PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF THE CARIBS.
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perfectly indifferent to him. When disposed to sleep, no consideration on earth would tempt him to sell his bed ; but in the morning, when satisfied with slumber, and prepared to set out on the usual business or recreation of the day, the Carib has been known to dispose of it for the smallest trifle which caught his fancy. The only thing they deemed of real value, was their weapons—consequently, when they found, by sad experience, the superiority of fire-arms over the bow and arrows of their own country, they viewed them with unbounded admiration ; but the inventions and improvements of civilized life, with all the arts and manufactures of the Spaniards, they regarded with apathy, or paid them the same attention as we do the toys of childhood. Columbus noticed two distinct races of Caribs. One was quite black, with hair approaching to woolly ; the other, of a deep copper colour complexion, with long, straight hair ; the latter inhabited Antigua and the adjoining islands, while the blacks predominated more in the islands further south. In appearance, the Caribs were robust and muscular; their limbs flexible and active. They ornamented their hair with shells and grease ; and some of them had it turned up like women, and decorated with thin plates of gold, which they procured from the Arrowawks. Their garments were composed of cotton cloth, fabricated by their females, and which they had the art of staining red, their favourite colour ; but many of them were in a state of nudity. The cartilage of the nostril was perforated, and in it they stuck a piece of tortoise-shell, the bone of a fish highly polished, or a parrot's feather. They adorned their arms, neck, and ankles, with the teeth of their enemies which they had slain in battle, or devoured at home. Their bodies were painted in the most hideous manner, which appears to have been intended to make them look more formidable in the eyes of their enemies than pleasing in the sight of their friends. The favourite style of doing this, was first to smear a quantity of red paint all over them ; they then encircled one eye with a streak of white, and the other with one of black; they also disfigured