Primitive Games. 301 



to hear that this kimiti performed exa6tly the office of a 

 reception committee. Some of the kimiti carried in their 

 hands, and frantically waved, small joints of smoke-dried 

 meat. Then, with endless frantic and most fantastic 

 caperings and posturings, and with the most vehement 

 sounding of their shrill whistles, the kimiti darted like a 

 flock of wild duck down the path toward the forest, 

 whence the parasheera were expected to emerge. The 

 nearer and nearer approach of the expected guests was 

 indicated by constant increase in the loudness of the 

 most extraordinary and pandemoniac roar which they 

 raised —which, by the way, contrasted curiously, and, 

 doubtless intentionally, with the piercingly shrill sounds 

 of the equally, but differently, noisy kitniti. At last, just as 

 the two bodies of different noises approached and blended 

 in a most truly marvellous inharmonious harmony, the 

 first of the long single-filed procession of new-comers 

 came in sight, just at the edge of the forest. His entire 

 body was concealed in a clothing of the pale yellow-green 

 young leaves of the aeta palm (Mauritia flexuosa). A 

 skirt of the same, plaited together at the top, but otherwise 

 hanging loose, hung from round his waist to his heels. 

 A similar cloak of the same hung from round his neck 

 so as to overlap the skirt ; and a curiously plaited 

 arrangement of the same leaves encircled his head, part 

 serving as a far-extending, halo-like crown, part hanging 

 down visor-like, over his face so as to overlap the top of 

 the cloak. He held in his hand a long wand of trumpet- 

 wood (Cecropia peltata), pierced with holes so as to 

 serve as a rude trumpet, and surmounted by a large flat 

 representation of the sun or moon, or some star, or of some 

 animal or bird, made of carved and painted soft wood. 



