Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/350

302 entertained for her defunct spouse, and of the grief she felt at his loss. On the day which is named quitaluto (quit-weeds), the widow is carried in a sedan chair from her dwelling to the brotherhood. She enters weeping; and if she does not display a sufficient address, in acting the part of a mourner, she exposes herself to the risk of receiving a few stripes, as a punishment for her insensibility. Immediately after her arrival, a lamb is immolated on one of the seats of earth within the quarters: this sacrifice is offered up to the manes of the deceased, to whose memory the bride is about to bid adieu for ever. She presents, on a silver salver, the shoes which during her widowhood had become old and crazy. These ceremonies being concluded, the preliminaries of the civil act of matrimony are performed; and all the brethren display their earnestness to treat the newly married couple with liquors and viands of every description.

When it happens that a widower weds a second time, not any of these formalities are observed. The negroes say, that it is derogatory in a man to manifest his grief for the death of a woman, when for the one that is lost a hundred are to be found. If in any particular it is apparent that these wretched Africans are barbarians, it is in the adoption of this iniquitous maxim. Sensible and just men do not think in this manner. Among us, there are those who are persuaded that the long life of an antediluvian patriarch would not suffice to deplore the loss of a good wife.

The other assemblages which the negroes are in the habit of forming, are less interesting, either on account of their similarity to those that have been already described, or because they