614 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH, ANN. 38 
laid. Schomburgk mentions such a tent made of truli from the 
upper Moruca (SR, 1, 149). Sometimes, especially in the interior, 
instead of the thatch thus described, two thin wickerwork mats, each 
large enough to cover the whole frame of the tent, are made. A 
layer of leaves (/schnosiphon) having been placed between them, 
the two are fastened, one over the other, and one mat thus produced, 
which is perfectly waterproof and can be laid onto the framework of 
the tent or taken off ina few minutes. This latter method of making 
tent covers seems to have been learned from the Brazilian Indians, 
and it is rarely seen far from the borderland (IT, 295). On the 
Orinoco Gumilla speaks of the addition of hatches at bow and stern, 
and then continues as follows: And the wonder is that, throughout a 
piragua you will not find a nail. Even the googings and screw pins 
with which the rudder [presumably the steering paddle] is turned 
from side to side are also of wood. You will not find an ounce of 
oakum, pitch or tar used in the calking of the hatches or the wash- 
boards (G, 11, 113-115). 
796. How, then, did these Orinoco Indians manage to calk their 
boats? is a question which is thus answered by the same authority. 
They take a quantity of bark from a tree which, like the mangrove, 
grows in and near the water on the river banks and seashore, and 
pound it well until there results a sticky mass held together by the 
many fibers contained in it. With this pulp they close tightly all 
the openings and seams of the piragua. It sticks fast and so stops 
the water entering (G, m, 113-115). The tree whose bark was thus 
utilized was probably the mora. [Acuna has the following to say 
of the Amazon Indians when they were first visited by the whites: 
They have pitch and tar as good as are to be found in Europe, and 
they have oil either to render it firm and solid or to temper its hard- 
ness, one sort of which they draw from fish and another sort they 
get from trees. They make a sort of tow, which they call ambira, so 
good that no better can be used for the calking of vessels and to 
make musket match (AC, 76).] The Boni blacks of the Maroni 
River, Cayenne, use the sapwood, previously bruised with a club, of 
the Bertholletia excelsa, the “ Brazil nut,” for calking. By way of 
tar they impregnate this oakum with a hard blackish substance called 
manil [Moronobea] (Cr, 44). 
797. Square lug sails (pls. 177 B, C; 178 C) could be carried with 
these corials, as is the case at the present day on the Wakapoa Creek 
(between the Moruca and Pomeroon Rivers). Such sails are made of 
thin laths split from the leaf stalk of the mauritia palm, attached 
with fiber cord somewhat after the style of the cheap variety of split 
bamboo window blind (pl. 177°C), and like it can be rolled up for 
transport purposes (pl. 177 B). This sail was also used in Surinam 
