Creator in the heart of all animals, for man's preserva-
tion, seems to forsake him. The lion having once
tasted human blood, relinquishes the pursuit after the
flock. He repairs to some highway or frequented path,
and has been known, in the kingdom of Tunis, to in-
terrupt the road to a market for several weeks; and in
this he persists, till hunters or soldiers are sent out to
destroy him.» Dobrizhoffer saw the skin of a jaguar
He
which was as long as the standard hide. says,
also, that he saw one attack two horses which were
coupled with a thong, kill one, and drag the other away

after it.

A most unpleasant habit of the beast is, that in cold or wet weather he chuses to lodge within doors, and will steal into the house. A girl at Corrientes, who slept with her mother, saw one lying under the bed when she rose in the morning: she had presence of mind to bid her mother lie still, went for help, and soon rid the house of its perilous visitor. Cat-like, the jaguar is a good climber; but Dobrizhoffer tells us how a traveller who takes to one for shelter may profit by the position: In promptu consilium; urina pro armis est: hac si tigridis ad arboris pedem minitantis oculos consperseris, salva res est. Quá data porta fuget illico. (i. 280.) He who first did this must have been a good marksman as well as a cool fellow, and it was well for him that he reserved his fire till the jaguar was within shot.

Dobrizhoffer seems to credit an opinion (which is held in India of the tiger also) that the jaguar's claws are in a certain degree venomous; the scar which they leave is said to be always liable to a very painful and burning sense of heat. But that author, in his usual amusing manner, repeats many credulous notions concerning the animal: as that its burnt claws are a remedy for the tooth-ache; and that it has a mode of decoying fish, by standing neck deep in the water, and spitting out a white foam, which allures them within reach. Techo (3o.) says the same thing of a large

snake.

An opinion that wounds inflicted by the stroke of animals of this kind are envenomed is found in the East also. Captain Williamson says, «However trivial the scratches made by the claws of tigers may appear, yet, whether it be owing to any noxious quality in the claw itself, to the manner in which the tiger strikes, or any other matter, I have no hesitation in saying, that at least a majority of such as have been under my notice died; and I have generally remarked, that those whose cases appeared the least alarming were most suddenly carried off. I have ever thought the perturbation arising from the nature of the attack to have a considerable share in the fatality alluded to, especially as I never knew any one wounded by a tiger to die without suffering for some days under that most dreadful symptom, a locked jaw! Such as have been wounded to appearance severely, but accompanied with a moderate hæmorrhage, I have commonly found to recover, excepting in the rainy season: at that period I should expect serious consequences from either a bite or a scratch.>> -Oriental Sports, v. i, p. 52.

Wild beasts were so numerous and fierce in one part of Mexico, among the Otomites, that Fr. Juan de Grijalva says in his time, in one year, more than 250 Indians were devoured by them. << There then prevailed

which is the

an opinion,» he proceeds, «and still it prevails among
many, that those tigers and lions were certain Indiau
sorcerers, whom they call Nahuales, who by diabolical
art transform themselves into beasts, and tear the In-
dians in pieces, either to revenge themselves for some
offences which they have received, or to do them evil,
condition of the Devil, and an effect
proper
of his fierceness. Some traces of these diabolical acts
have been seen in our time, for in the year 1579, the
deaths of this kind being many, and the suspicion ve-
hement, some Indians were put to the question, and
they confessed the crime, and were executed for it.-
With all this experience and proof, there are many per-
sons who doubt these transformations, and say that the
land being mountainous produces wild beasts, and the
beasts being once fleshed commit these great ravages.
And it was through the weak understandings of the
Indians that they were persuaded to believe their con-
jurors could thus metamorphose themselves; and if
these poor wretches confessed themselves guilty of such
a crime, it was owing to their weakness under the tor-
ture; and so they suffered for an offence which they
had never committed.»

