However, although I dare not affirm positively whence the Abipones formerly came, I will at any rate tell you where they now inhabit. That vast extent of country bounded from north to south by the Rio Grande, or Iñatè and the territories of Sta. Fè, and from east to west by the shores of the Paraguay, and the country of St. Iago, is the residence of the Abipones, who are distributed into various hordes. Impatient of agriculture and a fixed home, they are continually moving from place to place. The opportunity of water and provisions at one time, and the necessity of avoiding the approach of the enemy at another, obliges them to be constantly on the move. The Abipones imitate skilful chess-players. After committing slaughter in the southern colonies of the Spaniards, they retire far northwards, afflict the city of Asumpcion with murders and rapine, and then hurry back again to the south. If they have acted hostilities against the towns of the Guaranies, or the city of Corrientes, they betake themselves to the west. But if the territories of St. Iago or Cordoba have been the objects of their fury, they cunningly conceal themselves in the marshes, islands, and reedy places of the river Parana. For the Spaniards, however desirous, are not able to return the injuries of the savages, from the difficulty of the roads, or their want of acquaintance with them. It sometimes happens that a lake or marsh, which the Abipones swim with ease, obliges the Spanish cavalry to abandon the pursuit.
The whole territory of the Abipones scarcely contains a place which has not received a name from some memorable event or peculiarity of that neighbourhood. It may be proper to mention some of the most famous of these places; viz. Netagr̂anàc Lpátage, the bird's nest; for in this place birds resembling storks yearly build their nests. Liquinr̂ánala, the cross, which was formerly fixed here by the Spaniards. Nihírenac Leënerer̂quiè, the cave of the tiger. Paët Latetà, the bruised teats. Atopehènr̂a Lauaté, the haunt of capibaris. Lareca Caëpa, the high trees. Lalegr̂aicavalca, the little white things. Hail of enormous size once fell in this place, and killed vast numbers of cattle. Many other places are named from the rivers that flow past them. The most considerable are the Evòr̂ayè, the Parana, or Paraguay, the Iñatè, the Rio Grande, or Vermejo, the Ychimaye, or Rio Rey, the Neboquelatèl, or mother of palms, called by the Spaniards Malabrigo, the Narahage, or Inespin, the Lachaoquè Nâuè, Ycalc, Ycham, &c. the Rio Negro, Verde, Salado, &c.
In the sixtieth year of the present century, many families of Abipones removed, some to the banks of the Rio Grande, others to the more distant northern parts. The last Abiponian colony was nearly ten leagues north of the Rio Grande, in which situation we found that the Toba savages, who call themselves Nataguebit, had formerly resided.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE NATURAL COLOUR OF THE AMERICANS.
When European painters have represented a man of a dark complexion, naked and hairy from head to foot, with flat distorted nostrils, threatening eyes, and a vast belly, a monster, in short, armed with a quiver, bow, arrows, and a club, and crowned with feathers of various colours, they think they have made an admirable portrait of an American Indian. And, indeed, before I saw America, I pictured the Americans to myself as agreeing with this description; but my own eyes soon convinced me of my error and I openly denounced the painters, to whom I had formerly given credit, as calumniators and romancers. Upon a near view of innumerable Indians of many nations, I could discover none of those deformities which are commonly ascribed to them. None of the Americans are black like Negroes, none so white as the Germans, English and French, but of this I am positive, that many of them are fairer than many Spaniards, Portugueze, and Italians. The Americans have whitish faces, but this whiteness, in some nations, approaches more to a pasty colour, and in others is darker; a difference occasioned by diversity of climate, manner of living, or food. For those Indians who are exposed to the sun's heat in the open plain, must necessarily be of a darker colour than those who dwell always in the shade of forests, and never behold the sun. The women are fairer than the men, because they go out of doors less frequently, and whenever they travel on horseback, take greater care of their complexions, skreening their faces with fans made of the longer emu feathers.
I have often wondered that the savage Aucas, Puelches or Patagonians, and other inhabitants of the Magellanic region, who dwell nearer to the South Pole, should be darker than the Abipones, Mocobios, Tobas, and other tribes, who live in Chaco, about ten degrees farther north, and consequently suffer more from the heat. May not the difference of food have some effect upon the complexion? The Southern savages feed principally upon the flesh of emus and horses, in which the plains abound. Does this contribute nothing to render their skin dark? What, if we say that the whiteness of the skin is destroyed by very severe cold, as well as by extreme heat? Yet if this be the case, why are the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego more than moderately white: for that island is situated in the fifty-fifth degree of latitude, at the very extremity of South America, hard by the Antarctic Pole? May we not suppose that these Southern nations derive their origin from Africa, and brought the dark colour of the Africans into America? If any one incline to this opinion, let him consider by what means they crossed the immense sea which separates Africa from America, without the use of the magnet.
Many have written, and most persons at this day believe the Patagonians to be giants, perhaps the progeny of the Cyclops Polyphemus; but believe me when I say that the first are deceivers, and the latter their dupes. In the narrative of the voyage of the Dutch commander, Oliver Von Nord, who, in the year 1598, passed the Straits of Magellan, the Patagonians are asserted to be ten or eleven feet high. The English, who passed these straits in 1764, gave them eight feet of height. The good men must have looked at those savages through a magnifying-glass, or measured them with a pole. For in the year 1766, Captains Wallis and Carteret measured the Patagonians, and declared them to be only six feet, or six feet six inches high. They were again measured in 1764, by the famous Bourgainville, who found them to be of the same height as Wallis had done. Father Thomas Falconer, many years Missionary in the Magellanic region, laughs at the idea entertained by Europeans of the gigantic stature of the Patagonians, instancing Kangapol chief Cacique of that land, who exceeded all the other Patagonians in stature, and yet did not appear to him to be above seven feet high. Soon after my arrival, I saw a great number of these savages in the city of Buenos-Ayres. I did not, indeed, measure them, but spoke to some of them by an interpreter, and though most of them were remarkably tall, yet they by no means deserved the name of giants.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE PERSONS OF THE ABIPONES, AND THE CONFORMATION
OF THEIR BODIES.
The Abipones are well formed, and have handsome faces, much like those of Europeans, except in point of colour, which, though not entirely white, has nothing of the blackness of Negroes and Mulattoes. For that natural whiteness which they have in infancy is somewhat destroyed as they grow up, by the sun, and by the smoke: as nearly the whole of their lives is passed in riding about plains exposed to the beams of the sun, and the short time that they spend in their tents, they keep up a fire on the ground day and night, by the heat and smoke of which they are unavoidably somewhat darkened. Whenever the cold south wind blows, they move the fire to the bed, or place it underneath the hanging net in which they lie, and are thus gradually smoke-dried, like a gammon of bacon in a chimney. The women, when they ride out into the country, shield their faces from the sun's rays with an umbrella, and are, in consequence, generally fairer than the men, who, more ambitious to be dreaded by their enemies than to be loved, to terrify than attract beholders, think the more they are scarred and sun-burnt, the handsomer they are.
I observed that almost all the Abipones had black but rather small eyes; yet they see more acutely with them, than we do with our larger ones; being able clearly to distinguish such minute, or distant objects as would escape the eye of the most quick-sighted European. Frequently, in travelling, when we saw some animal running at a distance, and were unable to distinguish what it was, an Abipon would declare, without hesitation, whether it was a horse or a mule, and whether the colour was black, white, or grey; and on examining the object more closely, we always found him correct.