Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/381

 OF THE AMAZON. 341

both boiled as a vegetable, or with oil and vinegar as a salad.

All the tribes of the Uaup£s construct their dwellings after one plan, which is peculiar to them. Their houses arc the abode of numerous families, sometimes of a whole tribe. The plan is a parallelogram, with a semicircle at one end. The dimensions of one at Jauarite were one hundred and fifteen feet in length, by seventy-five broad, and about thirty high. This house would hold about a dozen families, consisting of near a hundred individuals. In times of feasts and dances, three or four hundred are accommodated in them. The roof is supported on fine cylindrical columns, formed of the trunks of trees, and beautifully straight and smooth. In the centre a clear opening is left, twenty feet wide, and on the sides are little partitions of palm-leaf thatch, dividing off rooms for the separate families : here are kept the private household utensils, weapons, and ornaments ; while the rest of the space contains, on each side, the large ovens and gigantic pans for making caxiri, and, in the centre, a place for the children to play, and for their dances to take place. These houses are built with much labour and skill ; the main supporters, beams, rafters, and other parts, are straight, well proportioned to the strength required, and bound together with split creepers, in a manner that a sailor would admire. The thatch is of the leaf of some one of the numerous palms so well adapted to the purpose, and is laid on with great compactness and regularity. The side-walls, which are very low, are formed also of palm thatch, but so thick and so well bound together, that neither arrow nor bullet will penetrate them. At the gable-end is a large door- way, about six feet wide and eight or ten high : the door is a large palm-mat, hung from the top, supported by a pole during the day, and let down at night. At the semicircular end is a smaller door, which is the private entrance of the Tushaua, or chief, to whom this part of the house exclusively belongs. The lower part of the gable-end, on each side of the entrance, is covered with the thick bark of a tree unrolled, and standing vertically. Above this is a loose hanging of palm-leaves, between the fissures of which the smoke from the numerous fires within finds an exit. In some cases this gable- end is much ornamented with symmetrical figures painted in colours, as at Carurtf caxoeira,