ng to receive
baptism. But as we could not thoroughly understand their meaning, and
there was no one with us who was able to teach them the doctrines of our
holy religion, we desired Taignoagny and Domagaia to tell them that we
should return to them at another time, bringing priests and the chrysm
along with us, without which they could not be baptised. All of this was
thoroughly understood by our two savages, as they had seen many children
baptised when in Brittany, and the people were satisfied with these
reasons, expressing their great satisfaction at our promise.

[Footnote 52: This seems a figurative expression, implying that he keeps
them in ignorance of what is to happen when displeased.--E.]

These savages live together in common, as has been already mentioned
respecting the inhabitants of Hochelega, and are tolerably well provided
with those things which their country produces. They are clothed in the
skins of wild beasts, but in a very imperfect and wretched manner. In
winter they wear hose and shoes made of wild beasts skins, but go
barefooted in summer. They observe the rules of matrimony, only that
every man has two or three wives, who never marry again if their
husbands happen to die, wearing all their lives after a kind of mourning
dress, and smearing their faces with charcoal dust and grease, as thick
as the back of a knife, by which they are known to be widows. They have
a detestable custom with regard to their young women, who are all placed
together in one house as soon as they are marriageable, where they
remain as harlots for all who please to visit them, till such time as
they may find a match. I assert this from experience, having seen many
houses occupied in this manner, just as those houses in France where
young persons are boarded for their education; and the conduct of the
inhabitants of these houses is indecent and scandalous in the extreme.
The men are not much given to labour, digging the ground in a
superficial manner with a wooden implement, by which they cultivate
their corn resembling that which grows in Brazil, and which they call
_effici_. They have also plenty of melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers,
and pease and beans of various colours, all different from ours. They
have likewise a certain kind of herb of which they lay up a store every
summer, having first dried it in the sun. This is only used by the men,
who always carry some of this dried herb in a small skin bag hanging
from