teeth, and all--on so worthy a suitor as myself. Finally, to
make the prospect still more inviting, he added that it would not
be necessary for me to subject myself to any voluntary tortures
to prove myself a man and fitted to enter into the purgatorial
state of matrimony. He was a great deal too considerate, I said,
and, with all the gravity I could command, asked him what kind of
torture he would recommend. For me--so valorous a person--"no
torture," he answered magnanimously. But he--Kua-ko--had made up
his mind as to the form of torture he meant to inflict some day
on his own person. He would prepare a large sack and into it put
fire-ants--"As many as that!" he exclaimed triumphantly,
stooping and filling his two hands with loose sand. He would put
them in the sack, and then get into it himself naked, and tie it
tightly round his neck, so as to show to all spectators that the
hellish pain of innumerable venomous stings in his flesh could be
endured without a groan and with an unmoved countenance. The
poor youth had not an original mind, since this was one of the
commonest forms of self-torture among the Guayana tribes. But
the sudden wonderful animation with which he spoke of it, the
fiendish joy that illumined his usually stolid countenance, sent
a sudden disgust and horror through me. But what a strange
inverted kind of fiendishness is this, which delights at the
anticipation of torture inflicted on oneself and not on an enemy!
And towards others these savages are mild and peaceable! No, I
could not believe in their mildness; that was only on the
surface, when nothing occurred to rouse their savage, cruel
instincts. I could have laughed at the whole matter, but the
exulting look on my companion's face had made me sick of the
subject, and I wished not to talk any more about it.