The moon is universally considered as the abode of the blessed, as the land of abundance. The Esquimo, for whom a plank thrown by the current on his treeless shore is a treasure, sees in the moon extensive plains covered with forests, while the Indian of the Orinoco perceives in its shining orb grassy savannahs, exempt from all insect plagues. ‘How pleasant it must be to live in the moon,’ said a Salina-Indian to Father Gumilla; ‘she is so beautiful and bright that surely no mosquitos can be there.’ Thus man is always disposed to transfer to some distant spot the seat of a felicity denied to him on earth. On the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons no idols are worshipped, but the Botuto, the holy trumpet, is the great object of veneration. The Piaches, priests or medicine-men who have taken it under their care, and who, to be initiated in its mysteries are obliged to submit to fasts, scourging, and other painful or self-denying religious practices, carry it under the palm trees where, as they pretend, its sound ensures a rich harvest for the following year. Sometimes the great spirit Cachimana blows the trumpet himself, at others he makes known his will through the guardians of the sacred instrument. No woman is allowed to see it on pain of death, but hurries away when the sound of it is heard approaching through the woods, and remains invisible till after the ceremony is over, when the instrument is taken away to its hiding-place, and the women come out of their concealment. Some of these Botutos are particularly renowned and venerated by more than one tribe. Sometimes offerings of fruits and palm-wine are deposited near them, and prove, no doubt, very acceptable to the Piaches. The wild Indians who people the vast forests and llanos of Brazil and Guaiana generally live in small hordes, separated from each other by mutual distrust, and often by open war. Their enmity is aggravated by the circumstance that even the neighbouring tribes speak totally different languages. Though when they first settled along the river-banks of tropical America they probably spoke one tongue; yet, lost in interminable woods, where sometimes a single mountain or a few miles of forest are an almost impervious barrier between hordes which, to communicate with each other, would require a few days’ navigation through a labyrinth of streams, mere dialects in process of time became separate languages, which from their dissimilarity perpetuate discord and hatred. The Indians avoid each other because they do not understand each other, and a mutual distrust and fear is the cause of their mutual animosity. Some of the Orinoco tribes, as for instance the Ottomacas and the Yaruras, are nomadic savages, the outcasts of humanity; others, like the Maquiritani and the Macos, are of milder manners, and live in fixed settlements, on the products of the soil.