Father Grijalva, however, holds with his Father S.
Augustine, who has said concerning such things, hee
ad nos non quibuscunque qualibus credere putaremus
indignum, sed eis referentibus pervenerunt, quos nobis
non existimaremus fuisse mentitos. «In the days of
my father S. Augustine,» he says, «wonderful things
were related of certain innkeepers in Italy, who trans-
formed passengers into beasts of burthen, to bring to
their inns straw, barley, and whatever was wanted from
the towns, and then metamorphosed them into their
own persons, that they might purchase, as customers,
the very commodities they had carried. And in our
times the witches of Logrono make so many of these
transformations, that now no one can doubt them.-
This matter of the Nahuales, or sorcerers of Tututepec,
has been confessed by so many, that that alone suffices
to make it credible. The best proof which can be had
is, that they were condemned to death by course of
justice; and it is temerity to condemn the judges, for
it is to be believed that they made all due enquiry. Our
brethren who have been ministers there, and are also
judges of the interior court (that is of the conscience
have all held these transformations to be certain: so
that there ought to be no doubt concerning it.
contrary, it is useful to understand it, that if at any
time in heathen lands the devil should work any of
these metamorphoses, the Indians may see we are not
surprised at them, and do not hold them as miracu-
lous, but can explain to them the reason and cause
of these effects, which astonish and terrify them so
greatly.»

On the

He proceeds to show that the devil can only exercise this power as far as he is permitted by God, in punishment for sin, and that the metamorphosis is not real, but only apparent; the sorcerer not being actually transformed into a lion, but seeming as if he were both to himself and others. In what manner he can tear a man really to pieces with imaginary claws, and devour him in earnest with an imaginary mouth, the good friar has not condescended to explain.-Historia de la Orden de S. Augustin en la Provincia de N. España, pp. 34, 35.

It is difficult to explain the superior quickness of sight which savages appear to possess. The Brazilian tribes used to eradicate the eyelashes and eyebrows, as impedHideous exhibitions of this kind are sometimes made ing it. << Some Indians,» P. Andres Perez de Ribas in monasteries, where they are in perfect accord with says, «were so quicksighted that they could ward off monastic superstition. I remember seeing two human the coming arrow with their own bow.» — L. ii, c. 3, bodies dry and shrivelled, suspended in the Casa dos Ossos, at Evora, in a chapel, the walls of which are lined with skulls and bones.

and elaborate, but more refined, is described by one
of the best old travellers to the East, François Pyrard.
«The inhabitants of the Maldives use on feast days
this kind of gallantry. They bruise sanders (sandal-
wood) and camphire, on very slicke and smooth stones,
(which they bring from the firm land,) and sometimes
other sorts of odoriferous woods. After they compound
it with water distilled of flowers, and overspread their
bodies with this paste, from the girdle upwards; adding
many forms with their finger, such as they imagine.
It is somewhat like cut and pinked doublets, and of an
excellent savour. They dress their wives or lemans in
this sort, and make upon their backs works and shadows
as they please.» Skin-prints Purchas calls this.—Pyrard
de Laval. Purchas, p. 1655.

The abominable practice of tarring and feathering was but too well known during the American war. It even found its way to England. I remember, when a child, to have seen a man in this condition in the streets of Bristol.

The costume of the savages who figured so frequently in the pageants of the sixteenth century, seems to have been designed to imitate the Brazilian tribes, best known to the French and English at that time. Indeed, this is expressed by Vincent Carloix, when in describing an entertainment given to Marechal de Vieilleville by the captains of the galley at Marseilles, he says, «Ayant lié six galères ensemble de front, et faict dresser les tables dessus, et tapissées en façon de grandes salles; ayant accoustrés les forceats en Bressiliens pour servir, ils firent une infinité de gambades et de tourbions à la façon des sauvages, que personne n'avoit encore veues; dont tout le monde, avec une extresme allaigresse, s'esbahissoit merveilleusement.»-Mémoires, l. x, ch. 18.

Note 9, page 555, col. 1.

Drinking feasts.

The point of honour in drinking is not the same among the savages of Guiana, as among the English potators; they account him that is drunk first the bravest fellow-Harcourt's Voyage.

