ORNAMENTS, CLOTHES 417 
enough to admit a billiard ball, fashion demanding that these two 
fleshy windows should always be without a wrinkle. The persever- 
ance with which this is attained is much to the purpose by inserting 
in it another circle curiously worked from the tender stem of a palm 
leaf (G, 1, 126). The Guamo not only slit and separate the fleshy 
part at the bottom of the ear, from the cartilage, in the same way as 
the Abano just mentioned do, but they go farther, carefully slicing 
and separating from the cartilage the narrow rim of flesh that is 
found all around the ears, leaving that flesh attached at its upper 
and lower ends. This is their idea of fashion, and they look on this 
as being particularly chic; and when, says Gu- 
milla, I saw that their captain stuck a letter, that 
Thad given him to carry to one of the Fathers, be- 
tween this strip of flesh and the ear itself (fig. 
298), and that they fitted into their ears, in the 
manner described, all the kickshaws that I gave 
them, as well as lumps of leaf tobacco, I came to 
the conclusion that this [slitting of the ears] was 
not merely a question of being 4 la mode but also 
served to provide them with a pocket or small 
wallet (G,1, 127). Mutilations of this nature per- 
haps may have given rise to the stories current of 
the big-eared nation on the Oyapock River men- 
tioned by Harcourt, the Marashewaccas (HR, 388). 
507. Castration was known to the Carib Island- 
ers (PBR, 225). They practiced it on their boy 
prisoners, who were subsequently fattened for the 
table (DAC, 442). On the Rio Branco certain of 
the tribes were said to be circumcised (ARW, 
5 A c = Fic. 228.—The ear as 
359), while on the Orinoco special attention was 4 wallet. Sketch 
drawn to an analogous custom by Gumilla. Thus, based on Gumilla’s 
“ description. 
the Saliva “circumcise” their little infants, boys 
and girls, on the eighth day, not by cutting, but by wounding them 
with a cruel transfixion, from the result of which some of either sex 
usually die. The various nations on the tributary streams of the 
Apure, before their conversion to the Holy Faith, were very cruel 
in the said custom, and extremely brutal in the ceremony by adding 
plenty of wounds all over the body and arms. They did not commit 
this butchery until the tenth or twelfth year of age in order that the 
innocent victims of their ignorance might have sufficient strength to 
withstand the loss of such a quantity of blood consequent upon the 
infliction of more than a couple of hundred wounds. ... So as not 
to feel the sharpened point with which they pierced the flesh, they 
