294 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. \Ju7ie, 
the dancing, which was taking place in the body of the 
house, in a large clear space round the two central co- 
lumns. A party of about fifteen or twenty middle-aged 
men were dancing ; they formed a semicircle, each with 
his left hand on his neighbour’s right shoulder. They 
were all completely furnished with their feather orna- 
ments, and I now saw for the first time the head-dress, 
or acangatara, which they value highly. This consists 
of a coronet of red and yellow feathers disposed in re- 
gular rows, and firmly attached to a strong woven or 
plaited band. The feathers are entirely from the shoul- 
ders of the great red macaw, but they are not those that 
the bird naturally possesses, for these Indians have a 
cmdous art by which they change the colours of the fea- 
thers of many birds. 
They pluck out those they wish to paint, and in the 
fresh wound inoculate with the milky secretion from the 
skin of a small frog or toad. When the feathers grow 
again they are of a brilliant yellow or orange colour, 
without any mixture of blue or green, as in the natural 
state of the bird ; and on the new plumage being again 
plucked out, it is said always to come of the same colour 
without any fresh operation. The feathers are re- 
newed but slowly, and it requires a great number of 
them to make a coronet, so we see the reason why the 
owner esteems it so highly, and only in the greatest ne- 
cessity will part with it. 
Attached to the comb on the top of the head is a fine 
broad plume of the tail-coverts of the white egret, or 
more rarely of the under tail-coverts of the great harpy 
eagle. These are large, snowy white, loose and downy. 
