150 TiMEHRI. 



his wife brought him something to eat. He had done 

 his share and she did her's. Sometimes he was inclined 

 to be lazy and left the house without meat for several 

 days, but no complaints were made. If any one in the 

 settlement had meat there was generally a little to spare 

 for those who had none. There were times however 

 when game was hardly procurable, and sometimes from 

 caterpillars or a heavy wet season the cassava failed. 

 Then the whole community looked thin and half-starved, 

 and the women had to grate mora and greenheart seeds 

 to make a sort of bitter cake. The men would go out 

 hunting and fishing day after day and come home almost 

 empty-handed. This was perhaps followed by a time of 

 great plenty, when the ripe fruits would attra6l large 

 flocks of birds, and great numbers of monkeys and 

 agouties. Then the thin and pinched looks of the 

 children gave place to an almost bloated appearance 

 in the lower part of their bodies, and they suffered much 

 from indigestion, 



Peter enjoyed very good health as a rule. Unlike 

 either white or black man, he suffered little from mala- 

 rial fevers. But irregularities in eating and drinking — 

 feast, and famine and drunkenness — necessarily pro- 

 duced disorders of the stomach. Then the Peaiman was 

 called in. This half-priest, half-doctor, would tell him 

 that his sickness was the work of a Kenaima — a mortal 

 enemy with a touch of the supernatural. A Kenaima 

 proper is the avenger of blood — one who has taken an 

 oath not to rest until he destroys his enemy or one of 

 the family. He paints himself — perhaps in imitation of 

 a jaguar — and lies in wait outside a settlement, or follows 

 his man through the forest and on the river for hundreds 



