Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 612 of 777 - First - Home
The Natives
Subsist During A Part Of The Year On Those Large Ants Of Which I Have
Spoken Above.
These insects are much esteemed here, as spiders are in
the southern hemisphere, where the savages of Australia deem them
delicious.
We found at Mandavaca the good old missionary, who had
already spent twenty years of mosquitos in the bosques del
Cassiquiare, and whose legs were so spotted by the stings of insects,
that the colour of the skin could scarcely be perceived. He talked to
us of his solitude, and of the sad necessity which often compelled him
to leave the most atrocious crimes unpunished in the two missions of
Mandavaca and Vasiva. In the latter place, an Indian alcalde had, a
few years before, eaten one of his wives, after having taken her to
his conuco,* (* A hut surrounded with cultivated ground; a sort of
country-house, which the natives prefer to residing in the missions.)
and fattened her by good feeding. The cannibalism of the nations of
Guiana is never caused by the want of subsistence, or by the
superstitions of their religion, as in the islands of the South Sea;
but is generally the effect of the vengeance of a conqueror, and (as
the missionaries say) "of a vitiated appetite." Victory over a hostile
tribe is celebrated by a repast, in which some parts of the body of a
prisoner are devoured. Sometimes a defenceless family is surprised in
the night; or an enemy, who is met with by chance in the woods, is
killed by a poisoned arrow.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 612 of 777
Words from 166312 to 166573
of 211397
