In their wars against the Portuguese, they made use of their horned cattle; and, collecting them and the horses into a great herd, drove them furiously upon the enemy. Even the Paulistas were afraid of such an attack; and their largest parties dreaded to meet the Guaycurus in the open country; the only resource was, to get into the woods, and climb the trees; then their muskets gave them the advantage. As the Guaycurus, like the savages of South Africa, made this use of their cattle in war, so, like the same people, they had trained them to obey a whistle, by which, at any time, they could assemble and direct them.

'As soon as the surrounding pasture is exhausted, the horde removes. Presently their tents are struck,—all are in motion: the large town which was standing in the morning disappears; what was then swarming with life and population, is left as a desert behind them; and before night, the town rises upon the banks of another water, and the wilderness is filled with flocks and herds. They sleep upon the ground, on hides, and cover themselves with skins, or with a matting made from the inner rind of certain trees; or with the garments which the women wear by day, and which are large enough to serve for coverlets. The men wear nothing, except a short philibeg, which used to be of cotton, but since their intercourse with the Portuguese, is ornamented with beads of various colours. The women wear a wider petticoat, without which they are never seen from their earliest infancy; and over this a garment, or rather web of calico, is wrapt about them, from the neck to the feet, which is laid on in such heavy folds, that it is said to render the breasts pendant by its weight and pressure: the colour of the cloth is red, with stripes of black and white. They have trimmings of shell work, beads on the arms and legs, silver bugles for a necklace, and a plate of silver* on the breast. Formerly

* Where they should have obtained this silver, is a curious question: Francisco Alves supposes that it has existed among them from the time of

these ornaments were made of wood, and the lower classes still make them of that material. The men adorn their heads and limbs with feathers: they wear mouth-pieces of wood or silver, according to their means, and silver ear-rings in the form of a crescent. They eradicate their eye-brows and eyelashes, tattoo their faces (a fashion, by which the women also deform themselves), and stain the body in patterns with the juice of the urucu and jenipapo. The young men shear their hair after their own fancy; the elder to a prescribed form, resembling the tonsure of the Lay-Franciscans: the women also wear only a broad circle on the head. Unlike most of the Brazilian tribes, these Guaycurus are not polygamists: it is not to be supposed, that either law or custom renders their marriages indissoluble; the parties separate if they choose; but such separations are said to be unfrequent. Their connubial attachments are represented to be both durable and strong; and they are tenderly fond of their offspring, when their accursed customs suffer them to be born. The children are charged with showing little natural love towards their parents: cautious, as we ought to be, not to oppose mere opinion to what is asserted as fact upon fair authority, it may yet be affirmed, that this cannot be generally true; for it is impossible that tenderness in the parent should not, generally, produce correspondent, though not equal affection, in the child. Each horde has one great cemetery,—a long piece of ground, covered like a gallery along its whole length with mats: under this roofing every family has its own burial place staked off. The weapons, and other personals of the deceased, are laid upon his grave; and if he were distinguished in war, these things are decked with flowers and with feathers, which are annually renewed. The body of a

Alexo Garcia's expedition, and is part of the spoil which he brought from Peru, and which remained among the tribes by whom he was cut off. Is it not more likely to have found its way from l'otosi, passing from one possessor to another, sometimes by fair means, sometimes by foul?'

young woman is attired for her funeral as it would have been for her marriage, and carried on horseback to the cemetery: the spindle, and other articles of her use are laid upon her grave. Upon the death of a relation, or a slave, the household change their names.

"The distinction of ranks is strongly marked in this nation: the true Guaycurus form but the smallest part. They call themselves Joage* and are divided into classes, the first of which is a nobility, proud to excess of their birth. The men have a title equivalent to captain; and their wives and daughters also are addressed by an honorary prefix. There are not many of these nobles, and no supremacy among them. The second class, which is much more numerous, consists of the Guaycuru people, all of whom are soldiers, from father to son; but the great bulk of the population is composed of slaves and their descendants; for with them, one chief motive for making war is, to keep up their numbers by this system of half adoption. They spare no adult males, and sometimes kill the women; but the women are sometimes carried away prisoners, and the children always. When it happens that they bring away an infant without its mother, the wife of the captor takes the babe to her breast, whether she have a babe of her own at the time or not; for they havet discovered that a secretion of milk is excited by the action of the infant's lips, even in women of more than fifty years of age, who have

This name is so like that of Jaadge, by which the Lenguas called themselves, that, notwithstanding the opinion of Hervas, it affords a strong presumption in favour of the assertion of Francisco Alves, that the Lenguas are a branch of the Guaycurus; but when he identifies the latter with the Chiriguanas, he is certainly wrong.'

