285 



We psssed the night in a hut lately abandon- 

 ed. An Indian family had there left their fish- 

 ing instruments, pottery, nets made of the petio- 

 lae of palm-trees, all that composes the house- 

 hold furniture of that careless race of men, little 

 attached to property. A great store of mani 

 (a mixture of the resin of the moronobea and the 

 amyris caranna) was accumulated round the 

 house. This is used by the Indians here, as at 

 Cayenne, to pitch their canoes, and fix the boney 

 spines of the ray at the point of their arrows. 

 We found in the same place jars filled with 

 a vegetable milk, which serves as a varnish, and 

 is celebrated in the missions by the name of 

 leche parapintar*. They coat with this viscous 

 juice those articles of furniture, to which they 

 wish to give a fine white colour. It thickens 

 by the contact of the air, without growing yel- 

 low, and appears singularly glossy. We have 

 already mentioned^, that the caoutchouc is the 

 oily part, the butter of all vegetable milk. It is 

 no doubt a particular modification of caout- 

 chouc, that forms this coagulum, this white and 

 glossy skin, that seems as if covered with a 

 copal varnish. If different colours could one 



* The Echinavis say, no doubt by corruption, milk of 

 pendare. They call the unknown tree, that yields this milk, 

 javicou. This tree, which grows on the banks of the Rio 

 Negro, we could not find. 



+ Vol. iv, p. 226. 



