344 
Indians’ Fondness eor Dogs. 
lighter, but certainly not so lasting. Since leaving Pirara I had not 
seen a house with mud walls. 
932. After the children, yelling and screeching, had run into the 
houses and the adult residents had scrutinised me With curiosity and 
astonishment, the head of the settlement approached one of my men and 
addressed him with a short salutation formula, which, word for word, 
ran: “Sit thou down, sit thou safe and sound down.” The person so 
addressed replied to the greeting with a plain “Wang,” i.e., “It is good.” 
The chieftain thereupon turned to the next of my companions and went 
on greeting everyone in the same way. His two sons followed and after 
them, the remaining members of the settlement, who repeated the same 
formula. As for me who was excluded from it, their ceremony, lasting 
as it did for almost half an hour, was dull enough. But when the 
residents learnt from my men the object of my coming, an old Macusi 
offered to take me next morning up the Ilamikipang, as he had rendered 
the same service upwards of four years ago to my brother, whose 
personality he remembered down to the most minute particulars. The old 
man had an especial interest for me in that he had been described as one 
of the most celebrated poison-makers in the district, on which account 
I could be all the more certain of his knowing the habitat of all urari 
plants in the whole neighbourhood. 
933. That the innumerable village dogs, momentarily silenced by 
infinite trouble on the part of the women, did not belong to the dumb 
variety was demonstrated clearly enough, because hardly did I let myself 
be seen than the whole pack started an uproar that I could only stand 
with difficulty. Except for the larger specimens, which judging from 
their whole build must have been of Spanish origin, the remainder 
belonged to a sharp snouted small breed with long and dark hair. While 
I soon got on friendly terms with the former, I remained on a war- 
footing with the latter. The dog is to the Indian what his mare is to the 
Arab. In spite of the animals often resembling living skeletons, they 
stand next to their children in their affections, and as the most valuable 
prize of an Indian is a gun or an axe, he accordingly asks for one of these 
articles whenever anybody wants to trade with him for a dog. Fowls 
and dogs constitute the main items of the Indian’s live-stock, but both 
were first introduced by the Spaniards. I have already mentioned the 
fact of the Indian eating neither fowls nor their eggs nor in general the 
flesh of imported animals except under circumstances of direst necessity: 
it, might have come about on this account principally that the herds of 
wild cattle have increased so enormously. The piai is even forbidden to 
eat the flesh of introduced animals. 
934. Shortly after my arrival a woman brought me a cup with a 
drink that indeed resembled chocolate, but did not at all taste like it. It 
was prepared from the ripe fruits of the Turu palm ( Oenocarpus 
Bataua and 0. Bdcdba). The ripe blue fruits are boiled for this purpose, 
then thrown into a sort of mortar, where they are stirred round and 
round until the flesh loosens from off the stone, whereupon the latter 
are removed by means of a sifter, and the slimy mass thinned with 
water. The drink has such an insipid taste that it could not possibly 
