130 APPENDIX. 



" These Indians are of middling stature, well set, and very active; 

 and make their way among the rocks with an amazing agility. Their 

 feet, by this kind of exercise, contract a callosity which renders the 

 use of shoes quite unnecessary to them. But before I conclude the 

 few observations I have to make on a people so confined in all their 

 notions and practices, it may be expected I should say something of 

 their religion ; but as their gross ignorance is in nothing more con- 

 spicuous, and as we foimd it advisable to keep out of their way when 

 the fits of devotion came upon them, which are rather frantic than 

 rehgious, the reader can expect very httle satisfaction on this head. 

 Accident has sometimes made me unavoidably a spectator of scenes 

 I should have chosen to have withdrawn myself from ; and so far I 

 am instructed. As there are no fixed seasons for their religious 

 exercises, the younger people wait till the elders find themselves 

 devoutly disposed, who begin the ceremony by several deep and 

 dismal groans, which rise gradually to a hideous kind of singing, from 

 which they proceed to enthusiasm, and work themselves into a dis- 

 position that borders on madness; for suddenly jumping up, they 

 snatch fire brands from the fire, put them in their mouths, and run 

 about burning every body they come near : at other times, it is a 

 custom with them to wound one another with sharp muscle-shells 

 till they are besmeared with blood. These orgies continue till those 

 who preside in them foam at the mouth, grow faint, are exhausted 

 with fatigue, and dissolve in a profusion of sweat. When the men 

 drop their part in this frenzy, the women take it up, acting over 

 again much the same kind of wild scene, except that they rather 

 outdo the men in shrieks and noise. Our cacique, who had been 

 reclaimed from these abominations by the Spaniards, and just knew 

 the exterior form of crossing himself, pretended to be much offended 

 at these profane ceremonies, and that he would have died sooner 

 than have partaken of them. Among other expressions of his dis- 

 approbation, he declared, that whilst the savages solemnized these 

 horrid rites, he never failed to hear strange and uncommon noises in 

 the woods, and to see frightful visions ; and assured us, that the 

 devil was the chief actor among them on these occasions." 



" Here I must relate an anecdote of ovu: nominally Christian ca- 

 cique. He and his wife had gone off, at some distance from the shore, 

 in their canoe, when she dived for sea-eggs ; but not meeting with 



