Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/249

 potato, by means of a clay still, which had been manufactured by herself. The liquor had a reddish tint, but not a very agreeable flavour. A cup of it warm from the still, however, was welcome after our long journey. Cardozo liked it, emptied his cup, and replenished it in a very short time. The old lady was very talkative, and almost fussy in her desire to please her visitors. We sat in tucúm hammocks, suspended between the upright posts of the shed. The young woman with the blue mouth—who, although married, was as shy as any young maiden of her race—soon became employed in scalding and plucking fowls for the dinner, near the fire on the ground at the other end of the dwelling. The son-in-law, Pedro-uassú, and Cardozo now began a long conversation on the subject of their deceased wife, daughter, and comadre. It appeared she had died of consumption—"tisica," as they called it, a word adopted by the Indians from the Portuguese. The widower repeated over and over again, in nearly the same words, his account of her illness, Pedro chiming in like a chorus, and Cardozo moralising and condoling. I thought the cauím (grog) had a good deal to do with the flow of talk and warmth of feeling of all three: the widower drank and wailed until he became maundering, and finally fell asleep.

I left them talking, and went a long ramble into the forest, Pedro sending his grandson, a smiling well-behaved lad of about fourteen years of age, to show me the paths, my companion taking with him his Zaraba-