i34 
Manufacture of Paiwari. 
yond the grave, both among the Warraus as well as the different tribe® 
which I subsequently found opportunity of studying.* 
461. The morality of the Indians has become specially imperilled by 
the taste for liquor : it brings a new element into their crude souls and 
poisons the sources of their virtue. Europeans have been blamed for 
making choice of this terrible means to break the old-time strength of 
the tribes and so render them tractable through tveakness : but this is not 
quite correct. Though the evil has indeed increased since the appearance 
of the whites, whose self-interest lias not remained innocent in the cor- 
ruption of these people, they have not alone caused and introduced the 
vice which now reigns to such an awful extent amongst the Indians. 
40w. Before the discovery of America these races were already cog- 
nisant with intoxicating liquors which they prepared from palm-fruits, 
cassava-bread, maize, and potatoes, while the Paiwari, still up to now 
the favourite intoxicant of all the aborigines who have not yet entered 
into intimate and regular relation with Europeans, is an inheritance from 
the primitive times of their forefathers. Paiwari is made out of cas- 
sava bread. For this purpose, the bread is baked thicker and much hard- 
er than usual, so that the outer crust gets almost quite charred. After 
breaking it up, the pieces are thrown into a big vessel and boiling water 
poured over them. As soon as the mass has cooled, the women keep on 
stirring it round with their hands, and chew it handful after handful 
which brings it to a regular pap, to be spat into a second jug: by this 
dirty means the fermentation is said to lie hastened and, the drink to gain 
markedly in intoxiealting power. While the mhss is still fermenting it 
is mixed with the juice of the sugar-cane and sweet po'tatoes. 0 A second 
drink, which is equally intoxicating, is prepared in the same way out of 
sweet potatoes without further additions, but here the jug is carefully 
covered with plantain-leaves. 
463. The Mauritia flcxuosa Linn, is a most useful tree for the War- 
raus. There is hardly a portion of this magnificent palm, that is not 
utilised for economic purposes by the aborigines, for which reason the.des- 
eription given of it by missionary Gumilla in his account of the Orinoco 
as the “Arbol de la Vida (Tree of Life)” is quite intelligible. The fan- 
like fronds supply the Warraus with a covering for their houses, the 
frond-libres are made into hammock thread, and changed into rope, the 
pith contains a sort of sago which, especially with a failure in the cas- 
sava crop, constitutes their daily food, and the sheath-like base of the leaf- 
stalk gives material for the simple sandals of the savannah residents. 
Moreover, the fruits, something like fir-cones, after soaking for several 
days in water, afford a tit-bit that is much sought after, and the delicious 
sap of the tree which, pressing out of the openings made in the trunk for 
the purpose, easily changes into a very intoxicating wine-like drink. Why, 
even after death the palm continues to serve the Indians: it forms the 
store-house of a new dainty for them, the larva of a large beetle ( Cal an - 
dra \ palmarum ) which customarily lays its eggs in the dead trunk. These 
* See Roth op. eit. (Ed.) 
8 The Macusis use neither one nor the other in the manufacture of their Paiwari, (Ed.) 
