162 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. X.—B. S. 
do not allow any white man to return the compliment, 
and to this day they have never been conquered by 
the Spaniards or their descendants. They are of short 
stature, strongly built, and a cheerful cast of coun¬ 
tenance. The men—though, I believe, never the 
women—are occasionally seen at Panamd, where 
they make their purchases. They do not seem to 
understand exactly the value of money, and think 
that the true drift of making a bargain consists in 
offering a sum different to that demanded. I hap¬ 
pened to be in a shop when four of them came in to 
buy a comb, for which half-a-crown was asked, but 
the Indians said that unless the shopkeeper would 
take three shillings they could not think of having 
it. Some twenty years ago I made a vocabulary of 
their language,* never thinking that I should be 
able to make any practical use of it; but a few 
years ago, when enjoying the hospitality of Mr. 
Samuel Pittar’s steam yacht in the G ulf of Triste, 
Yenezuela, the people of Tueacas sent on board an 
Indian who had been left there they did not know 
by whom, and came they did not know whence. 
He was evidently an intelligent, good-humoured, and 
active lad, of about seventeen years of age, but spoke 
neither English, Spanish, nor any Indian dialect of 
Yenezuela. I had tried him with half-a-dozen Ame¬ 
rican languages of which I possessed some smatter- 
* Published in the ‘ Transactions of the American Ethnological 
Society.’ I believe this was the first ever published. Shortly after. 
Dr. Cullen published his in the ‘Royal Geographical Society’s Journal.’ 
The two supplement each other. 
