Unacquainted with every branch of science, and untrained from their earliest infancy in any kind of exercise but that which war afforded, the hours must have moved tardily; and their time must have rested upon them as an intolerable burden. In savage, as well as civilized life, the soul requires activity and exercise; its vacant moments are burdensome and dull; and in such a situation it feels its imprisonment, and suffers from the chain. It prompts to action in cases where the judgment is too feeble to direct its energies; and produces effects through its native activity, which are more pernicious than perfect inanity. The exuberance of its energies will render itself conspicuous, even where reason is unable to controul its force; and time must be either improved or murdered through every moment that fleets along its stream.

Such was the case with the Charaibees. Their reasoning powers had never been called into much exercise. They were enfeebled by sloth, and injured by inaction, and were insufficient to assume the empire of the intellectual part of man. Hence the vices of savage life became predominant, and gathered strength from those actions which would submit to no restraint. The mind of the Charaibee presents magnificence in utter ruins; it shews the natural depravity of man in its most disgraceful attire, and awfully demonstrates the certainty of a most radical defect.

The amusements which are established in civilized countries, and the boisterous revels which are found in a savage state, are but distinct emanations from the same innate activity of the soul; and the popinjay of Europe, and the Charaibee of the western world, both conspire to establish the same truth. The large cabin of the Charaibee was undoubtedly introduced by him to relieve his mind from the horrors of vacancy, and to improve himself and countrymen in those practices which originated in the improper direction of the native vigour of his soul. But from the amusements of this cabin they soon retired to their private huts. In these huts the Charaibees spent the greatest part of their lives, when not at war, either in sleeping or smoaking. When they went out, they retired into some

dition was preserved with veneration. "To an ancient Charaibee bemoaning the uncomfortable savage life of his countrymen, a deity clad in white apparel appeared, and told him, He would have come sooner to have taught him the ways of civil life, had he been addressed before. He then shewed him sharp cutting stones to fell trees and build houses, and bade him cover them with palm leaves. He then broke his staff in three, which, being planted, soon after produced cassada." See Note on the "Sugar Cane," a poem by James Grainger, M. D. p. 148.

corner, and sat upon the ground, or at the foot of a tree, seemingly absorbed in the most profound meditation. Reserved in their families, they seldom spoke; but when they did, were always heard without interruption or contradiction. Their words were attended to with the strictest punctuality; they were despots in their houses; their females crouched in humble submission before them; and a declaration of their will was law.

In these reveries of solitude which engrossed the vacant hours of the Charaibee, he brooded over his past misfortunes, and endeavoured to improve by the late disasters which he had suffered. In these retirements he examined at leisure the topics which his countrymen had proposed on the great concerns of peace or war; and prepared himself to meet the subject of debate, to censure or applaud the measures, just as the proposal met his view.

The sustenance of himself and family excited no solicitude. He slept in peace, thoughtless and careless of to-morrow's fare. His household followed his example, or acted from the same common instinct which nature had inspired; frigidly indifferent both to hope and fear. Clothing for themselves and families was an article to which they were strangers; and their paints and other ornaments were provided without their aid; their time was therefore divided into two portions, and chiefly engrossed between solitude and war,

Men who dwell in the woods, consume less than those who dwell in open countries. The temperance therefore of these islanders was habitual, and they took but little trouble to procure their scanty sustenance. Without being compelled to the toilsome labours of cultivation, they constantly found in their ferests a wholesome vegetable food suited to their constitutions, and which required little or no care in preparing it. If they sometimes added to their fruits and vegetables what they had taken in hunting and fishing, it was generally on some public festivals; and these were not held at any stated times; they were therefore always considered as extraordinary assemblies. They depended entirely on the fancy of the person who was at the expense of the feast, notice being given some days before to all the neighbours, and upon particular occasions to the whole island; but no one was obliged to attend though invited. Sometimes they were called together to resolve on a voyage of negotiation, or a visit, or for going to war with another nation. If war was the subject of the meeting, some old woman was produced, who harangued the guests to excite them to vengeance. She gave a long detail of the wrongs and injuries they had suffered from the enemy, enumerated the relations and friends they had killed; and when she saw that the whole com

pany were violently heated, she began to exhibit signs of rages and that they might no longer breathe any thing but blood and death, she threw into the middle of the assembly the dried limbs of some who had been slain in former wars, which they fell upon immediately like furies, biting, scratching, tearing in pieces, and chewing them with all the rage of which cowardly and vindictive men are capable in a savage state. They then approved the proposal, and promised to be ready on an ap pointed day to set out together, in order to go and exterminate all their enemies.

It was seldom that any of these riotous meetings passed without homicide, which was committed without much ceremony. It was sufficient for one of the guests to recollect that another had killed one of his relations, or that he had given him some offence: nothing more was wanting to excite him to revenge. He rose up without ceremony; he got behind his adversary, and either split his head with a blow from his club, or stabbed him with a knife; and not one of the persons present endeavoured to prevent the assassination, or to arrest the perpetrator of the horrid deed; except it so happened that the unfortunate victim had sons, brothers, or nephews in the assembly; in which case they immediately fell upon the assassin, and dispatched him. Thus a people, who without any regular form of government, enjoyed a base kind of tranquillity, and gave way to a life of indolence, in their domestic retirement, manifested the utmost brutality in these convivial assemblies, where hatred and revenge appeared to be their predominant passions.

