Cuap. XI. BLOW-PIPE. 205 
replenished it in a very short time. The old lady was very talkative, 
and almost fussy in her desire to please her visitors. We sat in tacim 
hammocks, suspended between the upright posts of the shed. The 
young woman with the blue mouth—who, although married, was as shy 
as any young maiden of her race—soon became employed in scalding 
and plucking fowls for the dinner, near the fire on the ground at the 
other end of the dwelling. The son-in-law, Pedro-uassi, and Cardozo 
now began a long conversation on the subject of their deceased wife, 
daughter, and comadre.* It appeared she had died of consumption— 
“tisica,” as they called it, a word adopted by the Indians from the 
Portuguese. The widower repeated over and over again, in nearly the 
same words, his account of her illness, Pedro chiming in like a chorus, 
and Cardoza moralising and condoling. I thought the cawim (grog) had 
a good deal to do with the flow of talk and warmth of feeling of all three : 
the widower drank and wailed until he became maundering, and finally 
fell asleep. 
I left them talking, and went along ramble into the forest, Pedro 
sending his grandson, a smiling well-behaved lad of about fourteen 
years of age, to show me the paths, my companion taking with him his 



Gti 

Blow-pipe, quiver, and arrow. 
Zarabatana, or blow-pipe. This instrument is used by all the Indian 
tribes on the Upper Amazons. It is generally nine or ten feet long, and 
is made of two separate lengths of wood, each scooped out so as to form 
one-half of the tube. To do this with the necessary accuracy requires 
an enormous amount of patient labour, and considerable mechanical 
ability, the tools used being simply the incisor teeth of the Paca and 
Cutia. The two half-tubes when finished are secured together by a very 
close and tight spirally-wound strapping, consisting of long flat strips of 
Jacitara, or the wood of the climbing palm-tree; and the whole is 
smeared afterwards with black wax, the production of a Melipona bee. 
The pipe tapers towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouth-piece, 
made of wood, is fitted in the broad end. A full-sized Zaradbatana is 
heavy, and can only be used by an adult Indian who has had great 
practice. The young lads learn to shoot with smaller and lighter tubes. 
When Mr. Wallace and I had lessons at Barra in the use of the blow- 
pipe, of Julio, a Juri Indian, then in the employ of Mr. Hauxwell, an 
English bird-collector, we found it very difficult to hold steadily the 
long tubes. The arrows are made from the hard rind of the leaf-stalks 
of certain palms, thin strips being cut, and rendered as sharp as needles 
by scraping the ends with a knife or the tooth of an animal. They are 
* Co-mother ; the term expressing the relationship of a mother to the godfather of 
her child. 
