ACROSS NHAMBIQUARA LAND 239 



their implements and utensils, such as wicker baskets (some 

 of them filled with pineapples), gourds, fire-sticks, wooden 

 knives, wooden mortars, and a board for grating mandioc, 

 made of a thick slab of wood inset with sharp points of a 

 harder wood. From the Brazilians one or two of them had 

 obtained blankets, and one a hammock; and they had also 

 obtained knives, which they sorely needed, for they are 

 not even in the stone age. One woman shielded herself 

 from the rain by holding a green palm-branch down her 

 back. Another had on her head what we at first thought 

 to be a monkey-skin head-dress. But it was a little, live, 

 black monkey. It stayed habitually with its head above 

 her forehead, and its arms and legs spread so that it lay 

 moulded to the shape of her head; but both woman and 

 monkey showed some reluctance about having their photo- 

 graphs taken. 



Bonofacio consisted of several thatched one-room cabins, 

 connected by a stockade which was extended to form an 

 enclosure behind them. A number of tame parrots and 

 parakeets, of several different species, scrambled over the 

 roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures near 

 by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, 

 which ate the roots of grass, not emerging to eat the grass 

 but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These bur- 

 rows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers. 

 Miller found the animals difficult to trap. Finally, by the 

 aid of Colonel Rondon, several Indians, and two or three 

 of our men, he dug one out. From the central shaft sev- 

 eral surface galleries radiated, running for many rods about 

 a foot below the surface, with, at intervals of half a dozen 

 yards, mounds where the loose earth had been expelled. 



