(Footnote.  Many usages of these rude people much resemble those of the wandering Arabs.  Dr. Pococke mentions some open huts made of boughs raised about three feet above the ground which he found near St. John D’Acre.  He observes:  “These materials are of so perishing a nature, and trees and reeds and bushes are so very scarce in some places that one would wonder they should not all accommodate themselves with tents but we find they do not in fact.”  Volume 2 page 158.  “And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem saying, Go forth unto the mount and fetch olive branches and pine branches and myrtle branches and palm branches and branches of thick trees to make booths as it is written.”  Nehemiah 8:15.)

REMARKABLE CUSTOMS.

The men wear girdles usually made of the wool of the opossum, and a sort of tail of the same material is appended to this girdle, both before and behind, and seems to be the only part of their costume suggested by any ideas of decency.  The girdle answers besides the important purpose of supporting the lower viscera, and seems to have been found necessary for the human frame by almost all savages.

CHARMED STONES.  FEMALES EXCLUDED FROM SUPERSTITIOUS RITES.

In these girdles the men, and especially their coradjes or priests, frequently carry crystals of quartz or other shining stones, which they hold in high estimation and very unwillingly show to anyone, taking care when they do that no woman shall see them.*

(Footnote.  Genesis 28:18.  “From this conduct of Jacob and this Hebrew appellative, the learned Bochart, with great ingenuity and reason, insists that the name and veneration of the sacred stones called Baetyli, so celebrated in all Pagan antiquity, were derived.  These baetyli were stones of a round form, they were supposed to be animated, by means of magical incantations, with a portion of the Deity; they were consulted on occasions of great and pressing emergency, as a kind of divine oracles, and were suspended either round the neck or some other part of the body.”  Burder’s Oriental Customs volume 1 page 40.)

BANDAGE OR FILLET AROUND THE TEMPLES.

The natives wear a neatly wrought bandage or fillet round the head and whiten it with pipe-clay as a soldier cleans his belts.* They also wear one of a red colour under it.  The custom is so general, without obvious utility, at least when the hair is short, that we may suppose it is also connected with some superstition.

(Footnote.  See illustration Cambo Volume 1.)

STRIKING OUT THE TOOTH.