i18 INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 
in the greatest order. They bathe every day, and, 
being generally naked, are thus exempted from the 
filth principally caused by clothing. Besides their 
cabin in the village, they usually have a smaller one, 
covered with palm or plantain leaves, in some soli- 
tary place in the woods, to which they retire as 
often as they can; and so strong is the desire among 
them of enjoying the pleasures of savage life, that 
the children sometimes wander entire days in the 
forests. In fact the towns are often almost wholly 
deserted. As in all semi-barbarous nations, the wo- 
men are subjected to privation and suffering, the 
hardest labour falling to their share. 
The Indians learn Spanish with extreme diffi- 
culty; and even when they perfectly understand the 
meaning of the words, are unable to express the 
most simple ideas in that language without embar- 
rassment. They seem to have as little capacity for 
comprehending any thing belonging to numbers ; the 
more intelligent counting in Spanish with the ap- 
pearance of great effort only as far as thirty, or per- 
haps fifty, while in their own tongue they cannot 
proceed beyond five or six.. The construction of the 
American dialects is so different from that of the se-- 
veral classes of speech derived from the Latin, that 
the Jesuits employed some of the more perfect among 
the former instead of their own ; and had this sys- 
tem been generally followed the greatest benefit 
would have resulted from it. The Chayma appear- 
ed to Humboldt less agreeable to the ear than that of 
1 the other South American tribes. 
| | The Pariagotoes, or Parias, formerly occupied 
| the coasts of Berbice and Essequibo, the peninsula 
| of Paria, and the plains of Piritoo and Parima.. 
