122 CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 
fishers, and many of the falcon tribe. A species of water- 
hen is also very numerous. 
Insects (with the exception of ants,) are not numerous, 
there being no common flies, and very few musquitoes ; 
some moths, and beetles. 
The natives speak of a large species of snake, and some 
of the early catholic missionaries make mention of them 
from twenty to thirty feet in length, but we have seen no 
other reptile than the water snake which I killed in the boat, 
and small lizards. 
The natives are, with very few exceptions, drest in Euro- 
pean cloathing, their only manufacture bemg a kind of 
caps of grass, and shawls of the same materials ; both are 
made by the men, as are their houses and canoes, the latter 
of a high tree, which grows up the river, and appears to 
be a species of the ficus, resembling that of the jficus reli- 
giosa. These vary in their size, but they appear to be 
generally from twenty to twenty-four feet long by eighteen 
to twenty, and even twenty-four inches wide. Their drink- 
ing vessels are pumpkins or gourds, and their only cooking 
utensil earthen pots of their own making, in which they boil 
or stew their meats, but more generally boil them. They 
take no wild animals for food, a few birds excepted, but 
they are very mexpert in the use of the musquet; and their 
