THE
CARIBS
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when he found that the Christianity went no deeper. Moral virtues, he concluded charitably, could no more be expected out of a Carib than reason and good sense out of a woman. At Roseau, the capital, he fell in with the then queen of Dominica, a Madame Ouvernard, a Carib of pure blood, who in her time of youth and beauty had been the mis tress of an English governor of St. Kitts. When Labat saw her she was a hundred years old with a family of children and grandchildren. She was a grand old lady, unclothed almost absolutely, bent double, so that under ordinary circumstances nothing of her face could be seen. Labat, however, presented her with a couple of bottles of eau de vie, under the influence of which she lifted up to him a pair of still brilliant eyes and a fair mouthful of teeth. They did very well together, and on parting they exchanged presents in Homeric fashion, she loading him with baskets of fruit, he giving a box in return full of pins and needles, knives and scissors. Labat was a student of languages before philology had become a science. He discovered from the language of the Caribs that they were North American Indians. They called themselves Banari, which meant ‘ come from over sea.’ Their dialect was almost identical with what he had heard spoken in Florida. They were cannibals, but of a peculiar kind. Human flesh was not their ordinary food ; but they ‘ boucanned’ or dried the limbs of distinguished enemies whom they had killed in battle, and handed them round to be gnawed at special festivals. They were a light-hearted, pleasant race, capital shots with bows and arrows, and ready to do anything he asked in return for brandy. They killed a hammer shark for his amusement by diving under the monster and stabbing him with knives. As to their religion, they had no objection to anything. But their real belief was in a sort of devil. Soon after Labat's visit the French came in, drove the K2