Not only are the Banibas probably the most numerous of the many tribes of the hinterland of Guayana, but they are considered by Tavera-Acosta to be the most advanced of them all. A description, therefore, of their principal customs may be taken as a sufficient indication of the tendency of the beliefs and practices of other aborigines of the interior. The Banibas are found chiefly along the Guainia and the Atabapo Rivers, their villages extending into Brazil and Colombia. They are said to be intelligent and peaceable, of a sedentary mode of life, excellent boatmen and hammock-makers. Tavera-Acosta, adopting the view that they are a branch of the ancient Quichua nation, gives d’Orbigny’s description of the latter thus: “The head is oblong, nose long, slightly aquiline, eyes horizontal, profile almost European, though the cheek-bones are higher. They are serious, somewhat melancholy, industrious, with an intelligent expression, but reserved. Neither red nor copper in colour, but bronze. The foot is small, but instep rather high.” Their villages are composed of round conical huts, built of poles covered with palm-leaves, each hut containing twenty or thirty of the same family. All the work is done by the young men and women, the elders living a life of absolute idleness; the men hunt and collect the rubber and other produce of the forest, travelling about in canoes; the women attend to the household duties, fish, and sow the small fields with maize and manioc. The hammocks made by the Banibas are especially noted, some being beautifully interwoven with feathers; the best have been known to fetch as much as £40. Their staple foods are maize flour, manioc meal, and the cakes of arepa or cassava made therefrom; the meal they preserve by treating it with a preparation of bitter yuca, known as _murujui_; fish, smoked and dried tapir meat, and small game vary their diet, and in default of other beverages they drink _yucuta_, the chicha of the Warraus. Their religious beliefs and customs have been considerably affected by the presence in the region of Jesuits and other missionaries from an early period in the Spanish occupation; hence Roman scapularies and pagan fetiches are found side by side, and their form of worship, as well as their faith, is a similar mixture of pagan and heathen dogmas. Their customs as regards birth, sickness, and death are sufficiently similar to the rest of the aborigines to render description unnecessary, but the marriage ceremony is bound up with the celebration of the pubescence of the girls, which is extraordinarily barbarous in view of the high standard of their morals and general character.