208 SINGULAR METHODS OF BODY-PAINTING. 
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 male injustice and 
tyranny ? 
When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we 
figure to ourselves a man whose head and waist are deco- 
rated with the fine feathers of the macaw, the toucan, and the 
humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors have long since 
jOgarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks of 
an American. We were surprised at not finding in the 
Chayma Missions, in the encampments of TTruana and of 
Pararuma (I might almost say on all the shores of the 
Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine plumes, those fea- 
thered aprons, which are so often brought by travellers 
from Cayenne and Demerara. These tribes for the most 
part, even those whose intellectual faculties are most ex- 
panded, who cultivate alimentary plants, and know how to 
weave cotton, are altogether as naked,* as poor, and as 
destitute of ornaments as the natives of New Holland. The 
excessive heat of the air, the profuse perspiration in which 
the body is bathed at every hour of the day and a great part 
of the night, render the use of clothes insupportable. Their 
objects of ornament, and particularly their plumes of fea- 
thers. are reserved for dances and solemn festivals. The 
parrots. 
The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour 
uniformly spread; they sometimes imitate, in the most 
whimsical manner, in painting their skin, the form of Euro- 
pean garments. "We saw some at Pararuma, who were 
painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The mission- 
aries related to us that the Guaynaves of the Bio Caura 
are accustomed to stain themselves red with anato, and to 
make broad transverse stripes on the body, on which they 
stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a distance, these 
* For instance, the Mados and the Pir&oas. The Caribs must be ex- 
cepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth, so broad that it might coved 
the shoulders. 
f These came originally from the banks of th! Inirida, one of «** 
livers that fall into the Guaviare. 
