fiery liquor which chemists call spirits of wine. Some prick the gum of the tooth with the spine of the fish raya, and by eliciting blood, allay the pain. Others again reduce tigers' claws and alum first into a calx, and then into a powder, by laying them on hot coals, and after they are well mixed up together, apply them to the hollow of the tooth. By the adoption of this method, many, beside myself, have found not only the pain, but the cause of the pain so entirely removed, that it never returned afterwards. Tooth-ache is a frequent and dreadful affliction to Europeans in Paraguay, on account of the scarcity or unskilfulness of surgeons. In extracting the diseased tooth, they pierce and lacerate the whole gum near it, which causes extreme pain, together with much effusion of blood. That the Abipones never need the aid of these torturers, is a truly enviable part of their felicity. I never saw a toothless person amongst them. The teeth, which they have made strenuous use of all their lives, generally go with them to the grave. Whenever they feel themselves unwell, although the complaint be in the foot or the elbow, they always say that their heart pains them. The same is the case with the Guaranies. If you say to the sick man, what ails you, what is the matter with you? he immediately replies with a groan, it is in my heart: so that it is very difficult to understand from the Indians what their complaint is, and where it is situated, unless it be betrayed by other signs. Loathing of food for ever so short a time is, in their opinion, a certain indication of sickness. If an Abipon, from having overloaded his stomach, abstains from food for a little while, the women immediately augur the worst respecting him, and make no end of their lamentations, saying every now and then with a groan, _Chik rkeñe_, he does not eat. As soon as the sick person takes ever so little food, though the disorder be not yet subdued, they think him out of danger, so that _Là rkeñe_, he eats now; and _Là yamini_, or _Là natatéuge_, now he is recovered, now he revives, are with them synonymous. Moreover, as the Abipones are but very seldom sick, so very few of them die when they are sick. I do not doubt but that in the frequent conflicts they have with enemies and tigers, numbers fall yearly by the nails of the one, and the claws of the other. In most of the remainder, extreme old age is generally the fatal disease. In a word, greatest part of the Abipones die when they are satiated with life, when, weary of the burden of years, they long for death as the rest and solace of their miserable existence. This circumstance occasions the common error that they should never die at all were the Spaniards and the jugglers banished from America; for, to the arms of the former, and to the arts of the latter, they attribute the deaths of all their countrymen. A wound inflicted with a spear often gapes so wide that it affords ample room for life to go out and death to come in; yet