Moreover, we know that some tribes who go perfectly naked are ashamed to cover themselves, looking upon a garment as something indecent. The pious father Gumilla was greatly astonished to find that the Indians on the Orinoco did not blush at their nakedness. “Si les Missionnaires” he says, “qui ignorent leurs coutumes s’avisent de distribuer des mouchoirs, surtout aux femmes, pour qu’elles puissent se couvrir, elles les jettent dans la rivière, où elles vont les cacher, pour ne point être obligées de s’en servir; et lors qu’on leur dit de se couvrir, elles répondent: ... ‘Nous ne couvrons point, _parce que cela nous cause de la honte_.’”[1179] That this is no “traveller’s tale” merely, appears from the following statement made by v. Humboldt with reference to the New Andalusian Chaymas, who, like most savage peoples dwelling in regions excessively hot, have an insuperable aversion to clothing:—“Under the torrid zone,” he asserts, “ ... the natives are ashamed, as they say, to be clothed; and flee to the woods when they are too soon compelled to give up their nakedness.”[1180] Again, in an Indian hut at Mucúra in Brazil, Mr. Wallace found the women entirely without covering, and apparently quite unconscious of the fact. One of them, however, possessed a “saía,” or petticoat, which she sometimes put on, and seemed then, as Mr. Wallace says, “almost as much ashamed of herself as civilized people would be if they took theirs off.”[1181] There are several instances of peoples who, although they generally go perfectly naked, sometimes use a covering. This they always do under circumstances which plainly indicate that the covering is worn simply as a means of attraction. Thus Lohmann tells us that, among the Saliras, only harlots clothe themselves; and they do so in order to excite through the unknown.[1182] In many heathen tribes in the interior of Africa, according to Barth, the married women are entirely nude, whilst the young marriageable girls cover their nakedness,—a practice analogous to that of a married woman being deprived of her ornaments and her hair.[1183] Mr. Mathews states that, in many parts of Australia, “the females, and more especially young girls, wear a fringe suspended from a belt round the waist.”[1184] Concerning the natives of Botany Bay (New South Wales), Barrington remarks that “the females at an early age wear a little apron, made from the skin of the opossum or kangaroo, cut into slips, and hanging a few inches from the waist; this they wear till they grow up and are taken by men, and then they are left off.”[1185] Collins says the same of the girls at Port Jackson;[1186] Mr. Palmer of some other Australians;[1187] and Captain Snow of all those tribes among whom he had been for several weeks.[1188] Again, on Moreton Island, according to Macgillivray, both men and women went about altogether unclothed, but the female children wore a small fringe in front. The same naturalist reports that, in