1850.] 



BLOW-PIPE AND ARROWS, 



147 



room enclosed with a palm-leaf fence, to make a sleeping 

 apartment. There were several young boys here of from ten 

 to fifteen years of age, who were my constant attendants when 

 I went into the forest. None of them could speak a single 

 word of Portuguese, so I had to make use of my slender stock 

 of Lingoa Geral. But Indian boys are not great talkers, and 

 a few monosyllables would generally suffice for our communis 

 cations. One or two of them had blow-pipes, and shot 

 numbers of small birds for me, while others would creep along 

 by my side and silently point out birds, or small animals, before 

 I could catch sight of them. When I fired, and, as was often 

 the case, the bird flew away wounded, and then fell far off in 

 the forest, they would bound away after it, and seldom search 

 in vain. Even a little humming-bird, falling in a dense thicket 

 of creepers and dead leaves, which I should have given up 

 looking for in despair, was always found by them. 



One day I accompanied the Indian with whom I lived into 

 the forest, to get stems for a blow-pipe. We went, about a 

 mile off, to a place where numerous small palms were growing : 

 they were the Iriartea setigera of Martins, from ten to fifteen 

 feet high, and varying from the thickness of one's finger to two 

 inches in diameter. They appear jointed outside, from the 

 scars of the fallen leaves, but within have a soft pith, which, 

 when cleared out, leaves a smooth, polished bore. My com- 

 panion selected several of the straightest he could find, both 

 of the smallest and largest diameter. These stems were 

 carefully dried in the house, the pith cleared out with a long 

 rod made of the wood of another palm, and the bore rubbed 

 clean and polished with a little bunch of roots of a tree-fern, 

 pulled backwards and forwards through it. Two stems are 

 selected of such a size, that the smaller can be pushed inside 

 the larger; this is done, so that any curve in the one may 

 counteract that in the other ; a conical wooden mouthpiece is 

 then fitted on to one end, and sometimes the whole is spirally 

 bound with the smooth, black, shining bark of a creeper. 

 Arrows are made of the spinous processes of the Patawa 

 {CEnocarpus Batawd) pointed, and anointed with poison, and 

 with a little conical tuft of tree cotton (the silky covering of 

 the seeds of a Bombax) at the other end, to fill up exactly, but 

 not tightly, the bore of the tube : these arrows are carried in 

 a wicker quiver, well covered with pitch at the lower part, so 



