The women are the best looking, but in general, are not handsome; they are mostly taller than the men, who have low foreheads, projecting cheekbones and hollow eyes, with a large mouth, thick lips, and strong teeth, with bushy, eyebrows; the women are particularly careful to eradicate the hair from their bodies, and pierce their ears for ear-rings; the age of puberty in the women is as early as eleven and twelve, in the boys about thirteen; they are rapid and violent in the expressions of the passions of anger and joy; like other savage nations, they are divided into tribes, which move together from one place to another as fancy or necessity dictate. Their chiefs are chosen from the tallest, the strongest and the most warlike amongst them, and are distinguished by their head-dress. Such as are not under the immediate influence of the missionaries, practise polygamy; but the men hold their women in servitude. Sore throats, colds, pleurisies and disorders, attendant on a variable climate, are their complaints in the severe seasons; they make use of vegetable decoctions for the cure of these disorders; fevers prevail in summer. The women suffer very little in child-birth, and the attendant in those cases, plunges the new born infant into cold water, the mother bathing soon after, and is then covered up warm near a fire: she performs these ablutions and heatings successively for some time, and the infants are bandaged up in furs and pieces of bark, nearly in the same manner as in Canada. Their religion, previous to the priests coming amongst them, was very similar to that of most savage people, having a faint, idea of the Creator. A chain of mountains runs through the peninsula, the highest of which, called Cerro de la Giganta, is 4920 feet above the level of the sea.