+ The editor of the Patriota (3. 4. 29), seems to intimate a disbelief of this; but many instances have been known. A well-authenticated one is mentioned by Baxter, in his Own Life and Times. (Lib. 1. Part 1. p. 46.) and the far more extraordinary fact, that milk has thus been produced in the breast of a man, is authenticated by the indisputable testimony of Humboldt.'

never been mothers. The chief, who makes the largest addition to the horde by such captures, obtains the greatest reputation. The state in which these prisoners grow up has only the name of slavery, for they are never called upon to perform any compulsory service. But the inferiority of their rank is considered to be so great, that it is deemed disgraceful for a chief to take a captive for his wife; and the son of a Guaycuru woman by a prisoner, would despise the woman who bore him, as one who by such a connexion had dishonoured herself. The Chamococos sell their children to the Guaycurus for knives and axes.

'When they are going to war, they choose for leader the youngest of the nobles who is able to bear arms; and the elder chiefs accompany him as his counsellors. On the day of their outset, the young warrior sits upon his bed, while they who are to serve in the expedition collect round him, and one by one pay their respects to his mother, and to the woman who nursed him; and these women, with tears, and in impassioned tones, remind them of the famous actions of their forefathers, and exhort them rather to die than show themselves unworthy of their ancestry. They have a singular notion, that a shirt made of the skin of a jaguar is impenetrable, even to a musket ball,--a superstition, which seems to indicate that they have not often been opposed by good marksmen. When a youth kills his first enemy, or brings home his first prisoner, his mother makes a feast, at which the guests inebriate themselves with mead almost as potent as brandy. They make war upon the Cuyarabas, or Coroados, as the Portuguese call them, who roam about the sources of the Mambaya, a river which falls into the Parana; upon the Cambebas, or Pacaleques, about the sources of the Imbotatiu, a race who flatten their heads like the old Omaguas of the Orellana; and upon the Caupezes, a burrowing tribe, who are said to form for themselves natural but monstrous aprons, by stretching down, from earliest infancy the skin of

the groin. They have also children from many other tribes* among their slaves, if that appellation may be applied to persons who feel none of the evils of slavery, and are subject to none of its restraints.

"They believe in an Intelligent Creator of all things; but they offer him no worship, and seem not to regard him either with love or with fear. The invisible power, to whom they apply for a knowledge of what is to befall them in sickness, or in war, is supposed to be an inferior Deity, named Nanigogigo; and their jugglers, who are called Unigenitos, pretend to communicate with him. There is a small kind of hawk, of which the native name is Macauham; its cry resembles that of a man in distress, and serves as an indication of weather, for those who are accustomed to it: but the Guaycurus suppose that it fortells coming events; and when it is heard the Unigenito is put upon hard duty for the following night. He passes it in singing and screaming, imitating the notes of various birds, shaking a maraca, and calling upon Nanigogigo to interpret to him the augury of his unintelligible messenger. With the same ceremonies these knaves pretend to inquire whether the sick are to recover, and if an expedition will meet with good or ill success. The only appearance of a religious ceremony among them, is an annual festival of many days at the first rising of the Seven Stars; for at that season the cocoa of the Bocayuva palm begins to be ripe, upon which they probably relied for food before the introduction of European cattle. It is said that no belief of retribution after death is combined with their notions of a future state. They hold that the souls of departed chiefs, and Unigenitos, enjoy themselves among the stars, while those of the common people wander about the place of their interment. The Guaycurus seem to have caught their superstitious practices and opinions from many

* Francisco Alves enumerates the Goaxis, Quanas, Guatos, Cayvabas, Bororos, Ooras, Cayapos, Chiquitos and Chamococos.'