Note 10, page 555, col. 1.

A custom strange, and

yet

far spread

Through many a savage tribe, howe'er it grew, And once in the old world known as widely as the new. « Je la trouve chez les Iberiens, ou les premiers peuples d'Espagne; je la trouve chez les anciens habitants de l'Isle de Corse; elle étoit chez les Tibareniens en Asie; elle est aujourd'hui dans quelques-unes de nos provinces voisines d'Espagne, ou cela s'appele faire couvade; elle est encore vers le Japon, et dans l'Amerique chez les Caraibes et les Galibis.»-Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages, t. i. p. 50.

Strabo says, this strange custom existed in Cantabria, (L. iii, p. 174, ed. 1571.) so that its Gascon extraction has been direct. Diodorus Siculus is the authority for its existence in Corsica. (Book iii, ch. 1, English translation, 1814. vol. i. p. 305.) Apollonius Rhodius describes it among the Tibareni (L. ii. 1012.) ús isropst Nuφόδωρος ἐν τισιν νόμοις, says the scholiast.

"

à ce que l'on dit, parmy les paysans d'une certaine pro-
vince de France; et ils appellent cela faire la couvade.
pour le
Caraibe qui
pauvre
Mais ce qui est de fâcheuse
s'est mis au lit au lieu de l'accouchée, c'est qu'on luy
fait faire diete dix ou douze jours de suite, ne lui don-
nant rien par jour qu'un petit morceau de cassave, et
un peu d'eau dans laquelle on a aussi fait bouillir un
peu de ce pain de racine. Après il mange un peu plus;
mais il n'entame la cassave qui luy est presentée que par
le milieu durant quelques quarante jours, en laissant les
bords entiers qu'il pend à sa case, pour servir à un fes-
tin qu'il fait ordinairement en suite à tous ses amis. Et
même il s'abstient après cela, quelquefois dix mois ou
un an entier de plusieurs viandes, comme de lamantin,
de tortue, de pourceau, de poules, de poisson, et de
choses délicates, craignant par une pitoyable folie que
cela ne nuise à l'enfant. Mais il ne font ce grand jusne
qu'à la naissance de leur premier enfant.»-Rochefort.
Hist. Morale, c. 23. p. 495.

Marco Polo (L. ii, c. 41), the other authority to which Lafitau refers, speaks of the custom as existing in the great Khan's province of Cardandan. «Hanno un' usanza che subito ch'una donna ha partorito, si leva del letto, e lavato il fanciullo e ravolto ne' panui, il marito si mette a giacere in letto in sua vece, e tiene il figliuolo appresso di se, havendo la cura di quello per quaranta giorni, che non si parte mai. Et gli amici e parenti vanno a visitarlo per rallegrarlo e consolarlo; e le donne che sono da parto fanno quel che bisogna per casa, portando da mangiare e bere al marito, ch' e nel letto, e dando il latte al fanciullo, che gli è appresso. » —kamusio, t. ii, p. 36, ed. 1583.

Yet this custom, preposterous as it is, is not more strange than an opinion which was once so prevalent in this country that Primerose made it the subject of a chapter in his work de Vulgi Erroribus in Medicina, and thought it necessary to prove, by physical reasons, maritum loco uxoris gravida non ægrotare, for such is says, << Inter errores the title of one of his chapters. He quamplurimos maximè ridendus hic esse videtur, quod vir credatur ægrotare, iisque affici symptomatis, quibus ipsa mulier prægnans solet, illudque experientià confirmatum plurimi esse volunt. Habebam ægrum febre laborantem cum urinà valde accensâ et turbidâ, qui ægrotationis suæ nullam causam agnoscebat quam uxoris suæ graviditatem. Nullibi terrarum quam in Angliâ id observatum memini me audivisse, aut legisse unquam.-Nec si quis maritus cum uxor gravida est, ægrotat, ab uxore infectus fuit, sed potest ex peculiari proprii corporis vitio id pati. Sicut dum hæc scribo, pluit; non est tamen pluvia aut causa scriptionis, aut scriptura pluviæ. Res nova non est, viros et mulieres etiam simul ægrotare. At mirum est hactenusque ignotum, graviditatem affectum esse contagiosum, et non alias mulieres sed viros, quos natura immunes ab hoc labore fecit, solos infici. Præterea observatum est non omnibus mulieribus ejusmodi symptomata, aut saltem non omnia singulis contingere; et tamen accidit sæpe ut cum mulier bene valet, ægrotet maritus, etiam absens per aliquot milliaria. Sed quoniam ex solà relatione absurditas hujus erroris patet, plura non addam.

