S10 
DOGS USED nr DB AUGHT. 
A. very well informed traveller, M. Giesecke, who resided 
six years in Greenland, assured me that the dogs of the 
Esquimaux, which pass their lives in the open air, and hury 
themselves in winter beneath the snow, do not bark, but 
howl like wolves.* 
The practice of eating the flesh of dogs is now entirely 
unknown on the banks of the Orinoco; but as it is a 
Tartar custom, spread through all the eastern part of Asia, 
it appears to me highly interesting for the history of nations 
to have ascertained that it existed heretofore in the hot 
regions of Guiana and on the table-lands of Mexico. I 
must observe, also, that on the confines of the province 
of Durango, at the northern extremity of New Spain, the 
Comanches have preserved the habit of loading the backs 
of the great dogs that accompany them in their migrations, 
with their tents of buffalo-leather. It is well known that 
employing dogs as beasts of burthen and of draught is 
equally common near the Slave Lake and in Siberia. I 
dwell on these features of conformity in the manners of 
nations, which become of some weight when they are not 
solitary, and are connected with the analogies furnished 
by the structure of languages, the division of time, and 
religious creeds and institutions. 
We passed the night at the island of Cucuruparu, called 
also Flay a de la Tortuga , because the Indians of TTruana 
go thither to collect the turtles’ eggs. It is one of the 
best determined points of latitude along the banks of the 
Orinoco. I was there fortunate enough to observe the 
passage of three stars over the meridian. To the east of 
the island is the mouth of the Cano de la Tortuga, which 
descends from the mountains of Cerbatana, continually 
wrapped in electric clouds. On the southern bank of the 
Cafio, between the tributary streams Parapara and Oche, 
occur in the history of mute dogs, and dogs destitute of hair, the 
“ Views of Nature,” Bohn's edition, p. 85. 
* They sit down in a circle j one of them begins to howl alone, and 
the others follow in the same tone. The groups of alouate monkeys 
howl in the same manner, and among them the Indians distinguish “the 
leader of the band.” It was the practice at Mexico to castrate the mute 
dogs, in order to fatten them. This operation must have contributed to 
alter the orga i of the voice. 
