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There was a path through the forest which led to the mandioca fields, and several miles beyond to other houses on the banks of an interior channel. We were kindly received, as is always the case when a stranger visits these out-of-the-way habitations the people being invariably civil and hospitable.
We ran ashore in a most lonely and gloomy place, on a low sand- bank covered with bushes, secured the montaria to a tree, and then, after making a very sparing breakfast on fried fish and mandioca meal, rolled up our trousers and plunged into the thick forest, which here, as everywhere else, rose like a lofty wall of foliage from the narrow strip of beach.
It consisted of a few earthen pots; baskets made of palm-leaves, which were filled with Spanish potatoes, maize, mandioca roots, and various kinds of wild fruits; one or two drinking vessels; the hollow trunk of a tree, used for pounding maize in; and several dishes which contained the colours used by the Indians in painting their naked bodies, a custom which was very prevalent amongst them.
He bery bad man, with long shaggy hair, and live in de trees. He neber let anyone see him, but walk about all night, doing all the harm he can. Often he comes down to de plantations to steal de mandioca, and carry off young children when he can. Him got bright red face, and feet like de stag." "But if no one has seen him, how can you tell that he has got red face, cloven feet, and shaggy hair?"
The Brazilians have a mythological character called Mani a child who died and was buried in the house of her mother. Soon a plant sprang out of the grave, which grew, flourished, and bore fruit. This plant, says Mr. Dorman, was the Mandioca, named from Mani, and Oca, house.
The two languages are still spoken in various parts of the country. The Guaranis were superior in civilisation to numerous other intervening and more isolated tribes, who had sunk by degrees into greater barbarism. Like the Quichuas, they were agriculturalists cultivating mandioca, maize, calabashes, and potatoes.
The natives call it the furno do Piosoca, or oven of the Jacana, the shape of the leaves being like that of the ovens on which Mandioca meal is roasted. This eagle is considered a bird of ill omen by the Indians: it often perches on the tops of trees in the neighbourhood of their huts, and is then said to bring a warning of death to some member of the household.
Sometimes he is described as a kind of orangutang, being covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees. At others, he is said to have cloven feet and a bright red face. He has a wife and children, and sometimes comes down to the rocas to steal the mandioca. At one time I had a Mameluco youth in my service, whose head was full of the legends and superstitions of the country.
In the lower part of the Mahica woods, towards the river, there is a bed of stiff white clay, which supplies the people of Santarem with material for the manufacture of coarse pottery and cooking utensils: all the kettles, saucepans, mandioca ovens, coffee-pots, washing-vessels, and so forth, of the poorer classes, throughout the country, are made of this same plastic clay, which occurs at short intervals over the whole surface of the, Amazons valley, from the neighbourhood of Para to within the Peruvian borders, and forms part of the great Tabatinga marl deposit.
It was full of women and children, who were busy all day with their various employments; some weaving hammocks in a large clumsy frame, which held the warp while the shuttle was passed by the hand slowly across the six foot breadth of web; others were spinning cotton, and others again scraping, pressing, and roasting mandioca.
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