Voicy la brutalité de nos sauvages dans leur réjouis-Jupiter Bacchum in femore. Palladem in cerebro gestasance pour l'accroissement de leur famille. C'est qu'au vit. Sed hoc illi esto proprium,» Lib. ii, c. 13. même temps que la femme est delivrée le mary se met au lit, pour s'y plaindre et y faire l'accouchée; coutume qui, bien que sauvage et ridicule, se trouve neantmoins,

This notion, however, is probably not yet extinct, for I know that it existed in full force some thirty years ago, and that not in the lowest rank of life.

Note 11, page 556, col. 1.

Till hardened mothers in the grave could lay

Their living babes with no compunctious tear. This dreadful practice is carried to such an extent in the heart of South America that whole tribes have become extinct in consequence of it, and of another practice hardly less nefarious.

Those bloody African savages, the Giagas, reared no children whatsoever; « for as soon,» says Battell, << as the woman is delivered of her child, it is presently buried quick; so that there is not one child brought up in all this generation. But when they take any town they keep the boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen years of age as their own children, but the men and women they kill and eat. These little boys they train up in the wars, and hang a collar about their necks for a disgrace, which is never taken off till he proveth himself a man, and brings his enemy's head to the general; and then it is taken off, and he is a free mau, and is called 'gonso' or soldier. This maketh them all desperate and forward to be free, and counted men, and so they do increase.» A generation without generation, says Purchas, p. 977.

Among the causes for which the Knisteneaux women procure abortion, Mackenzie (p. 98) assigns that of hatred for the father. No other traveller has ever suspected the existence of this motive. They sometimes kill their female children to save them from the miseries which they themselves have suffered.

The practice among the Panches of Bogota was, that if the first-born proved a girl, it was destroyed, and every girl in succession till the mother bore a boy, after which girls were allowed to live; but if the firstborn were a boy, all the children then were reared.Piedrahita, p. 11.

Perhaps the most flagitious motive for which this crime has ever become a practice, is that which the Guana women assign for it; they destroy the greater number of their female infants in order to keep up the value of the sex. (Azara, t. ii, 85-100. See Hist. of Brazil, vol. ii, 379) A knowledge of the evils which polygamy brings upon some of their neighbours may have led to this mode of preventing it.

they have a bow and arrow in their hands, nothing more; we go with a basket full of things on the back, one child at the breast, another upon the basket. Their business is to shoot a bird or a fish, ours is to dig and work in the field; at evening they go home without any burthen; we, besides our children, have to carry roots for their food, and maize to make their drink. They, when they reach the house, go to converse with their friends, we have to seek wood, fetch water, and prepare their supper. Having supped, they go to sleep; but we almost all the night are pounding maize to make their chicha. And what is the end of this our watching and labour! They drink the chicha, they get drunk, and being out of their senses, beat us with sticks, take us by the hair, drag us about and trample on us. Would to God, Father, that my mother had buried me when she brought me forth! You know that I complain with cause, for all that I have said yon witness every day. But our greatest pain you do not know, because you never can suffer it. You do not know, Father, the death it is for the poor Indian weman, when having served her husband as a slave, sweating in the field, and in the house without sleep, at the end of twenty years she sees him take a girl for another wife. Her he loves, and though she ill uses our children, we cannot interfere, for he neither loves us nor cares for us now. A girl is to command over us, and treat us as her servants, and if we speak, they silence us with sticks. Can any Indian woman do better for the daughter which she brings forth than to save it from all these troubles, and deliver it from this slavery, worse than death? I say again, Father, would to God my mother had made me feel her kindness by burying me as soon as I was born! Theu would not this heart have had now so much to feel, nor these eyes so much to weep for.»>

Here, says Gumilla, tears put an end to her speech: and the worst is, that all which she said, and all she would have said, if grief had allowed her to proceed, is true.-Orinoco Illustrado, t. ii, p. 65, ed. 1791.

