Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/221

 1S51.] INMATES OF THE MALOCCA. 191

such occasions. Their hair was but moderately long, and they were without any ornament but strongly knitted garters, tightly laced immediately below the knee.

It was the men, however, who presented the most novel appearance, as different from all the half-civilised races among whom I had been so long living, as they could be if I had been suddenly transported to another quarter of the globe. Their hair was carefully parted in the middle, combed behind the ears, and tied behind in a long tail reaching a yard down the back. The hair of this tail was firmly bound with a long cord formed of monkeys' hair, very soft and pliable. On the top of the head was stuck a comb, ingeniously constructed of palm-wood and grass, and ornamented with little tufts of toucans' rump feathers at each end ; and the ears were pierced, and a small piece of straw stuck in the hole ; altogether giving a most feminine appearance to the face, increased by the total absence of beard or whiskers, and by the hair of the eyebrows being almost entirely plucked out. A small strip of " tururi " (the inner bark of a tree) passed between the legs, and secured to a string round the waist, with a pair of knitted garters, constituted their simple dress.

The young man was lazily swinging in a maqueira, but dis- appeared soon after we entered ; the elder one was engaged making one of the flat hollow baskets, a manufacture peculiar to this district. He continued quietly at his occupation, answering the questions Senhor L. put to him about the rest of the inhabitants in a very imperfect " Lingoa Geral," which language is comparatively little known in this river, and that only in the lower and more frequented parts. As we wanted to procure one or two men to go with us, we determined to stay here for the night. We succeeded in purchasing for a few fish-hooks some fresh fish, which another Indian brought in : and then prepared our dinner and coffee, and brought our maqueiras up to the house, hanging them in the middle aisle, to pass the night there. About dusk many more Indians, male and female, arrived ; fires were lighted in the several compartments, pots put on with fish or game for supper, and fresh mandiocca cakes made. I now saw several of the men with their most peculiar and valued ornament — a cylindrical, opaque, white stone, looking like marble, but which is really quartz imperfectly crystallized. These stones are from four to eight inches long,