293 GOSSIP THE AFFINITY OF RACES. 



resided in villages, in cabins constructed like the Indian wigwam, 

 except that the covering was palm leaves instead of birch bark. 

 As to their religion, it is reported that they had not even a name 

 for the Deity, although they seemed to entertain an indistinct sense 

 of a superior wise and invisible Being, of absolute and irresistible 

 power, and admitted the agency of subordinate divinities ; they 

 even supposed that each individual had his peculiar protector or 

 tutelar deity. They had some notion also of practical worship, for 

 besides their funeral ceremonies, which embodied observances com- 

 mon in both hemispheres, it was their custom to erect in every 

 cabin a rustic altar composed of banana leaves and rushes, whereon 

 they occasionally placed the earliest of their fruits and the choicest 

 of their viands, as humble offerings to avert the wrath of incensed 

 Omnipotence. 



Thus far but few analogies will be detected that will refer the 

 Caribs to a Mediterranean origin. Indeed the description would 

 answer for any of the Indian tribes on and to the north of the 

 Mississippi, especially those of them who were not sun worshippers. 

 We might go a step further and conjecture with some degree of 

 plausibility, that they were an offshoot, either of the Algonquin, 

 the parent stock of our Micmacs, or of the Iroquois races. The 

 former was the most widely spread of all the northern aboriginal 

 races, and was well known as far south as the mouth of the Missis- 

 sippi, which is an Algonquin word; while the latter had all the 

 characteristics of the Caribs, in their love of independence, their 

 '^warlike habits, their aptitude for conquest, and even their cruelty. 

 But if it were so the connection must have been far remote, and 

 •all remembrance of that and their separation had been lost. They 

 had no knowledge of each other, nor is it recorded that there was 

 •any similarity in their languages. 



The somewhat cautiously hazarded hypothesis of the writer in 

 the Church Chronicle^ that the Caribs came from the Eastern 

 Continent, is not without supporters, although their theories are 

 not based upon the same facts. Edwards, the substance of whose 

 history respecting them , I have largely availed myself of, ' ' without 

 attempting to controvert the position to which recent discoveries 

 seem indeed to have given a full confirmation, namely, that the 