Note 12, page 556, col. i.

From the dove
They named the child Yeruti.
This is the Guarani name for the species described by
Azara, t. iv, p. 130, No cccxx.

Note 13, page 559, col. 1.
What power had placed them here.
Some of the Orinoco tribes believe that their first
forefathers grew upon trees.-Gumilla, t. i, c. 6.

Father Gumilla one day bitterly reproved a Betoya woman (whom he describes as having more capacity than any other of the Indians in those parts) for killing her new-born daughter. She listened to him without lifting her eyes from the ground, and when he had done, and thought that she was convinced of her guilt and heartily repented of it, she said, « Father, if you will not be angry, I will tell you what is in my heart.» He promised that he would not, and bade her speak freely. This she said to me, he says, as follows, literally translated from the Betoya tongue. « Would to God, Father, would to God my mother when she brought me forth had loved me so well and pitied me so much as to have saved me from all those troubles which I have endured till this day, and am to endure till death! If my mother had buried me as soon as I was born, I should have died, but should not have felt These are the odd people who always for a first mardeath, and should have been spared from that deathriage give a girl to an old man, and a youth to an old which must come, and should have escaped so many things bitterer than death: who knows how many more such I must endure before I die! Consider well, Father, the hardships that a poor Indian woman endures among these Indiaus! They go with us to the plantation, but

The Othomacas, one of the rudest of the Orinoco tribes, suppose themselves descended from a pile of stones upon the top of a rock called Barraguan, and that they all return to stone as they came from it; so that this mass of rock is composed of their forefathers. Therefore, though they bury their dead, within the year they take off their heads and carry them to the holes in the rock.—Gumilla, t. i. c. 6.

woman. Polygamy is not in use among them; and they say, that if the young people came together there could be no good household management.-Gumilla, t. i,

C. 12.

P. Labbé (Lett. Edif. t. viii, p. 180, edit. 1781) speaks

of a tribe on the N. bank of the Plata who put their women to death when they were thirty years old, thinking they had then lived long enough. I have not seen this custom mentioned by any other writer, nor do I believe that it can possibly have existed.

Note 14, page 559, col. 1.

And Father was his name.

the second volume contains the historical part; but when Mr Kinder purchased the one at Buenos Ayres, the other was on its way to the United States, having been borrowed from the owner by an American, and not returned. Fortunately the subjects of the two volumes are so distinct that each may be considered as a complete work; and I have referred to that which I possess, in the history of Brazil, by the title of Noticias

Tupa. It is the Tupi and Guarini name for Father, del Paraguay, etc. for Thunder, and for the Supreme Being.

The Patagones call the Supreme Being Soychu, a word which is said to express that which cannot be seen, which is worthy of all veneration, and which is out of the world. They may thus explain the word; but it cannot contain this meaning; it is a definition of what they mean, and apparently not such as a savage would give. The dead they call Soychuhet; they who are with God, and out of the world.

The Puelches, Picunches, and Moluches have no name for God. Their prayers are made to the sun, whom they regard as the giver of all good. A Jesuit once admonished them to worship that God who created all things, and this orb among the rest; but they replied, they had never known any thing greater or better than the sun.-Dobrizhoffer, t. ii, p. 100.

