344 TIMEHRI. 
He therefore appeared suddenly betore the people at 
midnight, when they were drunk with paiwari, and 
addressed them in a long speech. The Great Spirit 
MAKUNAIMA, he said, had spoken with him, and ordered 
him to tell them that he (MAKUNAIMA) did not wish that 
his children should be driven out of their own land by 
white men, to live poor and naked with the wild animals. 
He loved them and not only wished to make them equal 
in every respeét to the whites, but even to raise them 
above the strangers. They would become rich, carry 
fire-arms instead of bows and arrows, have white girls 
for wives, and even themselves get white skins instead 
of brown. All who wished to obtain these advantages 
would have the opportunity offered them from that night 
until the one after the morrow, and those who chose this 
course must die during these three nights, one by the hand 
of another. The night of the following full moon the 
bodies of the slain would rise from the dead and come 
down from Roraima to their families, in colour and 
manners equal to the whites, and rule over the other 
brown men who had not gone through the same ordeal. 
With this AWACAIPU ended his murderous address, con- 
vinced by his cunning and knowledge of his countrymen, 
that the result would be powerful and effe€tive. 
The Indians, in spite of their pride in their own capa- 
bilities, envy the white people in every respe&t. They 
never acknowledge, however, amongst others that the 
whites are more intelligent and that they cannot acquire 
similar capacities by praétice, but among themselves 
they admit this to be the case.. And, it is especially the 
white skin which they envy, many of them being ready to 
give their lives if they could only possess it fora short time. 
