290 GOSSIP THE AFFINITY OF RACES. 



lonians, who slew their husbands. The truth seems to be, that 

 the Carians at that epoch being still a barbarous people, the women 

 were treated just as are the women of all such savage people — as 

 the Indians of North America — as the Caribs treated their women. 

 They were slaves to the men, administered to their wants, their 

 comforts and their pleasures, but were, if I may so speak, a sepa- 

 rate institution, with no community of interests or feelings except 

 as the stronger sex permitted. Thus we may readily believe that 

 the customs of the Carian women did not originate when they were 

 captured by the lonians, or that the latter were responsible for them. 

 They merely followed those which had grown up with them, and to 

 which they had become inured. In this respect they were on an 

 exact parallel with their uncivilized sisters in both hemispheres, and 

 were in affinity with them. The Carib women were socially degra- 

 ded when the Spaniards came among them, and satisfied with their 

 inferior position. Improvement, so far as they were concerned, 

 depended entirely upon the civilizing influences of settled life, to 

 which their nature had not attained. They were thus even far 

 behind the inhabitants of the larger Antilles. Historians describe 

 the Caribs as an intelligent people, and probably they were not 

 much inferior to the lonians at the time of their migrations. 



Lafiteu and other historians describe the Caribs as a distinct race 

 from the Indians who inhabited the larger Antilles — Hispaniola, 

 Cuba, Jamaica and Trinidad. These last were evidently pre-occu- 

 pants of the Islands. They are represented as of common origin, 

 speaking the same language, mild in disposition and comparatively 

 cultivated, possessing the same institutions, and practising similar 

 superstitions. The Caribs who had conquered the smaller windward 

 islands, frequently made descents upon the others, and their depre- 

 dations were much dreaded. They were enterprising and energetic, 

 extremely jealous of their independence, ferocious, cruel, and 

 cannibals, devouring the bodies of their enemies. They knew 

 nothing of their origin, and had no traditions that pointed to it. 

 They delighted in war, and the conquest of all the neighbouring 

 islands, peopled by a race effeminate by comparison, would proba- 

 bly have been only a work of time, had they not been interrupted 

 in their designs by the Spanish discovery. The radical difference 



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