BCMilAR V PUXISIIM KJfTS. 
B8 
Little annexed forms (suffixes) mark the gradations of senti- 
n)ent ; and here, as in every language formed by a free deve- 
lopment, clearness is the result of that regulating instinct 
which characterises human intelligence in the various stages 
of barbarism and cultivation. On holidays, after the cele- 
bration of mass, all the inhabitants ot the village assemble in 
front of the church. The young girls place at the feet of the 
missionary faggots of woo^ bunches of plantains, and other 
provision of which he stands in need for his household. At 
the same time the ^overnador, the alguazil, and other muni- 
cipal officers, all ot whom are Indians, exhort the natives to 
labour, proclaim the occupations of the ensuing week, repri- 
mand the idle, and flog the untractable. Strokes of the cane 
are received with the same insensibility as that with which 
they are given. It were better if the priest did not impose 
these corporal punishments at the instant of quitting the altar, 
and if he were not, in his sacerdotal habits, the spectator of 
this chastisement of men and women ; but this abuse is inhe- 
rent in the principle on which the strange government of the 
missions is founded. The most arbitrary civil power is 
combined with the authority exercised by the priest over the 
l ittle community ; and, although the Caribs are not cannibals, 
and we would wish to see them treated with mildness and 
indulgence, it may be conceived that energetic measures are 
sometimes necessary to maintain tranquillity in this rising 
society. 
The difficulty of fixing the Caribs to the soil is the greater, 
as they have been for ages in the habit of trading on the 
rivers. "We have already described this active people, at 
once commercial and warlike, occupied in the traffic of slaves, 
and carrying merchandize from the coasts of Dutch Gruiana 
to the basin of the Amazon. The travelling Caribs were the 
Bokharians of equinoctial America. The necessity of coimt- 
ing the objects of their little trade, and transmitting intelli- 
gence, led them to extend and improve the use of the qui^ot, 
or, as they are called in the missions, the cordoncillos con 
nudoa (cords with knots). These qinpoo or knotted cords 
are found in Canada, in Mexico (where Boturini procured 
some from the Tlascaltecs), in Peru, in the plains of Guiana, 
in central Asia, in China, and in India. As rosaries, they 
have become objects of devotion in the hands of the Christiana 
