OF THE AMAZON. 
515 
Little is known of tlieir domestic customs and super- 
stitions. The men have each but one wife ; the dead are 
buried in the sandy beaches ; and they are not known to 
have any pages. A few families only live together, in little 
moveable villages, to each of which there is a Tushaua. 
They have, at times, dances and festivals, when they make 
intoxicating drinks from wild fruits, and amuse them- 
selves with rude musical instruments, formed of reeds 
and bones. They do not use salt, but prefer payment in 
fish-hooks, knives, beads, and farinha, for the salsaparilha 
and tmdle-oil which they sell to the traders. 
May not the curious disease, to which they are so 
subject, be produced by their habit of constantly sleep- 
ing naked on the sand, instead of in the comfortable, 
airy, and cleanly hammock, so universally used by almost 
every other tribe of Indians in this part of South America? 
The Catauixis, though in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the last, are very different. They have perma- 
nent houses, cultivate mandiocca, sleep in hammocks, and 
are clear- skinned. They go naked like the last, but do 
not bore holes in their nose and lips ; they wear a ring 
of twisted hair on their arms and legs. They use bows, 
arrows, and gravatanas, and make the ervadura, or ururi 
poison. Their canoes are made of the bark of a tree, 
taken off entire. They eat principally forest game, tapirs, 
monkeys, and large birds ; they are however cannibals, 
killing and eating any Indians of other tribes they can 
procure, and they preserve the meat, smoked and dried. 
Senhor Domingos, a Portuguese trader up the river 
Purus, informed me that he once met a party of them, 
who felt his belly and ribs, as a butcher would handle 
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