Honourable mention has been frequently made by me of the chastity of the Abiponian women: it would be wrong to be silent upon their sobriety and temperance. It costs them much labour to prepare a sweet drink for their husbands of honey and the alfaroba: but they never even taste it themselves, being condemned to pure water the whole of their lives. Would that they as carefully abstained from strife and contentions, as they do from all strong drink! Quarrels certainly do arise amongst them, and often end in blood, upon the most trivial occasions. They generally dispute about things of no consequence, about goats' wool, as Horace expresses it, or the shadow of an ass. One word uttered by a scolding woman is often the cause and means of exciting a mighty war. The Abipones, in anger, use the following terms of reproach: _Acami Lanar̂aik_, you are an Indian, that is, plebeian, ignoble; _Acami Lichiegar̂aik_, you are poor, wretched; _Acami Ahamr̂aik_, you are dead. They sometimes dreadfully misapply these epithets. Who would not laugh to hear a horse, flying as quick as lightning, but which his rider wishes to incite to greater speed, called _Ahamr̂aik_, dead? When two women quarrel, one calls the other poor, or low-born, or perhaps lifeless. Presently a loud vociferation is heard, and from words they proceed to blows. The whole company of women crowd to the market-place, not merely to look on, but to give assistance as they shall think proper. Some defend the one, some the other. The duel soon becomes a battle-royal. They fly at each other's breasts with their teeth like tigers, and often give them bloody bites. They lacerate one another's cheeks with their nails, rend their hair with their hands, and tear the hole of the flap of the ear, into which the roll of palm-leaves is inserted. Though a husband sees his wife, and a father his daughter, bathed in blood and covered with wounds, yet they look on at a distance, with motionless feet, silent tongues, and calm eyes; they applaud their Amazons, laugh, and wonder to see such anger in the souls of women, but would think it beneath a man to take any part in these female battles. If there appears no hope of the restoration of peace, they go to the Father: "See!" say they, "our women are out of their senses again to-day. Go, and frighten them away with a musket." Alarmed at the noise, and even at the sight of this, they hasten back to their tents, but even from thence, with a Stentorian voice, repeat the word which had been the occasion of the combat, and, neither liking to seem conquered, return again and again to the market-place, and renew the fight. It seems to have been a regulation of divine Providence, that the Abiponian women should abstain from all strong liquors, for, if so furious when sober, what would they have been in a state of intoxication? The whole race of the Abipones would have been utterly destroyed.