The Young Girls Wear Very Tight Bandages Round Their Knees In Order To Give Thickness To The Thighs And Calves Of The Legs.]) On Observing The Spirit Of Order And Submission Which Prevails In The Carib Missions, The Traveller Can Scarcely Persuade Himself That He Is Among Cannibals.

This American word, of somewhat doubtful signification, is probably derived from the language of Hayti, or that of Porto Rico; and it has passed into the languages of Europe, since the end of the fifteenth century, as synonymous with that of anthropophagi.

"These newly discovered man-eaters, so greedy of human flesh, are called Caribes or Cannibals,"* says Anghiera, in the third decade of his Oceanica, dedicated to Pope Leo X. (* Edaces humanarum carnium novi helluones anthropophagi, Caribes alias Canibales appellati.) There can be little doubt that the Caribs of the islands, when a conquering people, exercised cruelties upon the Ygneris, or ancient inhabitants of the West Indies, who were weak and not very warlike; but we must also admit that these cruelties were exaggerated by the early travellers, who heard only the narratives of the old enemies of the Caribs. It is not always the vanquished solely, who are calumniated by their contemporaries; the insolence of the conquerors is punished by the catalogue of their crimes being augmented.

All the missionaries of the Carony, the Lower Orinoco and the Llanos del Cari whom we had an opportunity of consulting assured us that the Caribs are perhaps the least anthropophagous nations of the New Continent.

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