y down to his knees; this
was simply a quantity of _mutum_ feathers tied together as a girdle
by means of plant-fibres. The women wore no clothing whatever, their
only ornamentation being the oval wooden piece in the lower lip and
fancifully arranged designs on face, arms, and body. The colours which
they preferred were scarlet and black, and they procured these dyes
from two plants that grew in the forest near by. They would squeeze
the pulp of the fruits and apply the rich-coloured juice with their
fingers, forming one scarlet ring around each eye, outside of this a
black and larger ring, and, finally, two scarlet bands reaching from
the temples to the chin.

There were probably sixty-five families in this communal hut,
all having their little households scattered throughout the place
without any separating partitions whatever. The many poles which
supported the roof formed the only way of distinguishing the individual
households. The men strung their hammocks between the poles in such a
way that they formed a triangle, and in the middle of this a fire was
always going. Here the women were doing the cooking of game that the
men brought in at all times of the day. The men slept in the hammocks,
while the women were treated less cavalierly; they slept with their
children on the ground under the hammocks around the little family
triangle. As a rule they had woven mats made of grass-fibre and
coloured with the juices of the _urucu_ plant and the _genipapa_,
but in many instances they had skins of jaguars, and, which was more
frequent, the furs of the three-toed sloths. These were placed around
the family fire, directly under the hammocks occupied by the men. In
these hammocks the men did most of the repair work on their bows and
arrows when necessary, here they fitted the arrow heads to the shafts,
in fact, they spent all their time in them when not actually hunting
in the forests.

The hospitality of my friends proved unbounded. The Chief appointed
two young girls to care for me, and though they were not startling
from any point of view, especially when remembering their labial
ornaments and their early developed abdominal hypertrophies, they were
as kind as any one could have been, watching me when I tried to walk
and supporting me when I became too weak. There was a certain broth
they prepared, which was delicious, but there were others which were
nauseating and which I had to force myself to eat. I soon learned
tha