THETTt CANNIBAL TASTES. 
413 
and laborious ; but suffer them to take part in an incursion 
(entrada) to bring in tbo natives, and you can scarcely 
prevent them from murdering all they meet, and biding 
some portions of tbo dead bodies.” In reflecting on the 
manners of these Indians, we are almost horrified at that 
combination of sentiments which seem to exclude each other ; 
that faculty of nations to become but partially humanized ; 
that preponderance of customs, prejudices, and traditions, 
over the natural affections of the heart. We had a fugitive 
Indian from the Guaisia in our canoe, who had become 
sufficiently civilized in a few weeks to bo useful to us in 
placing the instruments necessary for our observations at 
night. He was no less mild than intelligent, and we had 
some desire of taking him into our service. What was our 
horror when, talking to him hy means of an interpreter, 
we learned, “that the flesh of the marimonde monkeys, 
though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human 
flesh.” He told us “ that liis relations (that is, the people 
of his tribe) preferred the inside of the hands in man, as 
in bears.” This assertion was accompanied with gestures 
of savage gratification. We inquired of this young man, 
so calm and so affectionate in the little services which he 
rendered us, whether he still felt sometimes a desire to eat 
of a Cheruviehahena. He answered, without discomposure, 
that, living in the mission, he would only eat what he saw 
was eaten by the Padres. Beproaches addressed to the 
natives on the abominable practice which we here discuss, 
produce no effect; it is as if a Brahmin, travelling in 
Europe, were to reproach us with the habit of feeding on 
the flesh of animals. In the eyes of the Indian of the 
Guaisia, the Cheruviehahena was a being entirely different 
from himself; and one whom he thought it was no more 
Unjust to kill than the jaguars of the forest. It was merely 
from a sense of propriety that, whilst he remained in the 
mission, he would only eat the same food as the Bathers. 
The natives, if they return to their tribe (al monte), or find 
themselves pressed by hunger, soon resume their old 
habits of anthropophagy. And why should we be so much 
astonished at this inconstancy in the tribes of the Orinoco, 
when we are reminded, by terrible and well-ascertained 
^samples, of what has passed among civilized nations in 
