56 TIMEHRI. 
dens, which the women in their turn must cultivate and 
plant. | 
In arithmetic they are exceedingly ignorant, their 
number not going higher than that of 5, pointing with 
their fingers to 10, and to 20 with their toes. 
To express the number of days and to remember their 
meetings, be it for hunting, fishing, or going to war, they 
prepare a Chart, which is a talley stick, or string of reeds, 
in which there are as many notches or knots as days are 
wanting before they come together ; every day they cut 
off one of these knots or notches, and by this means re- 
member at the proper time what they have to do. 
DESCRIPTION OF THEIR PROVISIONS. 
Their daily food consists of meat of all sorts of game 
and animals, as deer, tapirs, hogs, several sorts of 
monkeys, goats, and what more the country produces, as 
likewise of different river and sea fishes, iike manatis*, 
turtles, crabs in particular &c. and of fruits and roots. 
Meat they generally roast, or dry on a barbacot, or they 
boil it in their pepper pot, with fish, roots, and every- 
thing mixed, to which they add Atty or Spanish pepper 
which they use and eat for every purpose. They make 
their bread of a certain root, called by the Arawaks 
Kallidallie, or bread root, and by the Europeans and 
Indians Cassave, of which we intend to speak more fully 
hereafter. 
After being well washed, they grate the root raw, as 
fine as saw-dust; the rasps used for this purpose are 
made of copper, 15 or 18 inches long, and 10 to 12 
inches wide, nailed fast on a board half a foot long, and 
a foot broad in the centre ; the negro wench who rasps 
* Sea cows. 
