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ing the beaten track, they display great aptitude in the exercise of the arts of imitation; and they display a much greater still for the purely mechanical arts. This aptitude cannot fail of becoming some day very valuable, when the manufactures shall take their flight to a country where a regenerating government remains yet to be created.

The Mexican Indians have preserved the same taste for flowers which Cortez found in his time. A nosegay was the most valuable treat which could be made to the ambassadors who visited the court of Montezuma. This monarch and his predecessors had collected a great number of rare plants in the gardens of Istapalapan. The famous hand-tree, the cheirostemon*, described by M. Cervantes, of which for a long time only a single individual was known of very high antiquity, appears to indicate that the kings of Toluca cultivated also trees strangers to that part of Mexico. Cortez, in his letters to the emperor Charles the Fifth, frequently boasts of the industry which the Mexicans displayed in gardening; and he com plains that they did not send him the seeds of or

* M.Bonpland has given a drawing of it in our Plantes Equinoriales, vol. i. p. 75. pl. 24. For some little time past, roots of the Arbol de las manitas have been in the gardens of Montpellier and Paris. The cheirostemon is as remarkable for the form of its corolla as the Mexican gyrocarpus which we have introduced into the European gardens, and of which the celebrated Jacquin could not discover the flower, is for the form of its fruits.

namental flowers and useful plants which he demanded for his friends of Seville and Madrid. The taste for flowers undoubtedly indicates a relish for the beautiful; and we are astonished at finding it in a nation in which a sanguinary worship and the frequency of sacrifices appeared to have extinguished whatever related to the sensibility of the soul, and kindness of affection. In the great

market-place of Mexico the native sells no peaches, nor ananas, nor roots, nor p lque (the fermented juice of the agave), without having his shop ornamented with flowers, which are every day renewed. The Indian merchant appears seated in an intrenchment of verdure. A hedge of a metre * in height, formed of fresh herbs, particularly of gramina with delicate leaves, surrounds like a semicircular wall the fruits offered to public sale. The bottom, of a smooth green, is divided by garlands of flowers which run parallel to one another. Small nosegays placed symmetrically between the festoons give this inclosure the appearance of a carpet strewn with flowers. The European who delights in studying the customs of the lower people, cannot help being struck with the care and elegance the natives display in distributing the fruits which they sell in small cages of very light wood. The sapotilles (achras), the mammea, pears, and raisins, occupy the bottom, while the

*31fect.

top is ornamented with odoriferous flowers. This art of entwining fruits and flowers had its origin, perhaps, in that happy period when, long before the introduction of inhuman rices, the first inhabitants of Anahuac, like the Peruvians, offered up to the great s irit Teoil the first fruits of their harvest.

These scattered features, characteristic of the natives of Mexico, belong to the Indian peasant, whose civilization, as we have already stated, is somewhat akin to that of the Chinese and Japanese. I am able only to pou: tray still more imperfectly the manners of the pastoral Indians, whom the Spaniards include under the denomination of Indios Bracos, and of whom I have merely seen a few individuals, brought to the capital as prisoners of war. The Mecos (a tribe of the Chichimecs), the Apaches, the Lipans, are hordes of hunters, who, in their incursions, for the most part nocturnal, infest the frontiers of New Biscay, Sonora, and New Mexico. These savages, as well as those of South America, display more nobility of mind and more force of character than the agricultural Indians. Some tribes of them possess even languages of which the mechanism proves an ancient civilization. They experience great difficulty in learning our Furopean idioms, while they express themselves in their own with great facility. These very Indian chiefs, whose solemn taciturnity astonishes the observer, hold discourses for hours when any great interest

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excites them to break their natural silence.

We

observed the same volubility of tongue in the missions of Spanish Guiana, and among the Caribs of the lower Orinoco, of which the language is singularly rich and sonorous *.

* Gilij, an Italian missionary, who resided eighteen years among the nations of the Orinoco, and became master of their languages, published three octavo volumes at Rome, in 17801-2, which he entitled Saggio di Storia Americana. In these volumes there is much information with regard to the Indians, particularly those of the Orinoco. From the samples which he gives of their languages, some of them would seem to be remarkably expressive, as well as sonorous, and form 'in the latter respect a singular contrast to those of Mexico. All the words of the Orinochese languages, he says, constantly end in vowels, and none of these languages are difficult to pronounce. But though they end in vowels, they have nothing of the inarticulate appearance of the vowel languages of the South Seas. What wilt thou eat to-morrow? is thus expressed in the Maipurese language: Nunaunari iti pare peccari upie? The following will serve to show the expressiveness of the Maipurese language: one who has no father, one who has no mother, one who has no wife, one who has no children: Macchivacaneteni, matuteni, maanituteni, maaniteni.

Here are a few vocables from the Tamanac and Maipurese languages, with the corresponding ones in English.

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After examining the physical constitution and intellectual faculties of the Indians, it remains for us to give a rapid survey of their social state. The history of the lower classes of a people is the relation of the events which, in creating at the same time a great inequality of fortune, enjoyment, and á individual happiness, have gradually placed a part of the nation under the tutory and control of the other. We shall seek in vain this relation in the annals of history. They transmit to us the memory of the great political revolutions, wars, con

Gilij describes the nations of the Orinoco as libidinous, which sounds rather singularly applied to Indians; and he gives a very amusing account of their powers of mimicry, and the manner in which they counterfeit the language and gestures of the missionaries, for the purpose of turning them into ridicule. One would think, almost, that the French nation had sitten for the following portrait of the Maipurese. "Generalmente adunque parlando, sou gli Orinochesi di genio allegro; ma sopra ogni altra nazione spiccano i Maipuri per l'affabilità e l'amorevolezza con cui trattono i forestieri, Quindi è l'amore che portan loro gli Europei tutti, che li conoscano. Non v' ha forse Indiani, che più si affaciano all umore di ognuno. Fanno delle amicizie con tutti, ed appena trovasi in Orinoco una nazione in cui non siavi qualche Maipure. La loro lingua siccome facilissima ad imparare, è divenuta tra gli Orinochesi una lingua di moda; e chi poco, chi molto, chi mediocremente, chi bene, la parlano quasi tutti. I Maipuri nondimeno (il che toglie loro un gran pregio) sono incostanti, poco schietti; e non tanto internamente buoni, quanto per l'innata loro civiltà compajono agli altri. Vol. ii. p. 43.

Father Gumilla speaks highly of the state of music among the tribes of the Orinoco.

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