s the men were landed, she and the old Indian woman went up, not
without some marks of dread upon them, to an elderly Indian man, whose
remarkably surly and stern countenance was well calculated to raise such
sensations in his dependants. He seemed to be a cacique or chief man among
them, by the airs of importance he assumed to himself, and the deference
paid him by the rest. After some little conference passed between these
Indians and our cacique conductor, of which, most probably, the
circumstances of our history and the occasion of our coming here might be
the chief subject, for they fixed their eyes constantly upon us, they
applied themselves to building their wigwams.

I now understood that the two Indian women with whom I had sojourned were
wives to this chieftain, though one was young enough to be his daughter;
and as far as I could learn, did really stand in the different relations to
him both of daughter and wife. It was easy to be perceived that all did not
go well between them at this time, either that he was not satisfied with
the answers that they returned him to his questions, or that he suspected
some misconduct on their side; for presently after breaking out into savage
fury, he took the young one up in his arms, and threw her with violence
against the stones; but his brutal resentment did not stop here, he beat
her afterwards in a cruel manner. I could not see this treatment of my
benefactress without the highest concern for her, and rage against the
author of it; especially as the natural jealousy of these people gave
occasion to think that it was on my account she suffered. I could hardly
suppress the first emotions of my resentment, which prompted me to return
him his barbarity in his own kind; but besides that this might have drawn
upon her fresh marks of his severity, it was neither politic, nor indeed in
my power to have done it to any good purpose at this time.

[118] There are two very different disorders incident to the human body,
which bear the same name, derived from some resemblance they hold with
different parts of the animal so well known in the countries to which
these disorders are peculiar. That which was first so named is the
leprosy, which brings a scurf on the skin not unlike the hide of an
elephant. The other affects the patient with such enormous swelling of
the legs and feet, that they give the idea of those shapeless pillars
which support that creat