THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



733 



around the place, including the never-failing 

 banana, with its long, broad, soft green leaf- 

 blades, and groups of full-grown Pupunhas, 

 or peach palms. There was also a large 

 number of cotton and coffee trees. Among 

 the utensils I noticed baskets of different 

 shapes, made of flattened maranta stalks, 

 And dyed various colors. The making of 

 these is an original art of the Passes, but I 

 believe it is also practised by other tribes, 

 for 1 saw several in the houses of semi-civil- 

 ized Indians on the Tapajos. 



There were only three persons in the 

 house besides the old couple, the rest of the 

 people being absent ; several came in, how- 

 ever, in the course of the day. One was a 

 daughter of Pedro's, who had an oval tat- 

 tooed spot over her mouth ; the second was 

 a young grandson, and the third the son-in- 

 law frorn Ega, Cardozo's compadre. The old 

 woman was occupied, when we entered, in. 

 distilling spirits from cara, an eatable root 

 similar to the potato, by means of a clay 

 still, which had been manufactured by her- 

 self. The liquor had a reddish tint, but not 

 a very agreeable flavor. A cup of it, warm 

 from the still, however, was welcome after 

 our long journey. Cardozo liked it, emptied 

 his cup, and replenished it in a vary short 

 time. The old lady was very talkative, and 

 almost fussy in her desire to please her vis- 

 itors. We sat in tucurn hammocks, sus- 

 pended 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 be- 

 came 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-uassu, and Cardozo 

 now began a long conversation on the sub- 

 ject of their deceased wife, daughter, and 

 comadre.* It appeared she had died of con- 

 sumption " 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 

 iMness, Pedro chiming in like a chorus, and 

 Cardozo moralizing and condoling. I thought 

 the cauim (grog) had a good deal to do with 

 t-he 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 a long ram- 

 ble into the forest, Pedro sending his grand- 

 feon. a smiling, well-behaved lad of about 

 fourteen .years of ago, to how me the paths, 

 rny companion taking with him his Zaraba- 

 lana, or blow-gun. This instrument is used 

 by all the Indian tribes on the Upper Ama- 

 zons. It is generally nine or ten feet long, 

 and is made of two separate lengths of 

 wood, each scooped out so as tA form one 

 half of the tube. To do this with the neces- 

 sary accuracy requires an enormous amount 

 of patient labor, and considerable mechanical 



* Co-mother ; the term expressing the relationship 

 of a mother to the godfather of her child. 



ability, the tools used being simply the in- 

 csior 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 J uc- 

 itara, or the wood of the climbing palm -tree ; 

 and the whole is smeared afterward with 

 blacK wax, the production of a Melipona bee. 

 The pipe tapers toward the muzzle, and a 

 cup-shaped mouth-piece made of wood, is 

 fitted in the broad end. A full sized iro- 

 batana 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 bl jw- 

 gun, of Julio, a Juri Indian, then in the cm- 

 ploy of Mr. Hauxwell, an English bird-col- 

 lector, 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 aa animal. 

 They are winged with a little oval mass of 

 samauma silk (from the seed-vessels of the 

 silk-cotton tree, Eriodendron samauma), cot- 

 ton being too heavy. The ball of samauma 

 should fit to a nicety the bore of the blow- 

 gun ; when it does so, the arrow can be pro- 

 pelled with such force by the breath that it 

 makes a noise, almost as loud as a pop-gun, 

 on flying from the muzzle. My little com- 

 panion was armed with a quiver full of these 

 little missiles, a small number of which, suffi- 

 cient for the clay's sport, were tipped with 

 the fatal Urari poison. The quiver was an 

 ornamental affair, the broad rim being made 

 of highly polished wood of a rich cherry-red 

 color (the Moira-piranga, or red-wood of the 

 Japura). The body was formed of neatly 

 plaited strips of Maranta stalks, and the belt 

 by which it was suspended from the shoulder 

 was decorated with cotton fringes and tassels. 

 We walked about two miles along a well- 

 trodden pathway, through high caapoeira 

 (second-growth forest). A large proportion 

 of the trees were Melastomas, which bore a 

 hairy yellow fruit, nearly as large and s 

 well flavored as our gooseberry. The season, 

 however, was nearly over for them. The 

 road was bordered every inch of the way by 

 a thick bed of elegant Lycopodiums. Au 

 artificial arrangement of trees and bushes 

 could scarcely have been made to wear so 

 finished an appearance as this naturally 

 decorated avenue. The path at length ter- 

 minated at a plantation of mandioca, the 

 largest I had yet seen since I left the neigh- 

 borhood of Para. There were probably ten 

 acres of cleared land, and part of the ground 

 was plaated with Indian corn, watermelons, 

 and sugar-cane. Beyond this field there was 

 only a faint hunter's track, leading towaid 

 the untrodden interior. My companion told 

 me he had never heard of there being any in- 

 habitants in that direction (the south). We 

 crossed the forest from this place to anoth( r 

 smaller clearing, and then walked, on our 

 road home, through about two miles of 



