TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 257 



Other, they often remain for hours together in this 

 position, solely engaged in keeping in the fire, 

 or roasting Spanish potatoes, bananas, ears of 

 maize, &c. in the ashes, for breakfast. A tame 

 monkey, or some other of their numerous domes- 

 tic animals, with which they play, serves to amuse 

 them. The first employment of the women, on 

 leaving their hammocks, is to paint themselves and 

 their children, on which each goes to her particular 

 domestic occupation, stripping the threads from the 

 palm leaves, manufacturing nets, making earthen 

 vessels, rubbing mandiocca, and pounding the 

 maize, from which they make by fermentation a 

 cooling beverage (catimboeira). Others go to their 

 little plantations to fetch maize, mandiocca, and 

 beans, or into the wood to look for wild fruits and 

 roots. When the men have finished their frugal 

 breakfast, they prepare their bows, arrows, slings, 

 lances, &c. The first are cut with stone axes out 

 of the red wood of several siliquose trees, or out 

 of the black wood of some prickly palms {Brex- 

 aiiva) of the species Astrocaryum, and polished 

 with the angular bamboo cane, or v.'ith iron knives, 

 which they have obtained by barter : the arrows 

 themselves are made of a reed {Tacuara da 

 Frecha, Graiing of the Coroados, Saccharum sa- 

 gittarum, Aubl. ?). It is not till the sun is high 

 and the heat considerable, that the Indian de- 

 lights to bathe himself, and then goes between 

 nine and ten to the chase, generally accompanied 



VOL. II. s 