The most remarkable mode of superstition I remember to have met with, is one which is mentioned by the Bishop of Santa Marta, in his History of the Nuevo Reyno de Granada. He tells us, that the Pijaos of the Nuevo Reyno worshipped nothing visible or invisible, except the spirits of those whom they killed for the purpose of deifying them. For they thought that if an innocent person were put to death he became a god, and in that capacity would be grateful to those who were the authors of his apotheosis. For this reason they used to catch strangers and kill them; not thinking one of their own horde, or of their enemies, could be esteemed innocent, and therefore fitting. A woman or a child would do. But after a few months they held it necessary to make a new god, the old one either having lost his power, or changed his place, or perhaps by that time discharged himself of his debt of gratitude.-Piedrahita, p. 12.

Note 15, page 559, col. 2.

And once there was a way to that good land,
For in mid earth a wonderous tree there grew.

« Los Mocobis fingiau un Arbol, que en su idioma
llamaban Nalliagdigua, de altura tan desmedida que
llegaba desde la tierra al cielo. Por él de rama en rama
ganando siempre mayor elevacion subian las almas á
pescar de un rio y lagunas muy grandes, que abundaban
de pescado regaladísimo. Pero un dia que el alma de
una vieja no pudo pescar cosa alguna, y los pescadores
la negaron el socorro de una limosna para su manteni-
miento, se irritó tanto contra la nacion Mocobi que,
transfigurada en Capiguara tomó el exercicio de roer
el Arbol
por donde subian al cielo, y no desistió hasta
derribarlo en tierra con increible sentimiento y daño
irreparable de toda la nacion.>>

This legend is contained in a manuscript history of Paraguay, the Rio de la Piata, and Tucuman. For the use of the first volume (a transcript of which is in my possession), I am beholden, as for other civilities of the same kind, to Mr Thomas Kinder. This portion of the work contains a good account of the native tribes;

very

Note 16, page 560, col. 1.

The land of souls.

Many of the Indian speculations respecting the condition of souls in a future state are given in the History of Brazil. A description of a Keltic Island of the Blessed, as drest up by Ossian Macpherson, may be found in the notes to Madoc. A Tonga one is thus described in the curious and valuable work of Mr Mariner. «The Tonga people universally and positively believe in the existence of a large island lying at a considerable distance to the N. W. of their own islands, which they consider to be the place of residence of their gods, and of the souls of their nobles and mataboohes. This island is supposed to be much larger than all their own islands put together; to be well stocked with all kinds of useful and ornamental plants always in a state of high perfection, and always bearing the richest fruits and the most beautiful flowers, according to their respective natures; that when these fruits or flowers are plucked others immediately occupy their place, and that the whole atmosphere is filled with the most delightful fragrance that the imagination can conceive, proceeding from these immortal plants. The island is also well stocked with the most beautiful birds of all imaginable kinds, as well as with abundance of Logs, all of which are immortal, unless they are killed to provide food for the hotooas or gods; but the moment a hog or bird is killed, another living hog or bird immediately comes into existence to supply its place, the same as with the fruits and flowers; and this, as far as they know or suppose, is the only mode of propagation of plants and animals. The island of Bolotoo is supposed to be so far off as to render it dangerous for their canoes to attempt going there; and it is supposed moreover that even if they were to succeed in reaching so far, unless it happened to be the particular will of the gods, they would be sure to miss it. They give, however, an account of a Tonga canoe, which, in her return from the Feejee islands a long time ago, was driven by stress of wheater to Bolotoo: ignorant of the place where they were, and being much in want of provisions, and seeing the country abound in all sorts of fruit, the crew landed, and proceeded to pluck some bread-fruit, but to their unspeakable astonishment they could no more lay hold of it than if it were a shadow. They walked through the trunks of the trees, and passed through the substance of the houses (which were built like those of Tonga), without feeling any resistance. They at length saw some of the Hotooas, who passed through the substance of their bodies as if there was nothing there. The Hotooas recommended them to go away immediately, as they had no proper food for them, and promised them a fair wind and a speedy passage. They accordingly put directly to sea, and in two days, sailing with the utmost velocity, they arrived at Hamoa, (the Navigator's Island,) at which place they wanted to touch