[Footnote X:  This appears improbable, and is, no doubt, overstated; but so far as it is true, only shows the degradation of these women, and the absence of moral love on both sides.  The indifference to virgin chastity described by Mr. F., is a characteristic of barbarous nations in general, and is explained by the principle stated in the next note below; the savage state being essentially one in which the supernatural bond of human fellowship is snapped:  it is (as it has been called) the state of nature, in which continence is practically impossible; and what men can not have, that they soon cease to prize.  The same utter indifference to the past conduct of the girls they marry is mentioned by MAYHEW as existing among the costermongers and street population of London, whom he well likens to the barbarous tribes lying on the outskirts of more ancient nations.—­ED.]

There are charlatans everywhere, but they are more numerous among savages than anywhere else, because among these ignorant and superstitious people the trade is at once more profitable and less dangerous.  As soon as a native of the Columbia is indisposed, no matter what the malady, they send for the medicine man, who treats the patient in the absurd manner usually adopted by these impostors, and with such violence of manipulation, that often a sick man, whom a timely bleeding or purgative would have saved, is carried off by a sudden death.

They deposite their dead in canoes, on rocks sufficiently elevated not to be overflowed by the spring freshets.  By the side of the dead are laid his bow, his arrows, and some of his fishing implements; if it is a woman, her beads and bracelets:  the wives, the relatives and the slaves of the defunct cut their hair in sign of grief, and for several days, at the rising and setting of the sun, go to some distance from the village to chant a funeral song.

These people have not, properly speaking, a public worship.[Y] I could never perceive, during my residence among them, that they worshipped any idol.  They had, nevertheless, some small sculptured figures; but they appeared to hold them in light esteem, offering to barter them for trifles.

[Footnote Y:  It is Coleridge who observes that every tribe is barbarous which has no recognised public worship or cult, and no regular priesthood as opposed to self-constituted conjurors.  It is, in fact, by public worship alone that human society is organized and vivified; and it is impossible to maintain such worship without a sacerdotal order, however it be constituted. No culture without a cult, is the result of the study of the races of mankind.  Hence those who would destroy religion are the enemies of civilization.—­ED.]