MUCURI, VIpOZA, CARAVELLAS, &C. 225 



At the huts, our people were still employed in completing the 

 roofs. The two larger buildings, in which I lived, in company with 

 the ouvidor, the two naval captains, and Kramer, the German mill- 

 wright, were provided with clay-walls, and the roofs were finished. 

 For the latter they used the leaves of the uricanna, a palm which has 

 a small pliable stem : the beautiful large feathered leaves (folia 

 abrupte pimiata ) grow on slender stalks ; several of them are formed 

 into a bundle ; the stalks, which are very long, are then twisted 

 round a lath of cocoa- wood, and bound together under it with a cipo 

 tierdadeira ( bauliinia J, which is long enough to bind one bundle to 

 another. The laths, with the leaves thus attached, are laid over one 

 another in such a manner that two thirds of their breadth are 

 covered. The ridge of the roof is then covered with other leaves, 

 particularly the long cocoa fans, in order to render it quite water- 

 proof. Such a roof, which they very well understand how to make 

 here, is light and secure; care must however be taken to permit 

 smoke sometimes to circulate through it, because otherwise the insects 

 would destroy the dry leaves in the first year. 



A spacious hut was now erecting for a workshop for the smith ; for 

 on account of the hardness of the different woods which were to be 

 cut and worked, the tools very frequently stood in need of repairs. 

 The smith employed here, was an inhabitant of the country on the 

 Alcoba^a, whom the oiividor, to punish him for some fault, had 

 ordered to be taken from his home by night, and brought hither 

 to work. While the workmen were building the huts, the woodmen 

 cleared the spot where it was proposed to erect the saw-mill. The 

 ouvidor left us, and went for some time with many of his people to Cara- 

 vellas ; our company was consequently much diminished, but we soon 

 received a large accession of numbers. Captain Bento Lourenzo had 

 carried the new road so far with his Mineiros, that he had nearly ap- 

 proached our solitude. The Picadores (people who go before and mark 



2 G 



