ROTH] DOMESTIC IMPLEMENTS AND REQUISITES oie 
porting a trame about halfway (A) ; or of four uprights in the form 
of forked sticks, upon which two pieces rest lengthwise, and on these 
other sticks are laid crosswise (B). In Makusi and Patamona 
houses I have seen portable ones—portable in the sense that they can 
be shifted as a whole to whichever portion of the habitation they 
may be required—made of four sticks tied together at their tops (C). 
The women seem, generally speaking, to look after the babracote. 
It is certainly their business to do so at night and to keep watch lest 
the house dogs should make a snap at whatever meat, etc., is being 
smoke dried. 
334. For grating cassava, after it has been peeled, rough-surfaced 
stones were originally and are still being employed. Thus the Island 
Carib used certain hard, rough stones (pierres dures et picotées) 
which were found in the streams, something like our pumicestone 
(RO, 498). In British Guiana cassava was grated on a rough 
cragged stone (BA, 278), as was the case in Surinam, where it was 
known as matta (St, 4, 
388-389). A stone is also 
employed at the present 
day by the Waiwai and 
Taruma in ourown colony. 
Many thin slabs _ break 
off the great granite and 
gneiss bowlders, probably 
an inch thick and from 1 
to 2 feet across. Weather- 
ing gives these rocks a 
characteristic roughness 
which answers admirably for grating, and, indeed, they are preferred 
when reducing certain fruits. They are used when all their up-to- 
date graters have been sold (JO). 
335. The earliest mention of cassava graters seems to have been 
made for the mainland in Cayenne by Barrére, who speaks of these 
articles as bristling with little pieces of stone shaped in facets, etc., 
on a board 2 feet long and-8 inches wide, which formed a kind of 
rasp (PBA, 139). It formed an article of barter with the French 
(PBA, 31). One of the timbers from which the board is said to be 
constructed is the soft outer layer of the purple-heart (Br, 30). The 
stone chips have been described as flint flakes (FE, 68), hard green 
stone (Br, 30), quartz (Cr, 507-508), sharp pebbles (StC, 1, 312), 
and granite (IXG, 1, 78-79). Besides karamanni the chips are stated 
to have been secured in position with a kind of dried bird lime 
(Cr, 507-508) ; a vegetable glue called wabba obtained from the 
fruit of a tree or shrub called ducalli (Ti, June, 1883, p. 125); or 
with balata (GO,5). According to what Crévaux says, one might be 
Fic. 88.—Types of babracote. 
