300 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



enclosed in the stems of a slender palm, and this again is 

 an article of barter, for the particular palm used for this 

 purpose is not found in the country of the Waiomgomos. 

 Isidor used to regret that he did not have a blow-pipe to 

 show me how skilful he was in its use. He was always 

 ready to speak of the distant compound whence he had 

 come, and of his uncle Simon, who was the headman of 

 the place, but I never succeeded in getting from him 

 Simon's Indian name or the names of the others at the 

 settlement. As I observed during my first visit all the 

 Indians of Guiana appear to have the same objection to 

 divulging to strangers the names by which they are 

 known to their immediate relations ; and this is why, I 

 suppose, Isidor had bestowed on his uncle the name 

 Simon, although the latter had never had any inter- 

 course with Venezuelans. Im Thurn, in his work 

 ' Among the Indians of Guiana ' draws attention to the 

 strong objection the Indians whom he visited have to 

 the telling or using, even among themselves, of the name 

 bestowed upon a child by the peaiman or medicine-man 

 soon after birth, which is his proper name and is supposed 

 to form part of himself. 



Every evening Isidor would spend a couple of hom'S 

 with me and speak about his people and the journeys he had 

 made to the Paragua and Caroni, where the Camaracotas 

 and Guaicas have settlements. He would dwell with 

 delight on every detail of the yaraque feasts and dances 

 that took place on the return of one of these trading 

 expeditions. He described the ornaments worn on these 

 occasions — the gorgeous feather crowns, the strings of 

 beads and peccary teeth, the bands of braided hair worn 

 above and below the calf of the leg and around the arm 

 under the arm-pits. Then he spoke of the music — the long 



