280 TlMEHRI. 



A monkey dance, too, I have seen adult Arawaks 

 delightedly perform. It was distinguished among their 

 games by unusually rough fun, and certainly seemed 

 exciting. The players formed in line as in the warra- 

 caba dance. And then the file, thus formed, simply 

 rushed everywhere, sometimes over the roofs of the 

 houses, tearing off bits of thatch and pretending to chew 

 them, often up and along the rafters of the house, tear- 

 ing and throwing down all the many small properties 

 which the Indians there store, into the kitchen, upsetting 

 the pot, devouring or destroying all food that came in 

 the way, driving out the women who were baking bread, 

 scattering the fire ; and all the while chattering and 

 grinning as vehemently as any troop of real monkeys. 

 The women who were not playing scuttled at the very 

 sio-ht of the coming troop. The old man of the settle- 

 ment and his wife, in real anxiety for their goods, tried 

 to protect what they could, tearing it even out of the 

 monkeys' hands, or throwing food to the monkeys to dis- 

 tract their attention from more valuable properties. At 

 last the old man, with the help of one or two bystanders, 

 secured the more violent of the players, and, despite 

 some too genuine scratchings and bitings, managed to 

 tie them up with ropes to the posts of houses. At last 

 five had been so caught and tied in one house ; and then, 

 if there had been uproar before, there was pandemonium 

 now. The captives screamed and shrieked and 

 yelled; they rolled as far as their cords would allow, 

 and tore with their teeth everything that came in their 

 way: food, clothes, hammocks, pans, and calabashes. 

 It was with difficulty I preserved a young chicken which 

 one monkey had seized ; and my camera, which unfor- 



