AT BONAFACIO 229 



body was painted red with the juice of a fruit, had what 

 could fairly be styled a moustache and imperial ; and 

 one old man looked somewhat like a hairy Ainu, or 

 perhaps even more like an Australian black fellow. 

 My companion told me that this probably represented 

 an infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto 

 blood, from runaway slaves of the old days, when some 

 of the Matto Grosso mines were worked by slave labour. 

 They also thought it possible that this infiltration of 

 Africanjnegroes might be responsible for the curious shape 

 of the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy, 

 ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to 

 those of the other Indian tribes of this region ; whereas 

 they were not unlike the ordinary beehive huts of the 

 agricultural African negroes. There were in this village 

 several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of the 

 big huts. These were of closely woven thatch, circular 

 in outline, with a rounded dome, and two doors a couple 

 of feet high opposite each other, and no other opening. 

 There were fifteen or twenty people to each hut. 

 Inside were their implements and utensils, such as 

 wicker baskets (some of them filled with pineapples), 

 gourds, fire-sticks, wooden knives, wooden mortars, 

 and a board for grating mandioc, made of a thick slab 

 of wood inset with sharp points of a harder wood. 

 From the Brazilians one or two of them had obtained 

 blankets, and one a hammock; and they had also obtained 

 knives, which they sorely needed, for they are not even 

 in the stone age. One woman shielded herself from the 

 rain by holding a green palm-branch down her back. 

 Another had on her head what we at first thought to 

 be a monkey-skin head-dress. But it was a httle, live, 

 black monkey. It stayed habitually with its head above 

 her forehead, and its arms and legs spread so that it lay 



