ng nothing so appropriate
as his plate, he removed it to his chair before he took his seat. The
Caribs, however, had such an inveterate preference for dining _au
naturel_, that they frequently served up natives themselves, whenever
that expensive luxury could be obtained. The Spaniards brought home the
word _Cannibal_, which was a Haytian pronunciation of Cariba (Galiba);
and it gradually came into use to express the well-known idea of a
man-eater. The South-American Caribs preserve this vicious taste.

The Caribs had not overrun the island of Hayti, but it was never free
from their incursions. That hardy and warlike race was feared by the
milder Haytians, who had been compelled, especially in the southern
provinces of the island, to study the arts of defence, which do not
appear to have been much esteemed by them. Their arms were of the
simplest description: wood pointed and hardened in the fire, arrows
tipped with fish-bone or turtle-shell, and clubs of the toughest
kinds of wood. The Caribs used arrows poisoned with the juice of the
manchineel, or pointed with formidable shark's-teeth, their clubs of
Brazil-wood were three feet long, and their lances of hardened wood
were thrown with great adroitness and to a great distance. The southern
Haytians learned, warlike habits from these encroaching Caribs, and were
less gentle than the natives whom Columbus first met along the northern
coast.

But they were all gentler, fairer, more graceful and simple than the
Caribs, or the natives of the main. Their ambition found its limit when
the necessaries of daily life were procured. The greatest achievement
of their manual dexterity was the hollowing of a great trunk by fire to
fashion a canoe.[I] Their huts were neatly made of stakes and reeds,
and covered with a plaited roof, beneath which the _hamaca_, (hammock,)
coarsely knitted of cotton, swung. Every collection of huts had also one
of larger dimensions, like a lodge, open at the sides, where the natives
used to gather for their public business or amusement. This was called
_bohio_, a word improperly applied to the huts, and used by the
Spaniards to designate their villages. In the southern districts, the
_bohios_, and the dwellings of the caciques, were furnished with
stools wrought with considerable skill from hard wood, and sometimes
ornamented. But they could not have been made by the natives, who had
neither iron nor copper in use. Their golden ornaments were nothing m