Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/397

But, courageous as they were, the novel terror of the flash and smoke and thunder of the guns struck consternation into the daring cannibals, who turned and fled before the unexpected and alarming fire and fury of the cannon. The Spaniards gave chase and captured one of the canoes; in it was only one Carib; his companion or companions had escaped, but in the piragua lay a captive tied and bound, who, with tears running down his cheeks, made the Spaniards understand by gestures that six of his comrades had already been killed and eaten, and that such was to have been his own fate on the following day. The Spaniards unbound the prisoner and

gave him power over the cannibal to do with him what he would. Then, with the cannibal's own club, he laid on him all that he might drive hand and foot, grieving and fretting as it had been a wild boar, thinking that he had not yet sufficiently revenged the death of his companions when he had beaten out the brains and guts.

Speaking of the Caribs of the mainland, the old writer says: "That wild kind of men, dispersed through the large distance of those coasts, hath sometimes slain whole armies of the Spaniards." Indeed, the Caribs even mocked at their invaders, designating them as women or children, in ridicule of their white teeth, those of the Caribs "being black as coals, from a leaf they chewed."

The Arrowauks were taller than the Caribs, but not so robust, in color of a clear brown, their complexion, according to Columbus, not being much darker than that of a Spanish peasant. Both Arrowauks and Caribs flattened their heads, though each race had a different fashion of doing so.

By this practice [says Herrera] the crown was so strengthened that a Spanish broadsword, instead of cleaving the skull at a stroke, would frequently break short upon it.

Various reasons have been assigned for the singular fashion of flattening the head that obtained throughout the Antilles. It is said that infants whose heads are so treated do not cry or moan as do babies whose heads are left to Nature; but if, as some anatomists affirm, the coronal sutures in the heads of infants born in the West Indies are exceptionally open, the strengthening of the skull was probably the reason that had originally brought flattened foreheads into fashion. The practice, it is believed, does not lessen the intelligence of the bearer of the flattened head, and if it has any effect on the brain it would be in the direction of subduing "speculative and emotional energy," while developing activity of limb. Their hair, like that of Indians in general, was straight, coarse, and black; their features were hard and ugly; they had broad faces and flat noses, but their eyes showed great good nature, and their countenances were open and pleasing.