278 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [WrH, ANN. 38 
inclined to believe that occasionally this adhesive substance, whatever 
it was, did not prove sufficiently strong. Before using these imple- 
ments . . . they have to be moistened so as to make the timber swell, 
which thus helps to keep the stone chips more firmly fixed (Cr, 119). 
The largest kind of grater would appear to come from the upper 
Rio Negro area, where Wallace gives their dimensions as about 3 
feet long and 1 foot wide (ARW, 326) with a “boss” on the front. 
The smallest, a kind specially made for grating Brazil nuts by the 
Taruma on the headwaters of the Essequibo, measures about 4 by 8 
inches (JO). 
336. A description of the manufacture of a cassava grater among 
the Taruma can be made under four headings: The preparation of 
the board (by men), the making of the stone chips (by women), their 
fixation into it (by men and women), and the final touches (by men). 
337. To get the 
board, a man will fell 
a tree (one of the 
Simarukas?), cut off a 
block 2 or 3 feet long 
from the outside part, 
and square it down 
with a cutlass toa piece 
from 15 to 20 inches 
wide and about 1 inch 
thick, making the front 
A B c and back slightly con- 
Fic. 84.—Stone chip cassava grater. Diagram showing cave and convex, re- 
the lines along which the chips are inserted. spectively. He finally 
draws his “diagram” on the front of the board with his finger dipped 
in a vegetable dye. This diagram or pattern is a rectangular figure, 
crossed with parallel diagonals, leaving a free margin of from one-half 
to 1 inch at the sides, and from 3 to 6 inches at the ends (fig. 84, A, B,C). 
338. With regard to the preparation of the stone chips, the only 
quarry in the Taruma country where this particular stone (a por- 
phyry) is obtained is about a mile above the Duarwau (Kuassi-kiju) 
Creek, where an outcrop runs across the bottom of the Essequibo 
River, and hence can only be obtained in the very dry season. Brown 
and Sawkins, in their Geology of British Guiana, London, 1875, page 
193, thus describe the stone: “ Just beyond the mouth of the Cassikitu 
(Kuassi-kiju) River the granite gives way and is succeeded by 
quartz porphyry. It is of a gray color, is composed of crystals of 
feldspar in a feldspathic base, along with green chlorite crystals in 
aggregation, and contains but few quartz crystals.” Besides Taruma, 
the Waiwai, Parikuta, and Wapishana may come to fetch stone from 
here, though the Waiwai have a quarry in their own country on top 
