re taken and nursed by the
women of the village.

I once saw a big boar that followed a Sakai tribe with wonderful
docility even allowing the children to play tricks upon it; it had been
brought up by the women.

I have also seen rats, that have been reared by these foster-mothers, go
backwards and forwards from the hut at their will, and I remember that
one night when I had taken shelter in one of these cabins and had
selected a particular corner for my night's rest, the dark lady of the
house, without raising any objection to my choice, warned me that during
the night a rat would return to repose in the same spot and begged me
not to do any harm to the poor thing, as he was one of the family, but
to call her if it gave me any disturbance.

In fact I was fast asleep when some warm fur softly caressed me, and
waking up I understood that the dissolute rodent--almost bigger than a
cat--had returned home in the small hours, just as if he had been
provided with a latch-key.

I hastily called the woman who tenderly took it up and carried it away
to sleep with her.

It was an adopted child!

Is not this the acme of maternal feeling? And does it not approach
foolishness?

* * * * *

The birth, and subsequent suckling, of her first child put an end to the
grace and bloom of a Sakai woman.

[Illustration: A child being tattooed.

_p._ 140.]

She fulfils with incomparable zeal the functions confided to her by
Nature, but as she has, at the same time, to attend to the heavy duties
allotted her by man she becomes over-worked and worn-out with excessive
fatigue.

When thirty years old she looks almost as old and withered as one of our
hard-worked countrywomen does at fifty, and the poor creature cannot in
any way conceal this premature falling off because of--the extreme
lightness of her attire.

"The tailor tree of our great father Adam" has no leaves for the
inhabitants of the jungle, for both male and female only wear a strip of
bark (well beaten to render it flexible) wound round the body and
fastened on the hips.

That worn by the men never exceeds four inches in breadth, but the women
use lists of from six to eight inches wide. Another piece of bark-cloth
is passed between the legs and tied, in front and behind, to this belt.

The women, although daughters of the forest, are not without a certain
amount of coquetry and will often decorate their girdles with flowers or
medici