248 TlMEHRI. 
to the end of which they attach small shells. They also 
wear necklaces made out of large crystals and green 
stones,* which come from the Mainland, towards the 
Amazon River, and have a healing virtue ; it is their 
precious ornament and is only worn at feasts. They also 
roucou and blacken their body and paint on their fore- 
head a kind of veil which makes them look like a widow 
with crape on. They delight in painting their little 
children, using brushes made of their hair. The women 
bring forth children with little pain, and, if they feel any 
difficulty they use the root of a plant which relieves them. 
They often deliver near the fire, and the child is bathed 
at once ; but a funny precaution is, that if it is born at 
night, the men who are sleeping in the house go and bathe 
so that the child may not catch cold. The next day the 
mother attends to her household duties as if nothing had 
happened ; she fasts for a couple of days, eating only 
dried cassava, drinking warm water, and abstaining from 
eating female crabs, which would give the child stomach- 
ache. If it is a first born and a male, the husband, as 
soon as the woman is delivered, goes to bed, complains 
and acts as though he had been delivered, for this he goes 
to a different house and undergoes a fast of three months. 
The first ten days, he only takes a little dry cassava and 
some water ; afterwards, he begins to drink a little 
ouicou but abstains from everything else ; he eats only 
the middle of the cassava and keeps the rest for the feast 
at the end of the fast. He goes out only at night, sees 
nobody for fear of meeting a drunken body or one who 
has eaten fish ; this might tempt him and cause him to 
break his fast, the mother would become ill and the child 
* These are the well-known " Amazon stones." 
