THEI.B XiUMMT-CAVEB. 
123 
were under the yoke of feudal government. Among the 
Guanclies, this institution, which facilitates and renders a 
state of warfare perpetual, was sanctioned by religion. The 
priests declared to the people : “ The great Spirit, Achaman, 
created first tlie nobles, tlie cwlrimcnceys, to whom lie dis- 
tributed all the goats that exist on the face of the earth. 
After the nobles, Achaman created the plebeians, aelueaxnas. 
This younger race had the boldness to petition also for goats ; 
but the supreme Spirit answered, that this race was destined 
to serve the nobles, and that they had need of no property.” 
This tradition was made, no doubt, to please the rich vassals 
of tlie shepherd-kings. The faycan, or high priest, also exer- 
cised the right of conferring nobility ; and the law of the 
Guanclies expressed that every acbitnencey who degraded 
himself by milking a goat with his own hands, lost his claim 
to nobility. This law does not remind us of the simplicity 
of the Homeric age. "We arc astonished to see the useful 
labours of agriculture, and of pastoral life, exposed to con- 
tempt at tlie very dawn of civilization. 
The Guanclies, famed for their tall stature, were the Pata- 
gonians ol' the old world. Historians exaggerated the mus- 
cular strength of the Guanclies, as, previous to the voyage 
of Bougainville and Cordoba, colossal proportions were at- 
tributed to the tribe that inhabited the southern extremity 
of America. I never saw Guanche mummies hut in the 
cabinets of Europe. At the time I visited the Canaries they 
were very scarce ; a considerable number, however, might he 
found if miners were employed to open the sepulchral caverns 
which are cut in the rock on the eastern slope of the Peak, 
between Arico and Guimar. These mummies are in a state 
of desiccation so singular, that whole bodies, with their inte- 
guments, frequently do not weigh above six or seven pounds ; 
or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the 
same size, recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The 
conformation of (lie skull has some slight resemblance to 
that of tlie white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the 
incisive teeth of the Guanclies arc blunted, like those of the 
mummies found on the banks of the Nile. But this form of 
the teeth is the result of art ; and on examining more care- 
fully the physiognomy of the ancient Canarians, Blumenbach 
and other able anatomists have recognized in the cheek hones 
and the lower jaw perceptible differences from the Egyptian 
