On the Aborigines of Brazil. 15 



constitution breaks up with visible quickness, generally along 

 with colliquative diarrhoea. Colonists, who are in the habit 

 of carrying off Indians in hostile expeditions, and of making 

 use of them as servants or slaves about their farms, can 

 amply testify as to this great liability to fall away, as to this 

 want of all energy in the nutritive functions, especially when 

 their accustomed stimuli to exertion are gone, or when they 

 have to submit to a change in their mode of life ; a few weeks 

 are often sufficient to convert the strongest Indian into a bare 

 skeleton, and to render death certain, unless his own resolu- 

 tion, or the assistance of his comrades, or what is a rare 

 case indeed, the sympathy of his master restores him to his 

 original freedom. This sudden failing of the powers of 

 nutrition always depends on depression of spirits, and 

 has been justly brought forward as a proof of the great 

 power of mental influences over the Indian. For our pur- 

 pose, we may consider it a proof of the weakness of the 

 plastic system in this race of men. We shall see this more 

 plainly, if we compare with it the analogous condition of the 

 negro, which is too well known among slave-holders in 

 the Brazils under the name of Banzo. This nostalgia of the 

 black man also manifests itself in a deep melancholy, which 

 in most cases leads to death. But while the exterior of the 

 Indian scarcely betrays what he is suffering internally, and he 

 seems reduced to the condition of an automatic machine, 

 which can produce only one idea, that of flight, the negro 

 displays an unusual elevation in all the feelings connected 

 with his state. He broods with incessant fondness over his 

 own melancholy thoughts, lives in an exstatic remembrance 

 of the past, which his fancy unceasingly paints in the fairest 

 colours, refuses to take nourishment, and appears busied 

 with suicidal zeal and resolution in putting an end, as soon 

 as possible, to his miserable condition by death. Neverthe- 

 less, the negro is much slower than the Indian in becom- 

 ing the victim of such destructive emotions, and he often 