The wars they engaged in, as hinted already, were chiefly carried on against the Araucos or Arrowauks, a powerful Indian na❤ tion on that part of the continent of South America, which extended along the coasts of Guiana. The natural antipathy of the Charaibees, which was transmitted from father to son, we have already conjectured to have arisen from their ancestors being expelled the country of the Arrowauks, and obliged to seek new habitations and a settlement in the islands named after them. They embarked on these warlike expeditions in boats called canoes, constructed from a single tree, made hollow and shaped by a tedious and laborious process, partly by fire, and partly with hatchets in which a sharp stone was fixed to serve as a knife. Their weapons were a massy club and poisoned arrows, and their usual mode of attack was by concealing themselves in the woods. Sometimes they covered themselves with leaves; sometimes they stood or lay down behind trees or hillocks; then they suddenly sprung out from these ambushes, and made a dreadful slaughter. If timely discovered on their march, they

seldom engaged in open battle, but retreated to wait a better opportunity of making use of stratagem.

The attention and care bestowed on aged persons to the last extremity of life, was a distinguishing lineament in the character of the Charaibees; but one extraordinary act of kindness in their esteem, would be considered as an act of cruel inhuma nity by Europeans, and especially by a lover of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If their old people, tired of life, or exhausted by pain or sickness, entreated to be released from their torments, they put them to death; but this rarely happened. They also cut their own hair short, made loud lamentations, and some→ times made gashes in their flesh, for the loss of their relations and friends.

The hair of the Charaibees, we have already noticed, was ranked by them among their most important articles of orna ment. On this account their slaves were never permitted to wear it long; but such of their own people as had been taken prisoners, but were again restored, though some marks of degradation were placed upon them as badges of dishonour, were not denied this privilege. It was a token of national distinction, which seemed unalienable.

As the Charaibees had no laws, so they had no external form of religious worship; and therefore neither the former nor the latter had suggested to them any place of common rendezvous, in which they might deposit the bodies of their dead. In this point as well as others they were left to act under the impulse of nature, with nothing but the conduct of their predecessors for their guide.

To the patriarch of a family were assigned some particular marks of distinction in his death, which in his life-time he was not permitted to claim. Instead of being interred in some vault sacred to the family, his own cabin or hut which had been his habitation when living, became his sepulchre after death. The friends and relations of the deceased, after spending some time in lamentation, abandoned this habitation of death, after having finished the obsequies of their departed friend. His grave was dug nearly in the centre of his own habitation, in which he was interred in a sitting posture, and covered with rubbish. The habitation, these rites being performed, was then totally abandoned by all his survivors, and they selected a distant spot to erect another hut.

Of their religious views, of their notions of a Supreme Being and their prospects of rewards and punishments in another life, something still remains to be said. But on each of these topics our information is scanty; a beam of light, it is true, will oc

casionally dart across the gloom of savage darkness, to illumi nate the horrors which encircle them on every side. But though our views are circumscribed with barriers which we cannot pass, the glimmerings of light which we perceive, will tend further to establish a fact which is indeed already incontrovertible; that some faint traces of these truths have been found in all the savage nations upon earth. Their notions, it is true, like those of the Charaibees, have been confused and indistinct; but the diamond glitters through the rubbish with which it is inclosed, and unfolds its well-known marks to that eye which has been accustomed to peruse the page of revelation.

They considered the earth as their common bountiful parent, to whom they held themselves indebted for all the necessaries, comforts and conveniencies of life; and they were ready on all occasions to acknowledge the obligations which such favours conferred. They also admitted the existence of a good and of an evil spirit, which continually operated in hostility to each other. To both of these spirits they assigned an efficient power, and supposed that the earth occasionally acted under the controul of both, To the good spirit they ascribed the blessings which the earth produced in all its varied productions which they enjoyed: but to the evil spirit they attributed all the natural evils with which they felt themselves afflicted, and imagined that it was the cause of earthquakes, hurricanes, and excessive droughts, with which their lands were occasionally visited. Such were their general notions of a first or primary cause!

What their sentiments of spirit in general were, we do not know, nor can we be assured that they had any such views as: would submit to definition. They must have considered it as something distinct from the world which they inhabited, because their notion both of the good and evil spirit included an idea of power, which was capable of controuling the different elements with which they were surrounded. But whether they supposed the good and evil spirit to be equal to each other, or considered one to be superior to the other, are points which we connot ascertain. Neither can we satisfy ourselves as to the various perfections which they ascribed to the Divine Being. The notion of power seemed to be predominant, which must have been confusedly blended with some indistinct notions of wisdom and goodness. But still they were incapable of conceiving how a being who included goodness and wisdom in his nature, could permit those various evils to exist which so frequently overtook them; and from this inability to reconcile theory with fact, it is highly probable that they introduced their evil spirit, to remove seeming contradictions from their own ideas. They were sensible of the difficulties with which they were en