described how a young Mauhe hero bore the torture with
an endurance more than Spartan, dancing and singing, with his arms cased
in the terrible mittens, before every cabin of the great common house,
till pallid, staggering, and with chattering teeth he triumphantly laid
the gloves before the old chief and received the congratulations of the
men and the caresses of the women; then breaking away from his friends
and admirers he threw himself into the river and remained in its cool
soothing water till nightfall.[148] Similarly among the Ticunas of the
Upper Amazon, on the border of Peru, the young man who would take his
place among the warriors must plunge his arm into a sort of basket full
of venomous ants and keep it there for several minutes without uttering
a cry. He generally falls backwards and sometimes succumbs to the fever
which ensues; hence as soon as the ordeal is over the women are prodigal
of their attentions to him, and rub the swollen arm with a particular
kind of herb.[149] Ordeals of this sort appear to be in vogue among the
Indians of the Rio Negro as well as of the Amazon.[150] Among the
Rucuyennes, a tribe of Indians in the north of Brazil, on the borders of
Guiana, young men who are candidates for marriage must submit to be
stung all over their persons not only with ants but with wasps, which
are applied to their naked bodies in curious instruments of trellis-work
shaped like fantastic quadrupeds or birds. The patient invariably falls
down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his hammock, where he is
tightly lashed with cords. As they come to themselves, they writhe in
agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to and fro, causing the hut
to shake as if it were about to collapse. This dreadful ordeal is called
by the Indians a _marake_.[151]

[Custom of causing men and women to be stung with ants to improve their
character and health or to render them invulnerable.]

The same ordeal, under the same name, is also practised by the Wayanas,
an Indian tribe of French Guiana, but with them, we are told, it is no
longer deemed an indispensable preliminary to marriage; "it is rather a
sort of national medicine administered chiefly to the youth of both
sexes." Applied to men, the _marake_, as it is called, "sharpens them,
prevents them from being heavy and lazy, makes them active, brisk,
industrious, imparts strength, and helps them to shoot well with the
bow; without it the Indians would always be slack