a language whose origin has been variously
attributed to Florida, to Central America, and to the Caribbee Islands.
But the Indians of Central America could not understand the Cubans and
Haytians, and they in turn spoke a different language from the Caribs,
some of whose words they had borrowed. A favorite theory is, that the
_Ygneris_ were ancient inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, distinct
from the Caribs, who made their way from Florida by the Lucayan Islands,
leaving Hayti to the right, and reaching South America by that fringe of
islands that stretches from Porto Rico to Trinidad, through which the
great current is strained into the Caribbean Sea. Humboldt says,[G] in
noticing the difference between the language of the Carib men and their
women, that perhaps the women descended from the female captives made
in this movement, the men being as usual slain. But the Haytians also
claimed to have come from Florida. Perhaps, then, an emigration from
Florida, which may be called, for want of any historical data, that of
the Ygneris, covered all the West Indian Islands at a very early period,
to be overlapped, in part, by a succeeding emigration of Caribs who were
pressed out of Florida by the Appalachians.[H]

[Footnote G: _Personal Narrative_, Vol. III. p. 78, where see the
subject discussed at length.]

[Footnote H: _Histoire Generale des Antilles_, par Du Tertre, Paris,
1667, Tom. II. p. 360.]

The Caribs are supposed to have derived the compliment of their name,
which means "valiant men," from the Appalachians, who had great trouble
in dislodging them. They were very different from the Haytians: they cut
their hair very short in front, leaving a tuft upon the crown, bandaged
the legs of their children to make a calf that Mr. Thackeray's Jeames
would have envied, pulled out their beard hair by hair, and then
polished the chin, with rough leaves. A grand toilet included a coat of
scarlet paint, which protected them from the burning effect of the sun
and from the bites of insects. It also saved their skins from the scurf
and chapping which the sea-water occasioned. A Carib chief, in a full
suit of scarlet, excited once the anger of Madame Aubert, wife of a
French governor of Dominica, because he sat upon her couch, which had a
snowy dimity cover, and left there the larger portion of his pantaloons.
But afterwards, upon being invited to dine at the Government-House, he
determined to respect the furniture, and, seei