Premature Puberty and Decline. 
9L 
out-rooting. The eyebrows are also subject to the same procedure, after 
which the skin, both here and at the corners of the mouth, is tattooed 
with several curved lines, which, particularly amongst the females, seem- 
ed to be generally customary, and gave them a characteristic though not 
uninteresting appearance. 
323. The whole facial expression of the women and girls lia,d some- 
thing melancholy, but infinitely gentle about it. The young girls were 
commonly of buxom build, while the older women by contrast presented 
a more repulsive aspect. When the female reaches her twentieth year, 
the bloom of her life is spent : the former symmetry of her individual 
limbs and figure has disappeared, the elasticity of all her movements has 
given way to a certain indolence, and in place of a vitally fresh and robust 
fulness there appears on particular parts of the body an accumulation of 
fat which makes her really loathsome, because no clothing hides the mis- 
shapen masses from view. Their premature development and puberty 
may be one of the chief reasons for this rapid decline, since the girls are. 
mostly already married by ten years of age. 
32L Their pronunciation is very clear, except thaJt the particular 
words and syllables have nothing pregnant and sharp about them, but 
being drawled, merge into one another. 
325. The majority of the people collected here were suffering from 
inflammation of the eyes: indeed, many had almost completely lost their 
sight on this account : according to my belief their dirtiness and squalor 
together with the swampy and marshy soil are to be mostly blamed for 
the evil.* Besides affecting certain of the adults, a no less pitiful appear- 
ance presented itself amongst a number of children in particular, whose 
feet and buttocks were covered with awful boils as a result of which the 
extremities in some of the cases were deformed into real club-foot. Upon 
enquiring into the cause of the disfigurement I learnt that the sores were 
due to chigoes, a small species of flea, Pulex penetrans, which very gen- 
erally at night digs itself under the nails and skin of the foot and there 
lays its eggs: if within a few days their removal is neglected, the worst 
kinds of ulcer immediately arise from the slipping out of the wormlike 
maggots which proceed to dig themselves farther in for a while. From 
the fact of these pests choosing not only the foot but also the breech 
for depositing their eggs, the greatest number of the Warrau youngsters 
bear mournful testimony of their parents’ neglect and dilatoriness. I 
have never noticed such marks upon the children of other races. 
326. On nearing the group T was not a little taken aback at the 
panic to which my appearance gave rise among the women, children, 
monkeys, dogs, and parrots: everybody at first sought to escape while 
the men, pressing impetuously around, offered me their “trade,” amongst 
which were particularly noticeable the Psittacus pulveralentus Gm., 
wrongly named “Amazon Parrot” by the Colonists, the P. aestinis Linn. 
* These inflammations of the eye, blepharitis, conjunctivitis, corneal ulceration, etc., due 
to infection with the pyogenic organisms are said to be still common among these tribes, as 
well as the boils described on the feet and buttocks, known as impetigo. The connection 
which the author traces between these conditions and the dirtiness and squalor of the sur- 
roundings is well-founded. It is a little difficult to say what Schomburgk means by “ real 
club-foot.” Infantile paralysis, the most common cause of “club-foot,” is rare among the 
natives ; he probably refers to deformities due to contraction of scar-tissue after extensive 
ulceration (F.Cf.R.j 
