The Savages, Standing In The
Canoe, Worked The Paddles With A Grace And Elegance Which The
Civilized Man Would Fail To Acquire, And The Narrow Craft Shot
Through The Water At Great Speed.
The chief sat in silence at the
stern.
I occupied a palm-fibre mat spread for me amidships. The very
few words of Portuguese my companions spoke or understood rendered
conversation difficult, so the stillness was broken only by the
gentle splash of the paddles. On each side the dense forest seemed
absolutely impenetrable, but we at last arrived at an opening. As we
drew ashore I noticed that an Indian path led directly inland.
Leaving our dug-out moored with a fibre rope to a large mangrove
tree, we started to thread our way through the forest, and finally
reached a clearing. Here we came upon a crowd of almost naked and
extremely dejected-looking women. Many of these, catching sight of
me, sped into the jungle like frightened deer. The chief's wife,
however, at a word from him, received me kindly, and after accepting
a brass necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable.
Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts,
alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching.
Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the
earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that
they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt
himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief
business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on
the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their
bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, made
from wild cotton, which there seems to abound. Writing of mosquitos,
let me say these Indian specimens were a terror to us all. What
numbers we killed! I could write this account in their blood. It was
my blood, though - before they got it! Men who hunt the tiger in
cool bravery boiled with indignation before these awful pests, which
stabbed and stung with marvellous persistency, and disturbed
the solitude of nature with their incessant humming. I write the
word incessant advisedly, for I learned that there are several
kinds of mosquitos. Some work by day and others by night. Naturalists
tell us that only the female mosquito bites. Did they take a
particular liking to us because we were all males?
Some of the Indians paint their naked bodies in squares, generally
with red and black pigment. Their huts were in some cases large, but
very poorly constructed. When any members of the tribe are taken sick
they are supposed to be "possessed" by a stronger evil power, and the
sickness is "starved out." When the malady flies away the life
generally accompanies it. The dead are buried under the earth inside
the huts, and in some of the dwellings graves are quite numerous.
This custom of interior burial has probably been adopted because the
wild animals of the forest would otherwise eat the corpse.
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