82 Pottery Among Savage Races. [ February, 
ments. Having been reduced to powder and sifted, it is 
thoroughly intermingled with clay, to which, when wet, it gives 
a dark plumbaginous look, but this color grows much lighter on 
burning. The use of the Caraipé, according to universal testi- 
mony, makes the ware better able to stand the fire. The Indians 
of Sariacu use the ash of a bark called Afacarama, perhaps the 
same as Caraipé (Smythe & Lowe, Nar. of a Journ. from Lima to 
Para. Lond., 1836, 210). The Caraipé bark contains an enormous 
percentage of silica, which separates as a fine white powder. It 
is to this siliceous powder that the ash, doubtless, owes its value 
as a dégraissant. In the Amazonian region is found a species of 
fresh-water sponge, called Cauri, containing siliceous spicules, 
and whose ash is sometimes used to temper clay for pottery (De 
Souza, Lembrancas, etc. do Amazonas, 101). According to 
Semper (Der Stil. Band ii, 122) the use of these dégratssants and 
cements, besides destroying the homogeneity of the paste, furnish 
innumerable points of rest throughout the mass that reduce the 
fragility of the ware after burning, and the danger of cracking, 
whether through change of temperature or by shock. The 
coarser particles serve to break up and distribute the undulations 
by which the cracks are propagated, very much as a fracture in a 
pane of glass may be arrested by boring a hole at the extremity 
of the crack, 
By the advent of Europeans, pottery in America was invariably 
made by hand, the potters wheel being unknown. In the prov- 
ince of Para, among the Indians, and to a considerable extent 
among the whites, as each family makes its own pottery, stores of 
this clay are often laid up. 
The clay, mixed with Carzafé, is kneaded with the hands into a 
mass, which is then divided into a number of balls about as large 
as the first. The woman potter then furnishes herself with a 
board or mat, on which to build up the vessel, some flat object 
on which to rol] out the clay, a vessel of water, and a fragment of 
a cuta or a shell to serve as a smoothing instrument. If the ves- 
sel is to have a flat bottom, she presses out upon the board a 
round flat piece of the required size and thickness. This takes 
the impress of the board or mat, and fragments of the bottoms of 
vessels from the ancient sité of the “ Bluff-Dwellers” at Taparinha, _ 
near Santarem, are often beautifully impressed by the mat on which _ 
they were formed. Indian women of Santarem sometimes seat _ 
