Caribs all over Guiana. It has a soft, cochineal, crimson shade, and is in
great demand among the Indians as an ornamental paint. The use is chiefly
for the face, whilst they stain the other parts of the body with Arnotta.
They also apply the Chica on the cheeks and about the eyes, and variegate
the countenance by marking the forehead, and along the facial line, with
their coomazu, a yellow clay or ochre. This manner of painting produces a
striking contrast, and gives them a very strange and furious appearance.

From the scarcity of the Chica, its employment is almost exclusively
confined to the chiefs and higher orders, their nobility. The rest must be
contented with Arnotta, or Poncer mixed with the oil of Carapa, a portion
of which, with the Balsam of Aracousiri, mixed with these paints, imparts
to them a very delightful odour. The _toilet_, therefore, of the rude
tribes is as simple as their manners and mode of life, their chief material
being perfume, and all being carried in a little gourd.

The Chica is not merely esteemed as a pigment, but is considered in the
Orinoko as the most sovereign remedy for erysipelas, where that complaint
is very prevalent. It is simply made with water into a paste, thinly
spread on old linen or cotton, and applied as a plaster to the inflamed
part.--_Abridged_.


_Indian Graters_.

The Tacumas (Indians) are the fabricators of those curious Cassada Graters,
which are considered superior to all others by those who are acquainted
with them. They are made of a very hard wood, studded over with pointed
flint stones, and fixed by a kind of cement and varnish of surprising
durability; the substance being at the same time a strong cement and