The cacique would
have us seated, sat himself beside us, the _butio_ at his hand.
There seemed no especial warrior class. We noted that,
it being one of the things it was ever in order to note. No
particular band of fighting men stood about that block
of polished wood, that was essentially throne or chair of
state. The village owned slender, bone or flint-headed lances,
but these rested idly in corners. Upon occasion all or any
might use them, but there was no evidence that those occasions
came often. There was no body of troops, nor armor,
no shields, no crossbows, no swords. They had knives,
rudely made of some hard stone, but it seemed that they
were made for hunting and felling and dividing. No clothing
hid from us any frame. The cacique had about his middle
a girdle of wrought cotton with worked ends and some
of the women wore as slight a dress, but that was all. They
were formed well, all of them, lithe and slender, not lacking
either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew and muscle of
the free, graceful, wild world, not brawn of bowman and
pikeman and swordman and knight with his heavy lance.
In something they might be like the Moor when one saw
him naked, but the Moor, too, was perfected in arms, and
so they were not like.
We did not know as yet if ever there were winter in this
land. It seemed perpetual, serene and perfect summer.
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