An Indian child, soon after it is born, is swathed with cloths or skins, and being then laid on its back, is bound down on a piece of thick board, spread over with soft moss. The board is left somewhat longer and broader than the child, and bent pieces of wood, like pieces of hoops, are placed over its face to protect it, so that if the machine were suffered to fall the child would not probably be injured. The women, when they go abroad, carry their children thus tied down on their backs, the board being suspended by a broad band, which they wear round their foreheads. When they have any business to transact at home, they hang the board on a tree, if there be one at hand, and set them a swinging from side to side, like a pendulum, in order to exercise the children; sometimes also, I observed, they unloosened the children from the boards, and putting them each into a sort of little hammock, fastened them between two trees, and there suffered them to swing about. As soon as they are strong enough to crawl about on their hands and feet they are liberated from all confinement, and suffered, like young puppies, to run about, stark naked, into water, into mud, into snow, and, in short, to go wheresoever their choice leads them; hence they derive that vigour of constitution which enables them to support the greatest fatigue, and that indifference to the changes of the weather which they possess in common with the brute creation. The girls are covered with a loose garment as soon as they have attained four or five years of age, but the boys go naked till they are considerably older.