History of the Caribs. 247 
with a red paint diluted with oil, called roucou ; the old 
men only apply their fingers, spotting their whole body 
from head to foot, the young men besmear their whole 
faces and paint Spanish moustaches. One eye is painted 
red, and the other black, and with this they regard them- 
selves finer and braver ; others, instead of roucou, blacken 
themselves with Genipa.* The ears and the part between 
the nostrils and the under lip are pierced. The woman 
a fortnight after delivery, calls in an expert to perform 
this ceremony on the child. As soon as the hole is 
pierced, with a palm pin, a cotton thread is passed through 
it, and if it is a girl she names it after a tree, an island, 
a fish, bird or anything. They don't take the father's 
name, each has his personal name. In their ears they 
wear small caracolis. Caracolis are small pieces of 
metal in the shape of crescents, thin as paper, and glitter- 
ing like polished copper or gold, which do not rust or 
turn colour.t They get them from the Spaniards, and 
sometimes they pay a negro for one of these caracolis, 
and prefer it to any ornament. They wear as a shoulder 
belt a large collection of all sorts of animal's teeth and 
tiger claws. They wear their bracelets above the elbow 
and garters at the ankles. Sometimes they have on the 
back dried wings of a bird or a dozen claws attached to a 
piece of tiger skin. Some of the old men wear round 
their neck small bones of Arawaks (their enemies whom 
they eat) and make flutes out of these. The head dress 
of the women is like that of the men ; when they put no 
feathers they rub the hair with oil, and tie it with cotton, 
* This is the " lana" of Guiana — Genipa atnericana. 
\ On these crescents of gold, see a note in my " Indians of Guiana." 
