282 TlMEHRI. 



or in commemoration, of some important dead Arawak. 

 I have never been able to gain confirmation of this state- 

 ment.* It is true that the game is very rarely practised 

 now; and that there are but very few Arawaks alive who 

 have retained by tradition the correct form and ritual of 

 the ceremony. It is also true that in SCHOMBURGK's 

 time, and even in Brett's time (which, be it remem- 

 bered, so far as his intimate relations with Indians are 

 concerned, came to an end more than thirty years ago) 

 the game must have been much* more frequently prac- 

 tised. Their chance of obtaining information was there- 

 fore better than any that can now be had. But if the 

 game really was a funeral rite it seems to me strange 

 that within one generation all knowledge of this has 

 died out from the minds of the Arawaks. Furthermore, 

 there is a circumstance connected with the game which 

 may easily have misled the earlier writers. A grave is 

 prepared before the game begins ; and in this grave, at 

 the conclusion of the game, a burial does take place, 

 attended by all the players. But the thing buried is not 

 a corpse, but is the apparatus of the game, the whips and 

 whistles which have been used and which are then cere- 

 moniously buried, to be dug up and used — all that is left 

 of them, with the addition of whatever new material 

 may be requisite — when the game is again to be played. 

 As in almost all the other games of the Indians of 

 Guiana, the macquari is carried on with much drinking 

 of paiwarie, and has, at least in these latter days, 



* The late Rev. C. D. Dance, in his valuable if somewhat ill-arranged 

 *' Chapters from a Guianese Log-book," attributes a funeral purpose to 

 the macquari game, though without giving any important evidence of the 

 fa£t. In a later part of these notes I shall make opportunity to use 

 further this and other notes on games by Mr. Dance. 



