mNEEAiiY. Ixxiii 



numerous, and the men so few that we wondered what had become of 

 them. All we could ascertain was that they were far away. The 

 people call themselves mostly Ijy names taken from the rivers close by, 

 as the Sokorikos from the Soko creek, and the Quating people from 

 the main river ; but the derivation of the name of the Monikos was 

 not evident. They were all clearly of the Oarib stock, for both 

 the Arr6kunas and the Makushis understood them ; and in one 

 widely scattered village, both Monikos and Makushis lived in close 

 association. 



A very marked feature among the people of these little-travelled 

 upper savannahs, though not at the two villages near the base of 

 Roraima and Kukenaam, is the smallness of the women's aprons. 

 Beads are evidently scarce, for where the queyus consisted of them, 

 they wei'e either very small, of but three or four inches either way — 

 contrasting very strongly with the usual very ample proportions of the 

 others, of about a foot or even more, — or but a mere central pattern in 

 a cotton fringe! At times the apron was but a small cotton fringe 

 without beads, of the type of those worn by girls at puberty, though 

 the latter would be dyed red. One elderly woman wore but a small 

 pendent rag of cloth from her waist, a mere strip suspended as an 

 apron, and it looked much as if it had been improvised on our arrival. 

 The smaller girls were quite nude, except for small necklaces, mainly 

 of seeds — a quite unusual condition elsewhere. The seed-necklaces of 

 the women and children were seldom elaborate, or of any great size, 

 some of the latter even wearing strings of pieces of crockeiy and 

 gun-ramrods. The necklaces of the men, on the other hand, were 

 often very fine, of the teeth of the aguti, the capyba.ra, or peccary, 

 mostly the last, and occasionally with one or two of those of the 

 jaguar, or of its claws, or of the claws of the ant-bear, and generally 

 with long cotton strings, with or without pendants of feathers, seeds, 

 insect wings, etc. Supplying the deficiency of bead ornamentation, 

 however, the women were much decorated with red and blue-black 

 dyes, in stripes and dots, over the face, hands, and feet, and occasionally 

 over other parts of the body, especially for the ceremonial dance 

 occasions — the men at times also being thus decorated, but to a much 

 less extent, and with additions of white clay. The arnatto trees grew 

 commonly at the settlements, and sometimes the good-luck tree 

 (Thevetia), from the seeds of which are made the common rattles or 

 shak-shaks, though occasionally they were found made of deer-hoofs. 



In these remote districts, the houses are altogether smaller in 

 every way than those in the more accessible country ; and it is 

 probably due to the greater poverty of the people, who are far from 

 chances of employment by which they might furnish themselves with 

 such articles as axes, cutlasses, and large knives, which appear to be 

 very few in the settlements. Considering the number of the people, 

 the houses are also few, and they are thus very much crowded. If the 

 observed scarcity of men in proportion to women is due to a normal 

 deficiency, this no doubt will help to explain the conditions. Where 

 the houses in the open savannahs are far from the sources of supply 

 for timber and thatch, this is likely also to reduce the size and number 

 of houses, especially if the number of men is a limited one ; and the 



