Do not imagine that there is but one method of piercing the lip amongst the savages. The anthropophagi do not pierce the lower lip but cut it to the length of the mouth in such a manner, that when the wound terminates in a scar they look as if they had two mouths. They wander up and down the woods, and are often, but fruitlessly exhorted by the Jesuits, not without peril to themselves, to embrace our religion. The Indians of Brazil and Paraguay formerly delighted in human flesh. Many of them, after having been long accustomed to Christian discipline in our towns, sometimes confessed that the flesh of kine or of any wild animal tastes extremely flat and insipid to them, in comparison with that of men. We have known the Mocobios and Tobas, for want of other food, eat human flesh even at this day. Some hundreds of the last-mentioned savages fell suddenly upon Alaykin, cacique of the Abipones, about day-break as he was drinking in a distant plain with a troop of his followers. An obstinate combat was carried on for some time, at the end of which the wounded Abipones escaped by flight. Alaykin himself and six of his fellow-soldiers fell in the engagement, and were afterwards roasted and devoured by the hungry victors. An Abiponian boy of twelve years old, who used to eat at our table, was killed at the same time by these savages, and added to the repast, being eaten with the rest; but an old Abiponian woman, who had been slain there with many wounds, they left on the field untouched, her flesh being too tough to be used. Now let me speak a little of the adorning, or, more properly, torturing of the ears.
The use of ear-rings, which is very ancient, and varies amongst various nations, is highly ridiculous amongst the Americans. The ears of very young children of both sexes are always perforated. Few of the men wear ear-rings, but some of the older ones insert a small piece of cow's horn, wood, or bone, a woollen thread of various colours, or a little knot of horn into their ears. Almost all the married women have ear-rings, made in the following manner. They twist a very long palm leaf two inches wide into a spire, like a bundle of silk thread, and wider in circumference than the larger wafer which we use in sacrifice. This roll is gradually pushed farther and farther into the hole of the ear; by which means in the course of years the skin of the ear is so much stretched, and the hole so much enlarged, that it folds very tightly round the whole of that palm leaf spire, and flows almost down to the shoulders. The palm leaf itself, when in this spiral form, has an elastic power which daily dilates the hole of the ear more and more. Do not think that I have exaggerated the size of this spire and the capaciousness of the ear. With these eyes, by the aid of which I am now writing, I daily beheld innumerable women laden with this monstrous ear-ring, and very many men even of other nations. For those most barbarous people the Oaèkakalòts and Tobas, and other American nations out of Paraguay, use the same ear-rings as the Abiponian women. The Guarany women wear brass ear-rings sometimes three inches in diameter, not however inserted into the ear, but suspended from it.
The Paraguayrians seem to have learnt the various use of ear-rings from Peru. Its famous king and legislator, the Inca Manco Capac, permitted his subjects to perforate their ears, provided however that all the ear-holes should be smaller than those he himself used. He assigned various ear-rings to all the people in the various provinces: some inserted a bit of wood into their ears; some a piece of white wool not bigger than a man's thumb; others a bulrush; others the bark of a tree. Three nations were allowed the privilege of larger ear-rings than the rest. All persons of royal descent wore for ear-rings very wide rings which were suspended by a long band, and hung down to the breast. The Paraguayrians, who had at first imitated the Peruvians, in course of ages invented still more ridiculous ear-rings, none of which a European could behold without laughter.
As the Abipones deprive their eyes of brows and lashes, pierce their lips and ears, prick their faces with thorns and mark them with figures, pluck the down from their chins, and pull up a quantity of hair from the fore part of their heads, I always greatly wondered at their preserving the nose untouched and unhurt, the cartilage of which the Africans, Peruvians, and Mexicans formerly perforated, sometimes inserting a string of beads into the hole. According to Father Joseph Acosta, book VII. chap. 17, Tikorìk, king of the Mexicans, wore a fine emerald suspended from his nostrils. The Brazilians from their earliest age perforate not the lower lip alone but also other parts of the face, inserting very long pebbles into the fissures; a frightful spectacle, as the Jesuit Maffei affirms in the second book of his History of the Indies. You would call the faces of the Brazilians tesselated work or mosaic. But the Parthians delighted still more in deforming themselves; for, according to Tertullian, Lib. I., cap. 10. De Cultu Fœmin, they pierced almost every part of their bodies for the admission of pebbles or precious stones. If Diodorus Siculus Lib. IV. cap. 1. may be credited, the female Negroes bordering on Arabia perforated their lips for the same purpose. From all this it appears that the savages of America are not the only people who have adopted the foolish custom of marking their bodies in various ways.
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE STRENGTH AND LONGEVITY OF THE ABIPONES
Truly ridiculous are those persons who, without ever having beheld America even from a distance, have written with more boldness than truth that all the Americans, without distinction, are possessed of little strength, weakly bodies, and bad constitutions, which cannot be said of the generality of them. Their habit of body varies according to climate, country, food, and occupation; as we find those Europeans who breathe the healthy mountain air of Styria more robust than those who grow sallow with ague in the marshy plains of the Bannat. Negro slaves brought in ships were often exposed to sale, like cattle, in the streets of Lisbon, whilst I was in that city. Those from Angola, Congo, Cape de Verd, and above all the island of Madagascar are eagerly chosen, being generally of strong health and superior activity. Africans, natives of that country which the Portugueze call Costa de la Mina, can scarcely find a purchaser, being generally weak, slothful, and impatient of labour, because they inhabit nearest to the equator, where there is little or no wind, tepid air, and frequent rain. In sailing to Paraguay we were detained in that neighbourhood by a continuous calm, and remained stationary there for full three weeks, roasted by the heat of the sun, and daily washed with warm showers. Who can wonder that this languishing climate produces languid and weakly bodies, though strong robust people are found in other parts of Africa? From this you may know what to think of so extensive a region as America, and of its inhabitants. Its various provinces and even different parts of the provinces differ essentially in the properties of the air, food, and habitations, which produces a variety in the constitutions of the inhabitants, some being weak, some very strong.
Let others write of the other Americans to whom and what they choose: I shall not contradict them. Of the Paraguayrians I confidently affirm that the equestrian nations greatly excel the pedestrians in beauty of form, loftiness of stature, strength, health, and longevity. The bodies of the Abipones are muscular, robust, agile, and extremely tolerant of the inclemencies of the sky. You scarcely ever see a fat or pot-bellied person amongst them. Daily exercise in riding, hunting, and in sportive and serious contests prevents them almost always from growing fat, for like apes they are always in motion. They consequently enjoy such an excellent habit of body, and such sound health as most Europeans might envy. Many diseases which afflict and exhaust Europeans are not even known by name amongst them. Gout, dropsy, epilepsy, jaundice, stone, &c. are words foreign and monstrous to their ears. They expose their bare heads for whole days to the heat of the sun, and yet you never hear one of them complain of head-ache. You would swear they were devoid of feeling, or made of brass or marble; yet even these grow hot when acted on by the rays of the sun. After having been long parched with thirst in dry deserts, they drink large draughts of marshy, salt, muddy, stinking, bitter water, without injury. They greedily swallow quantities of hard, half-roasted beef, venison, tiger's and emu's flesh, and the eggs of the latter, without experiencing any consequent languor of the stomach, or difficulty of digestion. They often swim across vast rivers in cold rainy weather without contracting any ill affection of the bowels or bladder, which was often troublesome to the