4 Timekri. 
duced from the Indian into European languages. Hammock has nothing 
whatever to do with the “hange-matte” of Surinam, the “hang-mac” of 
French Guiana. The first mention in history of a hammock is in the letter of 
Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanea, relating to the second voyage of Columbus, dated 
1494. It refers to Guacamari, one of the San Domingo chiefs who is deseribed 
as being “ stretched upon his bed,” which was made of cotton net-work, and 
according to their custom, suspended. It was called “ hamaca ” by those San 
Domingo Arawak Indians, and is still so named in Spanish. 
Jaguar comes to us by medium of the French, from the Oyambi term “ yaouar ” 
of the Oyapock River in Cayenne. 
Mat pi, amongst the same people, means a camudi, an animal to whose muscu- 
lar constructions the action of this important domestic article has been likened 
by many an old author. Fermin, in his history of Surinam, calls it couleuvre 
caraibe, 7.e., the Carib snake. 
Kui-yu, the Indian woman’s apron of this colony, is really the name for the 
lap of the male uniform in French Guiana, as it also was on the Orinoco. The 
word itself is met with, more or less distorted, throughout the Guianas. 
Achi, is a common term for capsicums amongst the Indians within very wide 
limits from Cayenne to the foot of the Andes. It is also mentioned in the great 
Admiral’s history written by the younger Columbus in connection with the 
Antillean Islands. 
In conclusion, I propose giving a few notes concerning agriculture in the 
old days. 
The Guajivas and Chiricoas were the only old-time tribes in the Western 
Guianas who did not cultivate their lands—they accordingly were always travel- 
ling from river to river. collecting wild fruits, and hunting game ; they never 
built houses and had no artificial shelters from sun or rain. The other Indians 
used to say that these people had learnt their manner of life from monkeys and 
other animals : on the other hand, it was this very manner of life—the nomadic 
habit—that saved them from extinction. The Guajivas are still the same 
wandering gipsies of a couple of centuries ago. 
Those who did cultivate their lands set about their work as follows, an interest- 
ing account of which has been recorded by one of the old Jesuit Fathers —** With 
their axes made of a double-edged flint fixed midway in a suitable wooden handle, 
they used to cut the green stems of the brambles and briars after having broken 
them down with their hard-wood clubs: the women subsequently burnt the 
dry timbers. It took them two months to cut downa tree . . . . To 
start, throw up, and form furrows, after burning the undergrowth, they make 
use of shovels formed of very hard wood. . . They manufacture these shovels 
with fire, burning some portions, and leaving others free, not without skill, 
symmetry, and the expenditure of much time. . . . . . They heap up the 
earth on either side of the furrow, and with it cover the straw and dried grass : 
they then sow their maize, yams, and other roots, etc., and in all parts a large 
quantity of capsicums. ” 
