noko, is only two or three inches broad, and is tied on both sides to a string, that encircles the middle of the body. The girls are often married at the age of twelve years; until nine the missionaries allow them to go to church naked, that is to say without a tunic. I need not repeat here, that among the Chaymas, as well as in all the Spanish Missions and the Indian villages, which I have visited, a pair of drawers, or shoes, or a hat, are objects of luxury unknown to the natives. A servant, who had been with us during our journey to Caripe and the Oroonoko, and whom I brought to France, was so much struck on landing, when he saw the ground tilled by a peasant with a hat on, that he thought himself in a miserable country, where even nobles (los mismos caballeros) followed the plough. The Chayma women are not handsome, according to the ideas that we annex to beauty; yet the girls have something soft and melancholy in their looks, which forms an agreeable contrast with the expression of the mouth, which is somewhat austere and savage. They wear the hair plaited in two long tresses; they do not paint their skin, and from their extreme poverty are acquainted with no other ornaments than necklaces and bracelets made of shells, birds' bones, and seeds. Both men and women are very muscular, but fleshy and plump. It is superfluous to add, that I saw no person, who had any natural deformity; I might say the same of thousands of Caribs, Muyscas, and Mexican and Peruvian In dians, whom we observed during the course of five years. Bodily deformities, deviations from nature, are infinitely rare among certain races of men, especially those nations, who have the dermoid system highly coloured. I cannot believe, that they depend solely on the progress of civilization, a luxurious life, or the corruption of morals. In Europe a deformed or very ugly girl marries if she have a fortune, and the children often inherit the deformity of the mother. In the savage state, which is a state of equality, nothing can induce a man to unite himself to a deformed woman, or one who is very unhealthy. If therefore such s woman have had the misfortune of attaining an adult age, and have resisted the chances of restless and disturbed life, sh dies without children. We migh be tempted to think, that savage all appear well made and vigorou because feeble children die your for want of care; and that t strongest alone survive; but the causes cannot act on the Indi of the Missions, who have manners of our peasants, and Mexicans of Cholula and cala, who enjoy wealth, that been transmitted to them ancestors more civilized themselves. If in every st cultivation, the copper-col race manifests the same infle. lity, the same resistance to de tion from a primitive type, are not forced to admit, that t property belongs in great measu to hereditary organization, to the which constitutes the race? I use intentionally the expression is great measure, not entirely to Nations attach the idea of beauty to every thing, which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy. Thence it results, that, if Nature have bestowed very little beard, a narrow forehead, or a brownish-red skin, every individual thinks himself beautiful, in proportion as his body is destitute of hairs, his head flattened, his skin more covered with annotto, or chica, or some other coppery or redcolour. The Chaymas lead a life of the greatest uniformity. They go to rest very regularly at seven in the evening; and rise long before day-light, at half after four in the morning. Every Indian has a fire near his hammock. The women are so chilly, that I have seen them shiver at church when the centigrade thermometer was not below 18°. The inside of the huts of the Indians is extremely clean. Their hammocks, their mat of reeds, their pots to hold cassava and fermented maize, their bows and arrows, every thing is arranged in the greatest order. Men and women bathe every day, and being almost stantly naked, they are exempted from that want of cleanliness, of which the garments are the principal cause among the lower people in cold countries. Beside a house in the village, they have generally in their conucos, near con Thus, in their finest statues, the Greeks exaggerated the form of the forehead, by elevating beyond proportion the facial line. (Cuv., Anat. Comp. T. ii, p. 6. Humb., Monum. Americ., T. i. p. 158). some spring, or at the entrance of some solitary valley, a small hut, covered with the leaves of the palm or plaintain-tree. Though they live less commodiously in the conuco, they love to retire thither as often as they can. We have already spoken of that irresistible desire of fleeing from society, and of entering again on a savage life. The youngest children sometimes leave their parents, and wander four or five days in the forests, living on fruits, palm-cabbage, and roots. When travelling in the Missions, it is not uncommon, to find the villages almost deserted, because the inhabitants are in their gardens, or in the forests, al monte. Among civilized nations, the passion for hunting is owing perhaps in part to the same sentiments, to the charm of solitude, to the innate desire of independence, to the deep impression made by Nature, whenever man finds himself in contact with her alone. The condition of the women among the Chaymas, like that in all semibarbarous nations, is a state of privation and suffering. The hardest labour is their share. When we saw the Chaymas return in the evening from their gardens, the man carried nothing but the knife (muchette), with which he clears his way among the underwood. The woman however bent under a great load of plantains; she held a child in her arms; and sometimes two other children were placed upon the load. Notwithstanding this inequality. of condition, the wives of the Indians of South America appear to be in general happier than those of the savages of the North. Between + Between the Alleghany