242 TlMEHRI. 
as we do, but with long, pointed sticks. They weed the 
fields, make bread, and cook the meat. They spin their 
cotton, not with a spindle, but on their thighs, make 
hammocks, get fire wood, make palm oil, etc. The men 
make the houses and canoes, but the roofs are made 
by the women. The hammocks are made on frames 
resting against the posts of the hut. When finished the 
hammock is dyed ; that is, if it is for their own use, but, 
if made for a European, they leave it white. The orna- 
mentation is generally a kind of waved work, 
in which the pattern is made as duly and exactly 
as though they had used a rule and compasses. 
The women are just as dirty as the men in all 
they prepare ; in making their common drink, which 
is prepared of boiled cassava or sweet potato, 
they not only pound these fruits in a mortar, but also 
chew them to facilitate fermentation. Besides this 
beverage they make other kinds out of Carib cabbages, 
pine-apples, figs, bananas, but these beverages are so 
thick that they are rather to be eaten than to be 
drunk. Their meetings to drink this ouicou are 
their great festivities and debauches. Two or three 
families are > invited, and, they will drink 10 to 12 
barrels in a day and night without eating. These 
feasts always finish by someone getting killed or 
wounded, because, towards the end, men, women and 
children are all drunk. When the women make ham- 
mocks they place at both ends a small parcel of ashes. 
Unless this ceremony is observed the hammock would 
not last. Should they eat figs when they have 
a new hammock, they think it would get rotten. They 
take great care also, not to eat of certain fish with sharp 
