I Earn the Chikf's GRA'JiruDE. Ml 
825. The village consisted of 5 houses with 50 inhabitants whom — 
what a wonder! — I met in a state of sobriety: it was only the second 
settlement where this had been our luck. The women were busily 
engaged in finishing their earthen vessels. 1 soon learnt the reason 
for this extraortlinary temperance. Both children of the chieftain, a 
boy and a girl, were laid u]) with a liad attack of intermittent fever, 
which had pulled them down almost to skeletons. In spite of the piai 
having erected his little sugar-loaf shaped house in close proximity and 
had every evening worried liimself to drive the evil spirit out of the 
sick patients, he had not yet succeeded in doing so. 
S2(i. Tliongli tlic iiidiau readily lakes medicine from the white 
man, the latter must nevertheless be s])ecially careful in dispensing it, 
and in diligently examining the patient. If tlu' latter is already found 
in a doubtful condition and the sequence of the disease, as the patho- 
logical text-books put it, is "in death," 1 would advise no one to lend a 
helping hand : the piai who not unrightly recognises in the Para- 
naghieri his most vexa(if>us enemy would give him a rough time of it 
among the villagers as being responsil)le for the fatal ending. I h{Kl 
nothing to fear from the feverish children, but gave each 10 grains of 
quinine, and next morning the usual hour passed without any attack: 
the evil spirit had Iteeu exorcised. The gratitude of the chieftain and 
Iiis wife was boundless, and from that very moment the former l»e- 
came my very shadow: the long gaunt fellow with his huge hooked nose 
and a beard — the only s])ecimen of such size and thiekness I had as yet 
seen in an Indian — really tried to read in my eyes my every wish, and 
was infinitely delighted when he heard fi'om one of his subordinates, who 
had been several years in town and could consequently speak fluent 
English, that I Avas making diligent enquiry into the history con^'eru- 
ing his trifte. I am now putting down in shortened form what I leaT-nt, 
partly from my grateful host, and partly from otiier Caribs on the 
journey. 
827. The scattered settlements of the Caribs who, in former times 
when a dense Indian population still covered the new continent, were 
the mightiest, the most warlike, and at the same time the most indus- 
trious of the tril»es, are nowadays chiefly met on the lower areas of the 
Mazaruni, Cuyuni and Pomeroon : one of their villages is now and. agnin 
found isolated and solitary on the Torentyu, Pupununi and (ruidaru. 
Tu Pritish Ciuiana theii' total po])ulation might amount to 000. Out- 
wardly they differ essentially from other tribes in their powerful and 
muscular frame of body. Their speech has also something unusually 
strong and manly al>out it, they utter their words at the same time 
with a decisiveness and vivacity, indeed with quite an imperious tone. 
What their speech hints at, is but the expression of the inward conviction 
which teaches them to believe ihat they are not onlv the lords and mas- 
ters, but are v>roportionately feared as such by the Tcmainiug tribes. 
If a Carib walks into the house of another Indian, he does not first wait 
for the occu])ier to offer him meat and drink but haughtily and proudly 
oasts a look i-ound and takes what he fancies as his own unquestionable 
