vering, which reaches to the middle of the thigh, is named usti. The married women are invariably clad in a pampanilla of the same stuff, or, in other words, in a short petticoat, open at the sides, which barely reaches from the waist to the knees. In seating themselves, both men and women carefully cross the skirts of their garment between the legs, to cover the parts which decency obliges them to conceal. The unmarried females, however, appear like Eve in Paradise[1]. When we reflect that, among the nations in question, there must be many virgins in a state of puberty, we cannot fail to be persuaded, that custom is a species of antidote against the darts of the impure god of the gardens, whose wounds, beneath the torrid zone, give an impulsion to the sexes, and hurry them on blindly: in furias, ignesque ruunt. There are other tribes in which all the individuals of either sex present themselves, like the athleta, the wrestlers at the Olympic games, who, after the accident that befel Orcippus, appeared entirely naked. This custom, which was highly reprehensible in a civilized nation, such as Greece, is perhaps not so much to be condemned in our barbarians, who are incited to it by the warmth of the climate, in the particular regions they inhabit. The men cut short their hair, leaving it to fall in front to the brows, and behind as low as the point of the ear: on the top is a knot or wreath, interwoven with long and beautiful feathers. They perforate the chin, and the cartilaginous part between
- ↑ The following problem may be proposed: Why, among these Indians, the married women are covered, and the virgins naked?—and whence arises the sensation of shame, in the act which breaks through the boundaries of that estimable state?
the
