OF THE AMAZON, 



339 



•fsrfiich is applied in the spirally-grooved rifle-barrel : three 

 feathers are used, and they are all secured spirally, so as to 

 form a little screw on the base of the arrow, the effect of which 

 of course must be, that the arrow revolves rapidly in its 

 onward progress, and this no doubt tends to keep it in a direct 

 course. 



The gravatana and small poisoned arrows are made and used 

 exactly as I have already described in my Narrative (page 147). 



The small hand-nets used for catching fish are of two kinds, 

 — a small ring-net, like a landing-net, and one spread between 

 two slender sticks, just like the large folding-nets of entomo- 

 logists : these are much used in the rapids, and among rocks 

 and eddies, and numbers of fish are caught with them. They 

 also use the rod and line, and consume an enormous quantity 

 of hooks : there are probably not less than a hundred thousand 

 fish-hooks sold every year in the river Uaupes ; yet there are 

 still to be found among them many of their own hooks, in- 

 geniously made of palm-spines. They have many other ways 

 of catching fish : one is by a small cone of wicker, called a 

 matapV which is placed in some little current in the gapo ; 

 the larger end is entirely open, and it appears at first sight 

 quite incapable of securing the fish, yet it catches great quantities, 

 for when the fish get in they have no room to turn round, 

 and cannot swim backwards, and three or four are often found 

 jammed in the end of these little traps, with the scales and skin 

 quite rubbed off their heads by their vain endeavours to pro- 

 ceed onwards. Other matapis are larger and more cylindrical, 

 with a reversed conical mouth (as in our wire rat-traps), to 

 prevent the return of the fish : these are often made of a very 

 large size, and are placed in little forest-streams, and in narrow 

 channels between rocks, where the fish, in passing up, must 

 enter them. But the best method of procuring fish, and that 

 which has been generally adopted by the Europeans in the 

 country, is with the Cacoaries, or fish-weirs. These are princi- 

 pally used at high-water, when fish are scarce : they are formed 

 at the margin of rivers, supported by strong posts, which are 

 securely fixed at the time of low-water, when the place of the 

 weir is quite dry ; to these posts is secured a high fence of split 

 palm-stems, forming an entering angle, with a narrow opening 

 into a fenced enclosure. Fish almost always travel against the 

 stream, and generally abound more at the sides where the 



