Rory] POTTERY 131 
Guaviare River the mixing of the clay with the cinders of mingala 
bark evidently promotes glazing (Cr, 507). At the head of the 
Barama River this [potter’s] clay has a grayish color and is mixed 
with the loose materials of decomposing granite (ScB, 189). 
91. The following description of the manufacture of a clay vessel is 
taken at first hand from what I have observed among the Carib old 
women of the upper Manawarin, a branch of the Moruca River. 
The well-known “ buck-pot”’ is being made. The clay, already broken 
out of the ground with a thick, heavy, pointed stick, is cleaned of 
all dirt and foreign particles, and during this cleaning process is 
mashed with the hands, but without water. In this condition it may 
be left for years, if necessary, before being worked up, but it gradually 
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Fic. 31.—Diagram to show method of construction of buck pot. 
WER 
becomes harder. To be worked up it is now pounded and mixed 
with water, and, taking up lump after lump it is rolled with the flat 
of the hand, on a board, into a coil about 14 inches long and five- 
eighths of an inch thick. These coils, a dozen or so, are placed by 
the potter at her side. She then takes another lump of clay, presses 
and squeezes it between her hands, and makes a circular pat of it 
in the center of the board. The edges of this slab are everted so that 
in section it has the appearance represented in figure 31 A. A coil 
is now taken and placed around and inside of the everted edge of the 
preceding, both coil and edge being squeezed together at close 
intervals with the left thumb and forefinger on its passage round. 
If, as is usually the case, the coil happens to be longer than the 
circuit, it is pinched and pulled off. The vessel is thus built up, not 
