he Indians of Guiana
sometimes imitate, in the oddest manner, the clothes of Europeans in
painting their skin. This observant traveller was much amused by seeing
the body of a native painted to represent a blue jacket and black
buttons. The missionaries also told him that the people of the Rio Caura
paint themselves of a red ground, and then variegate the colour with
transverse stripes of silver mica, so that they look most gallantly
dressed. The painted cheeks that were once common in Europe, and are
still occasionally seen, are relics of the same barbarism.

The "taboo," or "tapu," prevails also in many of the South Sea Islands,
where it may be considered as the substitute for law; although its
authority, in reality, rests on what we should rather call religious
considerations, inasmuch as it appears to be obeyed entirely from the
apprehension that its violation would bring down the anger of heaven.

It would require more space than we can afford to enumerate the various
cases in which the "taboo" operates as a matter of course, even were we
to say nothing of the numerous exigencies in which a resort to it seems
to be at the option of the parties concerned. Among the former, we may
merely mention that a person supposed to be dying seems to be uniformly
placed under the "taboo"; and that the like consecration, if it may be
so called, is always imposed for a certain space upon the individual who
has undergone any part of the process of tattooing. But we are by no
means fully informed either as to the exact rules that govern this
matter, or even as to the peculiar description of persons to whom it
belongs, on any occasion, to impose the "taboo." It is common in New
Zealand for such of the chiefs as possess this power to separate, by
means of the "taboo," any thing which they wish either to appropriate to
themselves, or to protect, with any other object, from indiscriminate
use.

When Tetoro was shown, in the "Dromedary," a double-barrelled
fowling-piece, belonging to one of the officers, he "tabooed" it by
tying a thread, pulled out of his cloak, round the guard of the trigger,
and said that it must be his when he got to New Zealand, and that the
owner should have thirty of his finest mats for it. But this, according
to Cruise, any native may do with regard to an article for which he has
bargained, in order to secure it till he has paid the price agreed upon.

On another occasion, Cruise found a number of people colle