Sometimes the natives build a house strong enough to last during the whole winter, and large enough to hold seven or eight people.  They make it in the shape of a bee-hive.

Their reason for moving about continually, is that they may get food.  They look for it, wherever they go, digging up roots, and grubbing up grubs, and searching the hollows of the trees for opossums. (Of these strange animals more shall soon be mentioned.)

The women are the most ill-treated creatures in the world.  The men beat them on their heads whenever they please, and cover them with bruises.  A gentleman once saw a poor black woman crying bitterly.  When he asked her what was the matter, she told him that her husband was going to beat her for having broken his pipe.  The gentleman went to the husband, and entreated him to forgive his “gin” (for that is the name for a wife or woman).  But the man declared he would not forgive her, unless a new pipe was given to him.  The gentleman could not promise one to the black man, as there were no pipes to be had in that place.  The next morning the poor gin appeared with a broken arm, her cruel husband having beaten her with a thick stick.

The miserable gins are not beaten only; they are half starved; for their husbands will give them no food, and they—­poor things—­cannot fish or hunt, or shoot; they have nothing but the roots they dig up, and the grubs, and lizards, and snakes they find on the ground.  Their looks show how wretchedly they fare; for while the men are often strong and tall, the women are generally thin, and bent, and haggard.

Yet the woman, weak as she is, carries all the baggage, not only the babe slung upon her back, but the bag of food, and even her husband’s gun and pipe; while the man stalks along in his pride, with nothing but his spear in his hand, or at most a light basket upon his arm; for he considers his wife as his beast of burden.  At night the woman has to build her own shelter, for the man thinks it quite enough to build one for himself.

Such is the hard lot of a native woman, while she lives; and when she dies, her body is perched in a tree, as not worth the trouble of burying.

I have already told you, that the natives have no GOD; yet they have a DEVIL, whom they call Yakoo, or debbil-debbil.  Of him they are always afraid, for they fancy he goes about devouring children.  When any one dies, they say, “Yakoo took him.”  How different from those happy Christians who can say of their dead, “God took them!”