mountains and the Mississippi, wherever the natives do not live in great part on the produce of the chace, the women cultivate the maize, beans, and gourds; and the men take no share in the labours of the field. Under the torrid zone, the hunting nations are extremely scarce, and, in the Missions, the men work in the fields like the women. Nothing can exceed the difficulty with which the Indians learn Spanish. They have an absolute aversion to it, while, living separate from the whites, they have not the ambition to be called polished Indians, or, as it is termed in the Missions, latinized Indians, Indios muy latinos. But what struck me most, not only among the Chaymas, but in all the very distant Missions, which I afterwards visited, is the extreme difficulty, which the Indians have to arrange and express the most simple ideas in Spanish, even when they perfectly understand the meaning of the words, and the turn of the phrases. When a white questions them concerning objects which surround them from their cradle, they seem to discover an imbecility, which exceeds that of infancy. The missionaries assert, that this embarrassment is not the effect of timidity; that in, the Indians who daily visit the missionary's house, and who regulate the public works, it does not arise from natural stupidity, but from the obstacles they find in the structure of a language so different from their native tongues. The more remote man is from cultivation, the greater his stiffness and moral inflexibility. We must not then be surprised, to find obstacles among the isolated Indians in the Missions, which are unknown to those, who inhabit the same parish with the mestizoes, the mulattoes, and the whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. I have often been surprised at the volubility, with which, at Caripe, the alcalde, the governador, and the sargento mayor, harangue for whole hours the Indians assembled before the church; regulating the labours of the week, reprimanding the idle, threatening the disobedient. Those chiefs, who are equally of the Chayma race, and who transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all at the same time, with a loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. Their features remain motionless; but their look is imperious and severe. These same men, who displayed quickness of intellect, and who were tolerably well acquainted with the Spanish, could no longer connect their ideas, when, accompanying us in our excursions around the convent, we put questions to them through the intervention of the monks. They were made to affirm or deny, whatever the monks pleased: and indolence, attended with that wily politeness, to which the least cultivated Indian is no stranger, induced them sometimes to give to their answers the turn, that seemed to be suggested by our questions. Travellers cannot be enough on their guard against this officious assent, when they wish to support their opinions by the testimony of the natives. To put an Indian Alcalde to the proof, proof, I asked him one day, if he did not think the little river of Caripe, which issues from the cavern of the Guacharo, returned into it on the opposite side by some unknown entrance, after having ascended the slope of the mountain. After appearing gravely to reflect on the subject, he answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis: How else, if it were not so, would there always be water in the bed of the river at the mouth of the cavern?" An Autumn near the Rhine; or Sketches of Court, Society, Scenery, &c. in some of the GERMAN STATES, bordering on the Rhine. Frankfort on the Maine-the ancient place of inauguration of the German Emperors, the residence of the Diet which is to reconstruct the dismembered empire, a centre for colonial commerce, and the great money market of Germany, may, on every account be considered one of its most interesting cities. The approach from Darmstadt, through a noble beech wood, within the little territory of the free city, is very striking. The road gradually ascends to an old Roman tower, on the brow of the hill, half a mile distant, when the City, with its handsome white slated houses, its venerable Cathedral, and cheerful citizens' mansions and gardens, lies before you in the middle of the rich wide valley of the Maine. On the left you trace the ample course of the river towards Mayence; and a few leagues beyond the town rises the bold wooded chain of the Taunus Mountains, the highest points of which, above Homberg, are just opposite Frankfort. The road, as far as the suburb, is lined with highly cultivated gardens and vineyards, interspersed with cheerful boxes, whose air of smart comfort announces at once the affluence and mercantile taste of their pos sessors. You pass the Maine from the fauxbourg of Saxenhausen, by an ancient stone bridge, to the city. The river on both sides presents a respectable little cluster of their antique buildings, have a shipping, and the quays, with degree of life and bustle which would be more striking to any one than an Englishman familiar with London and Bristol. If the commercial navy of the free city is comparatively insignificant, the general construction of the city itself is, in some respects, more picturesque and interesting than that of the above-mentioned money-getting Cities. A cockney would, however, no doubt, prefer the tight tenements of Cornhill, denoting the value of every foot of ground, to the stately rambling mansion, where you enter a large court-yard by a ponderous porte cocher, which does not appear constructed for the momentary ingress and egress of a very lively commerce. In almost every town in Germany, the top of one of the church towers is inhabited by a family, who watch during the night, and give alarm in case of fire. They sound a small horn at every quarter or half-hour, in evidence of their vigilance; and are provided with an immense fire-horn or alarum-bell, to rouse the |