64 - TIMEHRI. 
and send them away, without caring for their mainte- 
nance; it is however usual for the father to keep the 
children with him. Other nations take only wiyes fora 
certain period, which having elapsed, each look out for ~ % 
another husband or wife. When the women are con- 
fined of a child, which generally grows prosperously, 
they wash it in the river and carry it on their back in a 
little linen or cotton hammock slung from the right to 
the left side. Most of their nations have an absurd 
custom; the husband after the child’s birth abstains 
from labour for a few days, as likewise from strong 
drink, which they believe to be pernicious to the health 
of the new born (from which the tale is derived that 
the men in lieu of the women are confined). Nay. in 
Cayenne, the husband, when his wife is confined for the 
first time, is obliged to remain lying in his hammock, 
which is hung high close tothe roof, little or nothing is 
given to him to eat, but a trifle of cassava and water, just 
as much as to keep him alive; after having undergone 
this hard fasting for a few weeks, he is allowed to leave 
his hammock, and with large fish bones or the teeth of 
the Acoury a quantity of gashes and cuts are made on 
sundry parts of his body, and he is even sometimes treated 
to a few lashes of the whip. 
After this ceremony, the young father is obliged to 
quit his wife for a few months and take service with some 
old Indian, who treats him on the whole as a slave. Mean- 
while he abstains from eating deer, pork, and other 
coarse game, neither may he chop wood with a large 
axe, for this would harm the child. This time of slavery 
past, he goes crab catching, and having caught a great 
number, prepares a large repast, where a great deal is 
