If a battle be fought at a distance from the town, a horseman is sent forward to announce the success of it to the hordesmen. As soon as this messenger is espied from a distance, a crowd come out to meet him, striking their lips with their right hands, and accompany him to his house. Having preserved the profoundest silence he leaps down from his horse on to a bed; whence, as from a rostrum, he announces the event of the battle, with a grave voice, to the surrounding multitude. If a few of the enemy are killed and wounded, he begins his story with _Nalamichiriñi_; they are all slaughtered, which he utters with a severe countenance and declamatory tone, and receives the applauses of the by-standers. He then enumerates those that he himself has slain in battle, and to enhance the merit of the victory, affirms of many, _Eknam Capitan_; he was a captain. At every name that is mentioned of an enemy slain in battle the air resounds with _Kem ékemat? Ta Yeegàm!_ an exclamation of surprize. The number of captives, waggons, and horses, that have been taken, are then detailed with infinite exaggeration, for of each he asserts that they are innumerable; _Chik Leyé_ _kalipì_; at which the auditors burst forth into an exclamation of _Ndře_, by which they express a strange and unheard-of thing. Having minutely recounted every circumstance tending to set forth this arduous fight and splendid victory, he proceeds to discover those of his fellow-soldiers that have been wounded in the battle. At every name the by-standers groan, and utter the word _Tayretà!_ Poor little thing! As the Abipones think it a crime to utter the name of a dead person, the narrator makes use of a paraphrase, thus, _Yoalè eknam oanerma Hamelèn laneuek là chit kaekà_: The man, the husband of the woman Hamelèn, is now no more. The mention of the death of one of their countrymen entirely destroys all the pleasure which the news of the victory had excited; so that the announcer immediately finds himself deserted by his late attentive listeners, as soon as ever he begins to touch upon this melancholy subject. All the women unloose their hair, snatch up gourds and drums, and lament in the manner that I have described in the twenty-fourth chapter.