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pounded and brayed in a large vessel filled with 

 water. The infusion, which is prepared cold, 

 yields a yellowish liquor, which tastes like milk 

 of almonds. Sometimes papelon or unrefined 

 sugar is added. The missionary told us, that 

 the natives become visibly fatter during the 

 two or three months in which they drink this 

 seje liquor, into which they dip their cakes of 

 cassava. The piaches, or Indian jugglers, go 

 into the forests, and sound the botuto (the sacred 

 trumpet) under the seje palm-trees, " to force 

 the tree," they say, " to yield an ample produce 

 the following year." The people pay for this 

 operation, as the Monguls, the Moors, and 

 the nations still nearer to us, pay the chamans> 

 the marabous, and other classes of priests, to 

 drive away by mystic words, or by prayers, the 

 white ants and the locusts, or to procure a ces- 

 sation of continued rain, and invert the order of 

 the seasons. 



Tengo en mi pueblo la fahrica de loza*, said 

 father Zea, when conducting us to an Indian 

 family, who were occupied in baking by a fire of 

 brushwood, in the open air, large earthen vessels, 

 two feet and a half high. This branch of ma- 

 nufacture is peculiar to the various tribes of the 

 great family of the Maypures, and it appears 

 they have followed it from time immemorial 



* u I have a manufactory of pottery in my village. '* 



