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The branches of this tree are greatly ramified and knotty, and the bark is white. Conspicuous, too, is the taxi, with brown buds and white flowers; while the margin of the water is thickly fringed by a belt of arrow-grass, or frexes so called by the Portuguese six feet in height. Its name is given in consequence of being used by the Indians in making arrows for their blowpipes.
Both were intrepid canoemen and huntsmen, and both perfectly at home anywhere in these fearful wastes of forest and water. Carepira had his son with him a quiet little lad of about nine years of age. These men in a few minutes constructed a small shed with four upright poles and leaves of the arrow-grass, under which Cardozo and I slung our hammocks.
First, there were the low and most recent alluvial deposits a mixture of sand and mud, covered with tall, broad- leaved grasses, or with the arrow-grass before described, whose feathery-topped flower-stem rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The only large trees which grow in these places are the Cecropiae. Many of the smaller and newer islands were of this description.
The men play a musical instrument, made of pieces of stem of the arrow-grass cut in different lengths and arranged like Pan-pipes. With this they wile away whole hours, lolling in ragged, bast hammocks slung in their dark, smoky huts.
The shaft is made of the flower-stalk of the arrow-grass. The head is composed of hard wood pointed, and sometimes armed with a serrated spine of the ray-fish, covered thickly with poison, and notched, so as easily to break off a most deadly weapon. Their arrows for shooting fish are armed with iron heads, while smaller arrows are used for shooting small game.
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