520 



effaced, if the Indian expose himself impru- 

 dently to a violent shower. There are some 

 nations, that paint only to celebrate festivals ; 

 others are covered with colour during the whole 

 year : and the latter consider the use of onoto 

 as so indispensable, that both men and women 

 would perhaps be less ashamed, to present them- 

 selves without a guayuco* than destitute of 

 paint. These guayucoes of the Oroonoko are 

 partly bark of trees, and partly cotton cloth; 

 Those of the men are broader than those worn 

 by the women, who, the missionaries say, have 

 in general a less lively feeling of modesty. A 

 similar observation had been already made by 

 Christopher Columbus. Must we not attribute 

 this indifference, this want of delicacy in women 

 belonging to nations of which the manners are 

 not much depraved, to that rude state of slavery, 

 to which the sex is reduced in South America by 

 the men's injustice and the abuse of power? 



When we speak in Europe of a native of Guy- 

 ana, we figure to ourselves a man, whose head 

 and waist are decorated with fine feathers of the 

 macaw, the toucan, the tanager, and the hum- 

 ming bird. Our painters and sculptors have 

 long since regarded these ornaments as the cha- 



* A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma of the 

 Indians of the Oroonoko is rather a band than an aprort* 

 See above, vol. iii, p. 231, 232. 



