324 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
met with, and it is the only instance I have found 
of a distinct tradition connected with its execution. 
[This is described at the end of Chapter XXVI I.] 
A few hours from the mouth of the Paapun's is 
a malloca of Pira-Tapuya Indians, and a Httle above 
this another malloca of Tucano Indians. Near the 
head-waters (from which there is a short portage 
by land to a tributary of the Japena) is the country 
of the Carapana Indians. 
Below the Jauarite caxoeira {i.e. just at its 
base) is the village which goes by the same name 
— or sometimes Povoacao de Callistro — the name 
of the existing chief, Tushaua of all the Tariana 
Indians. This contains some twenty houses, ranged 
chiefly along the brow of a steeply rising bank, which 
is of reddish sand in the upper part and rocky at the 
base by the river. The number of Pupunha palms^ 
standing in clusters on the hill-side and among the 
houses gives a very pretty appearance to the village. 
At the back of the other houses stands the large 
house of the Tushaua, at present considerably 
decayed and partly fallen away at one end, so that 
I could not ascertain its original length, but its 
breadth inside is 76 feet.^ Stretching away from 
this house towards the forest is a very broad sandy 
path, somewhat exceeding the width of the house, 
^ Humboldt in his Aspects of Nature describes the Pupunha palm 
(Piriguao or Pijiguao, as it is called in Venezuela) with a smooth and 
polished trunk between 60 and 70 feet high ; but in his Personal Narration 
he correctly says it has a thorny trunk more than 64 feet high. Again, 
in specifying what he considers requisites of beauty in Palms, he speaks of 
the heaveii- aspiring fronds of the Pijiguao, whereas they are remarkably 
earth-pointing, and the pendulous plume-like fronds of this palm are one of its 
most striking features. 
2 [I give the length as 115 feet {Travels on the A/nazon, p, 198), and I 
made a sketch of it, reproduced in my Palms of the A?fiazo7i, PI. xxxvi. — Ed.] 
