Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/379

 OF THE AMAZON. 339

which is applied in the spirally-grooved rifle-barrel : three feathers are used, and they are all secured spirally, so as to form a little screw on the base of the arrow, the effect of which of course must be, that the arrow revolves rapidly in its onward progress, and this no doubt tends to keep it in a direct course.

The gravatana and small poisoned arrows are made and used exactly as I have already described in my Narrative (page 147).

The small hand-nets used for catching fish are of two kinds, — a small ring-net, like a landing-net, and one spread between two slender sticks, just like the large folding-nets of entomo- logists : these are much used in the rapids, and among rocks and eddies, and numbers of fish are caught with them. They also use the rod and line, and consume an enormous quantity of hooks : there are probably not less than a hundred thousand fish-hooks sold every year in the river Uaupes ; yet there are still to be found among them many of their own hooks, in- geniously made of palm-spines. They have many other ways of catching fish : one is by a small cone of wicker, called a "matapf," which is placed in some little current in the gapd ; the larger end is entirely open, and it appears at first sight quite incapable of securing the fish, yet it catches great quantities, for when the fish get in they have no room to turn round, and cannot swim backwards, and three or four are often found jammed in the end of these little traps, with the scales and skin quite rubbed off their heads by their vain endeavours to pro- ceed onwards. Other matapis are larger and more cylindrical, with a reversed conical mouth (as in our wire rat-traps), to prevent the return of the fish : these are often made of a very large size, and are placed in little forest-streams, and in narrow channels between rocks, where the fish, in passing up, must enter them. But the best method of procuring fish, and that which has been generally adopted by the Europeans in the country, is with the Cacoaries, or fish-weirs. These are princi- pally used at high-water, when fish are scarce : they are formed at the margin of rivers, supported by strong posts, which are securely fixed at the time of low-water, when the place of the weir is quite dry ; to these posts is secured a high fence of split palm-stems, forming an entering angle, with a narrow opening into a fenced enclosure. Fish almost always travel against the stream, and generally abound more at the sides where the