Horrible To Relate, Their Own Half-Wild Dogs Sometimes Devour The Dead, Though An Older Member Of The Tribe Is Generally Left Home To Mount Guard.

Seeing by the numerous gourds scattered around that they were drinking chicha, I solicited some, being anxious to taste the beverage which had been used so many centuries before by the old Incas.

The wife of the chief immediately tore off a branch of the feather palm growing beside her, and, certainly within a minute, made a basket, into which she placed a small gourd. Going to the other side of the clearing, she commenced, with the agility of a monkey, to ascend a long sapling which had been laid in a slanting position against a tall palm tree. The long, graceful leaves of this cabbage palm had been torn open, and the heart thus left to ferment. From the hollow cabbage the woman filled the gourd, and lowered it to me by a fibre rope. The liquid I found to be thick and milky, and the taste not unlike cider.

Prescott tells us that Atahuallpa, the Peruvian monarch, came to see the conqueror, Pizarro, "quaffing chicha from golden goblets borne by his attendants." [Footnote: Este Embajador traia servicio de Senor, i cinco o seis Vasos de Oro fino, con que bebia, i con ellos daba a beber a los Espanoles de la chicha que traia." - Xerez.] Golden goblets did not mean much to King Atahuallpa, however, for his palace of five hundred different apartments is said to have been tiled with beaten gold.

In these Guato Indians I observed a marked difference to any others I had visited, in that they permitted the hair to grow on their faces. The chief was of quite patriarchal aspect, with full beard and mild, intelligent-looking eyes. The savages inhabiting the Chaco consider this custom extremely "dirty."

Before leaving these people I procured some of their bows and arrows, and also several cleverly woven palm mats and cotton fans.

Some liquor our cook gave away had been taken out by the braves to their women in another encampment. These spirits had so inflamed the otherwise retiring, modest females that they, with the men, returned to the steamer, clamoring for more. All the stores, along with some liquors we carried, were under my care, and I kept them securely locked up, but in my absence at the Indian camp the store-room had been broken open, and our men and the Indians - men and women - had drunk long and deep. A scene like Bedlam, or Dante's "Inferno," was taking place when I returned. Willing as they were to listen to my counsel and admit that I was certainly a great white teacher, with superior wisdom, on this love for liquor and its debasing consequences they would hear no words. The women and girls, like the men, would clamor for the raw alcohol, and gulp it down in long draughts. When ardent spirits are more sought after by women and girls than are beads and looking-glasses it surely shows a terribly depraved taste.

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