Chap. IL BUILD A CANOE. 117 
I stayed at the sitio of Joao Aracu until the 19th, 
and again, in descending, spent fourteen days at the same 
place. The situation was most favourable for collecting 
the natural products of the district. The forest was not 
crowded with underwood, and pathways led through it 
for many miles and in various directions. I could make 
no use here of our two men as hunters, so, to keep them 
employed whilst Jose and I worked daily in the woods, 
I set them to make a montaria under Joao Aracu s 
directions. The first day a suitable tree was found for 
the shell of the boat, of the kind called Itaiiba amarello, 
the yellow variety of the stone-wood. They felled it, and 
shaped out of the trunk a log nineteen feet in length : 
this they dragged from the forest, with the help of my 
host's men^ over a road they had previously made with 
pieces of round wood to act as rollers. The distance 
was about half a mile, and the ropes used for drawing 
the heavy load were tough lianas cut from the sur- 
rounding trees. This part of the work occupied about 
• a week : the log had then to be hollowed out, which 
was done with strong chisels through a slit made down 
the whole length. The heavy portion of the task being 
then completed, nothing remained but to widen the 
opening, fit two planks for the sides and the same 
number of semicircular boards for the ends, make the 
benches, and caulk the seams. 
The expanding of the log thus hollowed out is a criti- 
cal operation, and not always successful, many a good 
shell being spoilt by its splitting or expanding irregu- 
larly. It is first reared on tressels, with the slit down- 
wards, over a large fire, which is kept up for seven or 
