Their intoxication and lust went to excess. They had what wives they could support, and did not exempt among them their sisters and their mothers. Marriage consisted in the will of the parents of the bride, and the suitor paid them the dowry, although it was not handed to them until after they had children. If either of the parents were dead, the dowry was given to the nearest relative. They were divorced with ease, but it was on condition that if the husband solicited it he lost what was given to his parents-in-law; but if the wife procured it, the dowry was restored. If adultery were proved, the aggressor and the aggrieved [husband] came to terms--the same being done in the case of the wife--in regard to the sum that was agreed upon, after considerable haggling, and they generally remained fast friends. Consequently, some husbands were wont to make a business of that, such was their barbarism, arranging tricks, and providing occasions for their wives to repeat their adulteries, in order that they might derive infamous gains. If the culprit had nothing with which to pay, he became a captive or lost his life. Divorce was very frequent, and agreement was made to divide the children between husband and wife for their support. They gloried in knowing charms and in working them, by consulting the devil--a means by which some made themselves feared by others, for they easily deprived them of life. In confirmation of this assertion, it happened, according to the recital of one of our ministers, that while he was preaching to a great assembly one Indian went to another, and breathed against him with the intent of killing him. The breath reached not the Indian's face, however, but an instrument that he was carrying, the cords of which immediately leaped out violently, while the innocent man was left unharmed. The philosophy of such cases is that the murderer took in his mouth the poisonous herb given him by the devil, and had another antidotal herb for his own defense. Then, exhaling his breath in this manner, he deprived of life whomever he wished. They used arrows full of poison, which they extracted from the teeth of poisonous serpents. They wounded and killed as they listed, by shooting these through a blowpipe, which they concealed between the fingers of their hands with great dissimulation, blowing the arrows so that they touched the flesh of their opponent. They practiced consultation with the devil by means of their baylans, in order to ascertain natural causes, especially in their illnesses. Consequently, they were very great herbalists, knowing above all the preservatives from the poisons with which they attacked one another on slight occasions--especially the women, who are the more passionate and more easily aroused. § VI _Treats of the government of those islanders_