The Natives Have Always Concealed The
Places Where These Precious Stones Are Procured, But The Spaniards Have
Been In Use To Find Some Emeralds In That Part Of The Country, Mixed Among
Pebbles And Gravel, On Which Account It Is Supposed That The Natives
Procured Them From Thence.
The men also are fond of wearing a kind of
bracelets, or strings of beads, of gold and silver, mixed with small
turquoise stones and white shells, or of various colours; and the women
are not permitted to wear any of those ornaments.
The country is exceedingly hot and unwholesome, and the inhabitants are
particularly subject to certain malignant warts or carbuncles of a
dangerous nature on the face and other parts of the body, having very deep
roots, which are more dangerous than the small-pox, and almost equally
destructive as the carbuncles of the plague. The natives have many temples,
of which the doors always front the east, and are closed only by cotton
curtains. In each temple there are two idols or figures in relief
resembling black goats, before which they continually burn certain
sweet-smelling woods. From this wood a certain liquor exudes, when the
bark is stripped off, which has a strong and disagreeable flavour, by
means of which dead bodies are preserved free from corruption. In their
temples, they have also representations of large serpents, to which they
give adoration; besides which every nation, district, tribe or house, had
its particular god or idol. In some temples, particularly in those of
certain villages which were called _Pafao_, the walls and pillars were
hung round with dried bodies of men women and children, _in the form of
crosses_, which were all so thoroughly embalmed by means of the liquor
already mentioned, that they were entirely devoid of bad smell.
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