These People Have No Laws, Or Any Idea Of Distributive Justice, Neither
Are Malefactors Ever Punished Among Them.
Parents even neither teach nor
chastise their children.
We have sometimes seen them conferring together
among themselves in a strange manner. They seem very simple in their
discourse, yet are they very cunning and shrewd. In speaking they are
neither loud nor loquacious, using accents similar to ours, but squeezing
as it were most of their words between the teeth and the lips. They have a
great number of dialects, as at every hundred leagues distance we found a
different language, the different tribes not understanding each other.
Their manner of feeding is very barbarous, as they have no fixed periods
for eating, but just as inclination or opportunity offers, whether by day
or night. When taking food they recline on the ground, using neither
table-cloths nor napkins, as they have no linen or any other kind of cloth.
Their food is put into vessels of earthen ware, manufactured by themselves,
or into half gourd shells instead of dishes. They sleep in large net
hammocks made of cotton, suspended at some height; and however
extraordinary or disagreeable this custom may appear, I have found it
exceedingly pleasant, and much preferable to the carpets which we use.
Their bodies are very clean and sleek, owing to their frequent bathing.
When about to ease nature they are at great pains to conceal themselves
from observation, yet are very indecent in discharging their urine, which
they would do at any time, both men and women, while conversing with us.
They observe no law or covenant in regard to marriage, every man having as
many wives as he pleases or can procure, and dismissing them at pleasure,
and this license is common both to men and women. They are little addicted
to jealousy, yet much given to lust, in which the women far exceed the men.
From motives of decency I here omit describing the expedients they put in
practice for satisfying their inordinate desires. The women are very
prolific, and do not shun labour or fatigue while pregnant. Their
deliveries are attended with little pain, so that they are able
immediately afterwards to go about their usual occupations in perfect
health and vigour; going in the first place to wash themselves in the
nearest river. Yet such is their proneness to cruelty and malignant spite,
that if exasperated by their husbands, they take a certain poison in
revenge, which kills the foetus within them, so that they afterwards
miscarry, by which abominable practice vast numbers of their children are
destroyed. Their bodies are so elegant and well proportioned, that hardly
is any the smallest deformity to be seen among them. Though they go
entirely naked among the women, their appearance is tolerably decent[5],
yet are they no more moved by this exposure than we are by shewing our
faces. It is rare among them to see any women with lax breasts or
shrivelled bellies through frequent child-birth, as they are all equally
plump and firm afterwards as formerly.
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