o the matrimonial customs of these latitudes,
Oalava herself would be ready to bestow her person--queyou, worn
figleaf-wise, necklace of accouri teeth, and all--on so worthy a suitor
as myself. Finally, to make the prospect still more inviting, he added
that it would not be necessary for me to subject myself to any voluntary
tortures to prove myself a man and fitted to enter into the purgatorial
state of matrimony. He was a great deal too considerate, I said, and,
with all the gravity I could command, asked him what kind of torture he
would recommend. For me--so valorous a person--"no torture," he answered
magnanimously. But he--Kua-ko--had made up his mind as to the form of
torture he meant to inflict some day on his own person. He would prepare
a large sack and into it put fire-ants--"As many as that!" he exclaimed
triumphantly, stooping and filling his two hands with loose sand. He
would put them in the sack, and then get into it himself naked, and
tie it tightly round his neck, so as to show to all spectators that
the hellish pain of innumerable venomous stings in his flesh could be
endured without a groan and with an unmoved countenance. The poor youth
had not an original mind, since this was one of the commonest forms
of self-torture among the Guayana tribes. But the sudden wonderful
animation with which he spoke of it, the fiendish joy that illumined his
usually stolid countenance, sent a sudden disgust and horror through me.
But what a strange inverted kind of fiendishness is this, which delights
at the anticipation of torture inflicted on oneself and not on an enemy!
And towards others these savages are mild and peaceable! No, I could not
believe in their mildness; that was only on the surface, when nothing
occurred to rouse their savage, cruel instincts. I could have laughed at
the whole matter, but the exulting look on my companion's face had made
me sick of the subject, and I wished not to talk any more about it.

But he would talk still--this fellow whose words, as a rule, I had to
take out of his mouth with a fork, as we say; and still on the same
subject, he said that not one person in the village would expect to
see me torture myself; that after what I would do for them all--after
delivering them from a great evil--nothing further would be expected of
me.

I asked him to explain his meaning; for it now began to appear plain
that in everything he had said he had been leading up to some very
important mat