Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/418

402 calabashes for carrying water were hung on the walls of the cabin, as were also the spare arrows, the crop of wild cotton, and all the thousand nothings which these big children have the craze for collecting.

The fire is built out of doors when the weather permits it; but when it is raining, or is cold, it occupies the place of honor in the cabin, and men and animals sit around the blaze without seeming to be troubled by the smoky atmosphere. Fire is obtained by means of two sticks of dry wood, one of which, held tight between the feet, receives the end of the other. The second stick is revolved between the hands with a rapidity on the degree of which the production of the desired spark depends. The water is boiled on the fire for the maté, which is taken without sugar by means of a reed pipe; and the game is roasted there. If the weather is rainy, and laziness does not overcome the disposition to work, as it generally does, the man, smoking his pipe, weaves baskets and sieves for household use, and his wife oversees the preparations for the meal, or spins cotton, from which she makes a very durable cloth.

The men are generally well built and of medium stature; their limbs, especially in youth, are well developed—a result of their constant handling of large bows and their fondness for long walks. The color of their skin is a fine bronze, with variations that are largely dependent on the relative cleanliness of different individuals. With the bachelors, the ebony hair is worn flat, and covers the nape, while the married men wear it short and curled. Generally they wear no ornaments on the hair; but if there is occasion for it, the Cainguá bind their locks with a colored kerchief and perhaps put in a few feathers. Some travelers have spoken of tribes marked by their lighter tint and blond hair; so far as we have been able to find, there exist a few families in which albinism is hereditary, and this is probably what gave origin to the legend. Their face is full and round, the nose somewhat flattened, and the nostrils open, made so by the people's enlarging them with their fingers. The middle part of the lower lip is turned outward and pierced. The eyes, oblique, and always looking outward, give the physiognomy a very mild, even feminine, character.

The masculine dress consists of drawers terminating in fringes and bound in front and behind by a belt of braided hair; and for ornament a double collar is worn of the hard seeds of certain vegetable species mingled with variously colored bits of glass and vertebrae of small reptiles colored brown with quebracho. Under this collar a little pocket of raw hide holds the chewing tobacco. All, young and old, men and women, wear the barbote, or a hole in the lower lip, by means of which they can perfectly