Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/315

Rh child is born, with the limbs distorted, or with any remarkable defect, instantly to deprive the infant of life, as an inauspicious birth. Their complexion is fairer than that of the Peruvians, and some of them, the Conivos, for instance, would even vie in that respect with the Europeans, if the erratic life of the mountains, the unguents, and the pandtures of the sand-flies and mosquitoes, did not give them a swarthy hue. All their attention is bestowed on preserving a firm texture of the body, and on flattening the forehead and hinder part of the head, with a view of resembling, as they say, the full moon, and of becoming the strongest and most valiant people in the world. To attain the former of these aims, they bind the waist, and all the joints, of their male offspring, from their tender infancy, with hempen bands. With a view to the latter, they wrap the forehead in cotton, and lay on it a small square board, applying another similar board to the occiput, and adjusting them with cords until the intention has been answered. Thus the head is elongated above, and flattened both before and behind. This practice cannot fail to alter the functions of the brain; and, accordingly, the reproach of stupidity is attached to the bonzes, or Japanese priests, at whose birth the head is compressed, until it acquires the shape of a sugar-loaf, to the end that it may serve as an altar on which the minister may kindle the sacred fire, as a token of their being admitted into the priesthood. In reality, our Indians of the mountains are remarked to be the people the most devoid of thought any where to be found.

They go in a great measure naked, but with some distinction. The men wear a short cotton shirt, painted with a variety of colours, and provided with a half sleeve: this vering,