594 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH, ANN. 33 
sentence on him with a heroic and disdainful countenance: “It is 
true that Fate is at present against me, but my friends will some 
day in the same way come to your people and demand a reck- 
oning for the tortures you are about to inflict on me. Life is not 
so attractive that I can not easily leave it, though I am troubled at 
having to die without being able to take vengeance for my death,” 
etc. At evening they give him as much as he requires to eat and 
drink, each one bringing him something. Now they tie his hands 
behind his back, and to each foot a long rope. In the meantime 
those who have been invited have repaired there, each provided 
with some maquarys, a sort of torch streaked with a certain stuff 
which has the quality of pitch, so that it may burn the better. In 
the evening about 7 o’clock they start kindling fires around and 
within the house, after which, the prisoner being placed in the middle 
of his enemies, is bawled at in a loud voice by the oldest captain, 
making a big hubbub, “ Your people have caught my friends and 
treated them thus.” Hereupon he thrusts the burning maquary into 
his skin, after which everyone who can but reach him attacks him. 
One sticks it in his face, another about the genitals, a third upon 
another of the tenderest spots, at the same time that he is being 
dragged hither and thither by the ropes. If with all this punishment 
he begins to get faint, they pause a while from time to time so as to 
make his sufferings last the longer, because they want to sport as 
much as possible. In the interval they drink again with one an- 
other, just as if they were good friends; and the sufferer being 
somewhat refreshed, the business is started again. This lasts until 
the morning, about a short hour before sunrise, because they have 
then to make an end of it, which is done by a captaim, who crashes 
the miserable prisoner’s head with a wooden sword [club]. Every- 
body now falls upon him with a knife; one cuts him a piece out of 
the buttock, another out of the thigh, a third rips up another spot; 
to put it shortly, each to get what he can. The cut-off flesh after 
boiling is put into the pepper pot and eaten for good food. I have 
spoken to two whites who had tried it and maintained that it tasted 
very sweet. ‘The bones are buried in the earth, except a few small 
ones out of which they know how to make flutes. Amongst all 
this bustle the women sing at their ease, the song consisting of the 
relation of the tortures suffered by their own friends who had fallen 
into the hands of the enemy, together with the praises of these 
valiant men who are calling for vengeance for their deaths in the 
way described. It is a horrible thing to see. Besides that, the smell 
of the flesh, which is burnt incessantly with the maquarys, and the 
seething fat almost gushing out of it, is like to make a European not 
only squirm, vomit, and purge, but even also suffocate him. In the 
