39 



times necessary, to maintain tranquillity in this 

 rising society. 



The difficulty of fixing the Caribbees to the 

 soil is so much the greater, as they have been for 

 ages in the habit of trading on the rivers. We 

 have described above this active people, at once 

 commercial and warlike, occupied in the traffic 

 of slaves, and carrying merchandize from the 

 coasts of Dutch Guyana to the basin of the 

 Amazon. The travelling Caribbees were the 

 Bukhariansof equinoctial America ; accordingly 

 the necessity of counting the objects of their 

 little trade, and transmitting intelligence, had 

 led them to extend and improve the use of the 

 qiiippoes, or, as they call them in the missions, 

 the cordoncillos con nudos These quippoes or 

 knots are found in Canada -f~, in Mexico (where 

 Boturini procured some from the Tlascaltecks), 

 in Peru, in the plains of Guyana, in central 

 Asia, in China, and in India. As rosaries, they 

 are become objects of devotion in the hands of 

 the Christians of the east ; as swanpans, they 

 have been employed in the operations of manual 

 or palpable arithmetic by the Chinese, the Ta- 

 tars, and the Russians ^. The independant Ca- 



* Vol. v, p. 360. 

 + Caulin, p. 333. 

 X Views of the Cordilleras, and American Monuments, vol. 

 i, p. 168 5 ii, p. 146. On the quippoes found at the Oroono- 

 ko, among the Tamanacks, see Gili, Vol. ii, p. . The 



