a most despotic authority over their wives, whom they consider in the same view they do any other part of their property, and dispose of them accordingly:  Even their common treatment of them is cruel; for though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely upon the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it till the husband is satisfied, and then he assigns them their portion, which is generally very scanty, and such as he has not a stomach for himself.  This arbitrary proceeding, with respect to their own families, is not peculiar to this people only.  I have had occasion to observe it in more instances than this I have mentioned, among many other nations of savages I have since seen.

These Indians are of a middling stature, well set, and very active, and make their way among the rocks with an amazing agility.  Their feet, by this kind of exercise, contract a callosity which renders the use of shoes quite unnecessary to them.  But before I conclude the few observations I have to make on a people so confined in all their notions and practice, it may be expected I should say something of their religion; but as their gross ignorance is in nothing more conspicuous, and as we found it advisable to keep out of their way when the fits of devotion came upon them, which is rather frantic than religious, the reader can expect very little satisfaction on this head.  Accident has sometimes made me unavoidably a spectator of scenes I should have chosen to have withdrawn myself from; and so far I am instructed.  As there are no fixed seasons for their religious exercises, the younger people wait till the elders find themselves devoutly disposed, who begin the ceremony by several deep and dismal groans, which rise gradually to a hideous kind of singing, from which they proceed to enthusiasm, and work themselves into a disposition that borders on madness; for, suddenly jumping up, they snatch fire-brands from the fire, put them in their mouths, and run about burning every body they come near; at other times it is a custom with them to wound one another with sharp mussel-shells till they are besmeared with blood.  These orgies continue till these who preside in them foam at the mouth, grow faint, are exhausted with fatigue, and dissolve in a profusion of sweat.  When the men drop their part in this frenzy, the women take it up, acting over again much the same kind of wild scene, except that they rather outdo the men in shrieks and noise.  Our cacique, who had been reclaimed from these abominations by the Spaniards, and just knew the exterior form of crossing himself, pretended to be much offended at these profane ceremonies, and that he would have died sooner than have partaken of them.  Among other expressions of his disapprobation, he declared, that whilst the savages solemnized these horrid rites, he never failed to hear strange and uncommon noises in the woods, and to see frightful visions, and assured us that the devil was the chief actor among them upon these occasions.