LIFE IN TEFFE". 223 



Our household is now established on a permanent basis. 

 We had at first some difficulty in finding servants ; at this 

 fishing season, when the men are going off to dry and salt 

 fish, and when the season for hunting turtle-eggs and 

 making turtle-butter is coming on, the town is almost 

 deserted by the men. It is like haying-time in this coun- 

 try, when every arm is needed in the fields. Then the 

 habits of the Indians are so irregular, and they care so 

 little for money, finding, as they do, the means of living 

 almost without work immediately about them, that even 

 if one does engage a servant, he is likely to disappear 

 the next day. An Indian will do more for good-will and 

 a glass of cachaca (rum) than he will do for wages, which 

 are valueless to him. The individual, who has been sup- 

 plying the place of indoors man while we have been looking 

 for a servant, is so original in his appearance that he 

 deserves a special description. He belongs to a neighbor 

 who has undertaken to provide our meals, and he brings 

 them, when they are prepared and waits on the table. 

 He is rather an elderly Indian, and his dress consists of 

 a pair of cotton drawers, originally white, but now of 

 many hues and usually rolled up to the knees, his feet 

 being bare ; the upper part of his person is partially 



medulla oblongata. This region of the central nervous system is strangely 

 developed in different families of fishes, and sends out nerves performing very 

 varied functions. From it arise, normally, the nerves of movement and sensa- 

 tion about the face ; it also provides the organs of breathing, the upper part 

 of the alimentary canal, the throat and the stomach. In the electric fishes the 

 great nerves entering the electric battery arise from the same cerebral region, 

 and now I have found that the pouch in which the egg of the Acara is in- 

 cubated and its young nursed for a time, receives its nerves from the same 

 source. This series of facts is truly wonderful, and only shows how far our 

 science still is from an apprehension of the functions of the nervous sys- 

 tem. L. A. 



