168 The Aistdes aot) the Amazon. 



unsightly, but alarming to a stranger. Chicha-drinking 

 is a part of the worship of these simple aborigines. They 

 seem to think that the more happy they make themselves 

 while paying their devotions to the Creator, the better he is 

 satisfied. The Jesuits have found it impossible to change 

 this method of praise. Here, as among all rude nations, 

 an ancient custom is one half the religion. In eating 

 meat (usually monkey, sea-cow, and peccari), we observed 

 that they did not tear or bite it, but, putting one end of a 

 long piece in the mouth, cut off what they could not get 

 in, as Darwin noticed among the Fuegians. They keep no 

 domestic animals except fowls. 



As to dress, they make use of a coarse cotton cloth, call- 

 ed lienzo, woven bythe more enlightened Indians of Qui- 

 to, dyeing it a dull brown by means of achote juice. The 

 men wear a strip of this around the loins, and the women 

 a short skirt. On feast-days, or when musquitoes are thick, 

 the men add a little poncho and pantaloons. They do not 

 properly tattoo, but color the skin with achote or anatto. 

 This substance, which serves so many purposes in this part 

 of the world, is the red powder which covers the seeds con- 

 tained in the prickly bur of the Bixa orellana. The pig- 

 ment is an article of commerce on the Amazon, and is 

 exported to Europe, where it is used for coloring butter, 

 cheese, and varnish. They have no fixed pattern ; each 

 paints to suit his fancy. Usually, however, they draw hor- 

 izontal bands from the mouth to the ears, and across the 

 forehead ; we never saw curved lines in which higher sav- 

 ages, like the Tahitians, tattoo. 



The Napos have the provoking apathy of all the New 

 World aborigines. As Humboldt observed of another 

 tribe, " their poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state ren- 

 der them so rich and so free from wants of every kind, 

 that neither money nor other presents will induce them to 



