, as the injured
party was at liberty to seek revenge on the brother, son, or any
member of the family to which the guilty party belonged, these crimes
were all the more dreaded and rare. In a case of murder, the culprit,
and all belonging to him, fled to some other village of the district,
or perhaps to another district; in either case it was a city of
refuge. While they remained away, it was seldom any one dared to
pursue them, and risk hostilities with the village which protected
them. They might hear, however, that their houses had been burned,
their plantations and land taken from them, and they themselves
prohibited, by the united voice of the chief and heads of families,
from ever again returning to the place. Fines of large quantities of
food, which provided a feast for the entire village, were common; but
there were frequently cases in which it was considered right to make
the punishment fall exclusively on the culprit himself. For adultery,
the eyes were sometimes taken out or the nose and ears _bitten_ off. I
was called into a house one day to doctor the _nose_ of a young dame
who had just suffered from the incisors of a jealous woman. A story is
told of a husband and wife who made up their minds to end their
jealousies by a separation. When all was ready, and the woman was
about to leave the house with her share of the mat and other property,
she said to the man: "Now, let us again salute noses and part in
peace." The simpleton yielded, but instead of the friendly touch and
_smell_, the vixen fastened on to the poor fellow's _gnomon_, and
disfigured him for life.

For other crimes they had some such punishments as tying the hands of
the culprit behind his back, and marching him along naked, something
like the ancient French law of "amende honorable;" or, tying him hand
to hand and foot to foot, and then carrying him suspended from a
prickly pole run through between the tied hands and feet, and laying
him down before the family or village against whom he had
transgressed, as if he were a _pig_ to be killed and cooked;
compelling the culprit to sit naked for hours in the broiling sun; to
be hung up by the heels; or to beat the head with stones till the face
was covered with blood; or to play at handball with the prickly
sea-urchin; or to take five bites of a pungent root, which was like
filling the mouth five times with cayenne pepper. It was considered
cowardly to shrink from the punishment on which the vill