ported by a broad strap, which goes over the forehead. The boys begin with small cages, gradually increasing their size and weight, until they are able to carry the largest. When arrived at this point there is great exultation among them.

The nations on the banks of the Maranon and Orinoco, are acquainted with a poison called Wourali, in which they dip their arrows employed in hunting, and if they only pierce the skin, the blood fixes and congeals, and the strongest animals fall motionless; but the flesh may be eaten with entire safety, and retains its native relish and flavor. The chief ingredient of the poison is the juice extracted from the root of the curac, a kind of shrub. In the other parts of South America, they use the Manchenille which operates with the same activity.

THE CARIBS.-When Columbus, in 1493, discovered the beautiful cluster of islands, called the Antilles, they were the abode of the Caribs, a people who were regarded almost as demons by the gentle and effeminate Indians of Cuba, and the adjacent islands. They were indeed warlike, and, to their enemies, ferocious. They were also cannibals, and followed other revolting practices of savage life.

They were, however, further advanced in the arts than the other inhabitants of the West Indies, and possessed in a higher degree the moral and intellectual elements of civilization. They had houses, called carbets, set on posts, and thatched with leaves of the plantain. These were divided into rooms, according to the wants of the family. They had boats with sails, forty feet in length; they fabricated hammocks

of cotton cloth, nicely fitted and highly ornamented; they made bread of the manioc; had seasonings of pimento and lemon juice for their meats, which were well cooked; and possessed the art of making intoxicating beverages. They manufactured cotton, but not to cover the body, for they went naked. They decorated their persons with metallic ornaments, and their heads with feathers. Painting the body was universal. Even when a person died, his corpse was painted red, and the mustaches were rendered peculiarly black and shining. In war they used poisoned arrows.

Their love of liberty was indomitable. Their conquerors attempted to reduce them to a state of slavery, but they chose rather to die, than to submit to such servitude. Under continued wrongs and oppressions, they dwindled away, and have faded from the islands where they were first discovered, and to which they gave their name. The whole race was supposed to have perished, but Humboldt discovered that some of the Indians on the Orinoko, are of this stock. These are described as a fine race, with figures of a reddish copper-color, resembling antique statues of bronze. They shave a great part of the forehead, which gives them somewhat the appearance of monks; they wear only a tuft on the crown. They have dark, intelligent eyes, a gravity in their manners, and in their features an expression of severity, and even of sadness. They still retain the pride of a conquering people, who, before the arrival of the Spaniards, had driven before them all the native tribes in that part of the continent. A great proportion of them, however, have now been civilized in a surprising degree by the missionaries, who exercise over them an almost absolute sway.

Each holiday they present themselves, loaded with offerings of almost every kind which can be acceptable to the priest; and after divine service, those of both sexes, who have been guilty of any offence, receive in his presence a sound whipping, which they bear with exemplary patience. They cruelly torment their children by imprinting on them the barbarous ornament produced by raising the flesh in stripes along the legs and thighs. They are free, however, from the equally savage practice of flattening the head by compression, which is general among the other tribes of the Orinoco, the specimens of whose crania, shown as destitute of forehead, are merely skulls shaped between planks. In this country occur the caste of Albinos, with white hair, of weakly and delicate constitution, low stature, and very effeminate character they have large eyes, and are so very weak-sighted, that they cannot endure the rays of the sun, though they can see clearly by moonlight.

THE ATLANTIC TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA.

THE Country east of the Mississippi, from Florida to Hudson's Bay, was in the possession of various tribes of Indians, when the first English settlement was made at Jamestown, in 1607. Their number has been variously estimated from 500,000 to 4,000,000. In the space of a little more than two centuries, they have been swept away, with the exception of a few insignificant remnants. Most of the tribes are entirely extinct, and are without a name, except in the pages of the historian. A few have receded before the tide of civilization, and their descendants are found scattered throughout the Great Valley of the West.

The most celebrated of these eastern tribes, were the Massachusetts, who occupied the shores of the bay which bears their name, and were resident at the places now known as Salem, Charlestown, Lynn, and the islands of Boston harbor: the Pokanokets, the Narragansetts of Rhode Island, the Pequots of Connecticut, the Five Nations of New York, embracing the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas and Canandaiguas, the Delawares of the Middle States, the Yemassees of the Carolinas, and, farther south, the Catawbas, Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws. There were many other tribes, and some of considerable importance, but these we have named, chiefly figure in the early history of the country.

These Indians were all in the strictest sense savages. They had none of them the slightest knowledge of the use of iron, nor had they any tame animals. Their government was of the simplest form, and their arts extended no farther than to supply them with the common necessaries of life. Their religion was a crude superstition, embracing the general idea of a Great Spirit, with notions of many inferior divinities. Their dwellings were rude tenements, made of poles, thatched with leaves, or covered with skins. They had no towns, and no commerce.

Yet these people appeared to live for the most part a life of ease, in the midst of abundance, enjoying the wild pleasures of savage life. Around the heads of bays, and along the banks of rivers, where fish were plentiful, and where also the deer was abundant, they seemed to collect in swarms. In other parts of the country, they were more scattered, and there were some considerable districts entirely uninhabited.

In two respects the American Indians were a very remarkable race. There is a striking resemblance throughout the whole family, from Labrador to Patagonia. There is no other example of a population so widely spread, which bears such uniformity of form and aspect. At the same time, these people seemed to be peculiarly unchangeable in their physical characteristics. Even those who remain among us, the descendants of the Penobscots and the Mohicans, though degraded by imbibing the vices of civilized society, have still the same general aspect as their progenitors two centuries ago. Wherever you meet an Indian, you are struck with a look of mingled mystery