HAD ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [BLH, ANN. 38 
fresh water. They believed that sea water would make them stink 
and encourage bile (PBR, 240). Im Thurn has rightly noted that 
Indians make a point of bathing immediately after every meal, ap- 
parently without ill effects (IT, 191). 
933. To protect himself from the bites of mosquitoes many an 
Indian would anoint himself morning and evening with crab-wood 
oil. On the Orinoco the ointment was one of fat or oil mixed with 
powdered annatto (G, 1, 192). During the crab “march,” at the 
mouth of the Pomeroon and Moruca Rivers, about August month, the 
Indians will often plaster themselves with mud to withstand these 
insects. [The Mura Indians of the Amazon begrimed their bodies 
with black mud, which is smeared over the skin as a protection against 
mosquitoes (HWB, 166).] Gumilla records how some nations, like 
the Otomac, used a sort of curtain or tent (pabellon), made by the 
women out of ite fiber (G, 1, 170; mu, 192), for sleeping under. In 
later times Humboldt also drew attention to the mosquito curtains of 
this same people (AVH, nm, 280). [Perhaps this was of the same 
pattern as the modern sensoro variety of ite hammock, the mesh- 
work of which hangs close when not put upon the stretch, described in 
section 477.] Others of the Orinoco Indians build their sleeping 
quarters adjoining their houses, such quarters being but small huts, 
very stuffy and with a triple covering, so that their nocturnal visi- 
tors can not gain entrance (G, 1,192). On the other hand, Crévaux 
on several occasions during the course of his journey speaks of the 
inhabitants always leaving the village at night and sleeping at a 
distance. In place of a mattress the Otomac would heap up some 
sand, brought from the coast, and after the manner of a bed, the 
father, wife, and children half buried themselves in it, their only 
covering being the curtain mentioned above (G, 1,170). [This must 
have been somewhat after the style of the copper-colored people at 
Higuerote, on the coast of Caracas, who slept buried in the sand 
(AVH, wu, 280.] When sleeping on the sand banks the Indians of 
the Guaviar River stick into the sand a palm leaf or tree branch to 
protect themselves, in a measure, from the dew (Cr, 517). Bancroft 
noted how the Indians, to protect themselves from mosquitoes, made 
a great smoke under their hammocks in which they wrap themselves 
all over (BA, 237-238). Gumilla describes the Warrau as burning 
clods of ant bed, the comejen, with a similar object (Cr, 1, 147). On 
the Orinoco it was only the Guajiva, Chiricoa, and Guama nations 
who slept on the hard ground without any covering, except the open 
air, a habit which led Gumilla to remark that there is nothing to 
which the human body can not ultimately get accustomed (G, 1, 192). 
934. Notwithstanding what has been said in favor of the Indian 
with regard to the cleanly habits adopted at meals, and to the regular- 
