GEKEKAIi USE OF FIGMENTS. 
‘207 
they be bom with a forehead little raised, and the head fiat, 
they endeavour to depress the foreheads of their children. 
If they be distinguished from other nations by a thin beard, 
they try to eradicate the few hairs that nature has given 
them. They think themselves embellished in proportion as 
they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of 
their national conformation. 
We were surprised to see, that, in the camp of Pararuma, 
the women far advanced in years were more occupied with 
their ornaments than the youngest women. We saw an 
Indian female of the nation of the Ottomaes employing two 
°f her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair with 
the oil of turtles’ eggs, and painting her back with anato 
a nd caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice- 
work formed of black lines crossing each other on a red 
ground. Each little square had a black dot in the centre. 
It was a work of incredible patience. We returned from 
a very long herborization, and the painting was not half 
•unshed. This research of ornament seems the more singu- 
lar when we reflect that the figures and marks are not 
Produced by the process of tattooing, but that paintings 
‘■Vgcuted with so much care are effaced,* if the Indian ex- 
poses himself imprudently to a heavy shower. There are 
8 °me nations who paint only to celebrate festivals ; others 
:il 'e covered with colour during the whole year : and the latter 
c °nsider the use of anato as so indispensable, that both 
'Uen ant [ WO men would perhaps be less ashamed to present 
themselves without a guayucof than destitute of paint, 
"hese guayucos of the Orinoco 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 
111 general a less lively feeling of modesty. A similar ob- 
lation was made by Christopher Columbus. May \ve 
^ attribute this indifference, this want of delicacy in 
^ * The black and caustic pigment of $ie caruto (Genipa atnericana) 
, °^ever, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with regret, 
wifk 1 ** 0ne * u s P ort the Indians, caused our faces to be marked 
th k s ? ots atl d strokes of caruto. When we returned to Angostura, in 
® Budst of Ecropeans, these marks were still visible. 
0 f ^ "'ord of the Caribbean language. The perizoma of the Indie m 
Orinoco is rather a band than an apron. 
