IN THE PETER EEDPATH MUSEUM OP MCQILL UNIVERSITY, ETC. 243 



horn. For knives they used chips of obsidian. They were 

 naked or clothed only with their long hair or with scanty 

 garments of palm leaf, woven grasses, or skin. In some of 

 the islands there were houses and other buildings of stone. 

 In others, they lived in huts or caverns. Monogamy pre- 

 vailed, but it is said there was polyandry in some of the 

 smaller islands, one woman having as many as three 

 husbands. As in many primitive peoples, descent was 

 reckoned in the female line. They had a tribal government 

 of kings or chiefs, and had also a priesthood or class of 

 " Medicine Men," or Shamans. In some islands there were 

 communities of nuns or vestals. In one of the temples or 

 sacred buildings an image of stone is mentioned. In some 

 of the islands the people are said to have spent much time 

 in singing and dancing. 



There are believed to have been two races of men in the 

 islands ; one of brown complexion, the other white. The 

 brown race was the ruder, but the taller in stature, and 

 predominated in the islands nearest the African coast, and it 

 was in these that polyandry occurred. This distribution 

 would seem to indicate that the whiter and more civilised 

 people were the earlier colonists. The greater part of the 

 specimens in Dr. Lambert's collection being from Teneriffe, 

 would represent the lighter coloured and smaller people 

 of the central and western islands. The single Gran 

 Canarian skull may belong to the other race. It seems to 

 have been in the central and western islands that the 

 practice of embalming the dead prevailed. There were 

 professional embalmers who were also physicians, but theii 

 art was very rude and imperfect, compared with that of 

 Egypt in the time of its highest civilisation. The mummies 

 were sometimes deposited in caverns, and where these were 

 not readily accessible in cists or sepulchres of stone. 



The languages of the islands, though said to differ from 

 each other, would seem to have been dialects of a common 

 tongue, differing just as we find among the American 

 aborigines, where the want of writing and intercourse allows 

 languages originally the same to become in a few genera- 

 tions distinct from each other. In so far as the few words I 

 have had access to can give information, the general 

 language would seem to have been Turanian rather 

 than Aryan. The dialect of Teneriffe seems to have been 

 more distinct than any of the others. Father Abreu 

 Gelindo, and Webb and Berthelot, History of the Canaries, 



