ee days without eating or drinking. When the three days
were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her
feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of nature, a female
relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her
a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl's body.
Being replaced in her hammock, she was now allowed to get some flour,
boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh. Thus she
continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which
she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back.
During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of
abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third month
she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as
usual.[141]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of Guiana; custom of
beating the girls and of causing them to be stung by ants.]

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shews the first signs
of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut.
For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at
night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it,
else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts
of her body. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast
rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her
abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner
of the hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a
separate fire and in a vessel of her own. After about ten days the
magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on
her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has come in
contact. The pots and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and the
fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be
beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end
of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now
"clean," and can mix again with people.[142] Other Indians of Guiana,
after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a month,
expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.[143]
Sometimes, in addition to being stung with ants, the sufferer has to
fast day and night so long as she remains slung up on high in her
hammock, s