Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/223

 mocks. The total value of the produce annually exported from Ega, I calculated at from seven to eight thousand pounds sterling. Most of the articles are collected in the forest by the Ega people, who take their families and live in the woods for months at a time, during the proper seasons. Some of the productions, such as salsaparilla and balsam of copaüba, have been long ago exhausted in the neighbourhood of towns, at least near the banks of the rivers, the only parts that have yet been explored, and are now got only by more adventurous traders during long voyages up the branch streams. The search for India-rubber has commenced but very lately; the tree appears to grow plentifully on some of the rivers, but only an insignificant fraction of the immense forest has yet been examined. Grass hammocks are manufactured by the wild tribes, and purchased of them in considerable quantities by the salsaparilla collectors. They are knitted with simple rods, except the larger kinds, which are woven in clumsy wooden looms. The fibre of which they are made is not grass, but the young leaflets of certain kinds of palm trees (Astiyocaryum). These are split, and the strips twisted into two or three-strand cord, by rolling them with the fingers on the naked thigh. Salt-fish and mishíra are prepared by the half-breeds and civilized Indians, who establish fishing stations (feitorias) on the great sandbanks laid bare by the retreating waters, in places where fish, turtle, and manatee abound, and spend the whole of the dry season in this occupation. Turtle oil is made from the eggs of the large river turtle, and is one of the principal produc-