310 
MElfTAjj cNAPTITUDE. 
the torrid zone, hunting tribes are not numerous, and 
in the Missions, the men work in the fields as well aa the 
women. 
Nothing can exceed the difficulty experienced by the 
Indians in learning Spanish, to which language they have an 
absolute aversion, whilst living separate from the whites, 
they have no ambition to be called educated Indians, or, to 
borrow the phrase employed in the Missions, ‘ latinized 
Indians’ (Indies muy latinos). Not only among the Chay- 
mas, but; in all the very remote Missions which 1 afterwards 
visited, I observed that the Indians experience vast difficulty 
in arranging and expressing the most simple ideas in Spanish, 
even wheu they perfectly understand the meaning of the 
words and the turn of the’ phrases. When a European ques- 
tions them concerning objects which have surrounded them 
from their cradles, they seem to manifest an imbecility ex- 
ceeding that of infancy. The missionaries assert that this 
embarrassment is neither the effect of timidity nor of natural 
stupidity, but that it arises from the impediments they meet 
with in the structure of a language so different from their 
native tongue. In proportion as man is remote from culti- 
vation, the greater is his mental inaptitude. It is not, there- 
fore, surprising that the isolated Indians in the Missions 
should experience in the acquisition of the Spanish language, 
less facility than Indians who live among mestizoes, mulat- 
toes, and whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. Never- 
theless, I have often wondered at the volubility with which, 
at Caripe, the native alcalde, the governador, and the ser- 
gento mayor, ^ will harangue for whole hours the Indians 
assembled before the church ; regulating the labours of the 
week, reprimanding the idle, or threatening the disobedient. 
Those chiefs who are also of the Chayma race, and who 
transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all together in a 
loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. 
Their features remain motionless; but their look is impe- 
rious and severe. 
These same men, who manifest quickness of intellect, and 
who were tolerably well acquainted with the Spanish, were 
unable to connect their ideas, when, in our excursions in the 
country around the convent, we put questions to them 
through the intervention of the monks. They were made io 
