THE TEST OF STRENGTH 
his knee. Children in the aidejas were playing at this 
game all the time. In the Bororo wrestling-matches, it 
was sufficient to be thrown down to be the loser, and it 
was not essential to touch the ground with both shoulder- 
blades. 
The only other game I saw among the Bororos was 
the test of strength. It was carried out with a most 
striking article — a great wheel made of sections, each 
one foot long, of the trunk of the burity palm tied to¬ 
gether by double strings of fibre. The ribbon thus 
formed by them was rolled so as to make a solid wheel 
of heavy wood six feet in diameter. The whole was 
retained in a circular form by a strong belt of vegetable 
fibre. This great wheel was used by the Bororos in 
their sports, at festivals, for testing the strength of 
the most powerful men. It was so heavy that few 
men could lift it at all, the great test being actually 
to place it on one’s head and keep it there for a length 
of time. 
The Indians of South America, like the Indians of 
North America, revelled in decorating themselves with 
the feathers of brightly-coloured birds. The red, yellow, 
and blue giant macaws, fairly common in that region, paid 
dearly for this fashion of the Indians. Many of those 
poor birds were kept in captivity and plucked yearly of 
all their feathers, in order to make hair ornaments of 
beautiful blue and green plumage for the leading 
musician, who rattled the bacco (a gourd full of pebbles 
which can make a terrible noise), or else armlets, earrings, 
or necklaces. Some of the designs woven with the tiniest 
feathers of those birds were quite clever, and required 
delicate handling in their manufacture. Ducks, too, 
supplied many of the feathers for the ornaments of the 
Bororos. 
Their cooking utensils were simple enough: merely a 
few large earthen bowls, badly baked and unglazed, the 
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