ese
Indians as the air they breathe. It is their wheat and corn and rice,
their soup and salad and dessert, their ice and their wine, for
besides being their staple food, it provides _casareep_ which
preserves their meat, and _piwarie_ which, like excellent wine,
brightens life for them occasionally, or dims it if overindulged
in--which is equally true of food, or companionship, or the oxygen in
the air we breathe.

Besides this cultivation, Grandmother has a small group of plants
which are only indirectly concerned with food. One is _kunami_, whose
leaves are pounded into pulp, and used for poisoning the water of
jungle streams, with the surprising result that the fish all leap out
on the bank and can be gathered as one picks up nuts. When I first
visited Grandmother's garden, she had a few pitiful little cotton
plants from whose stunted bolls she extracted every fiber and made a
most excellent thread. In fact, when she made some bead aprons for me,
she rejected my spool of cotton and chose her own, twisted between
thumb and finger. I sent for seed of the big Sea Island cotton, and
her face almost unwrinkled with delight when she saw the packets with
seed larger than she had ever known.

Far off in one corner I make certain I have found beauty for beauty's
sake, a group of exquisite caladiums and amaryllis, beautiful flowers
and rich green leaves with spots and slashes of white and crimson. But
this is the hunter's garden, and Grandmother has no part in it,
perhaps is not even allowed to approach it. It is the _beena_
garden--the charms for good luck in hunting. The similarity of the
leaves to the head or other parts of deer or peccary or red-gilled
fish, decides the most favorable choice, and the acrid, smarting juice
of the tuber rubbed into the skin, or the hooks and arrows anointed,
is considered sufficient to produce the desired result. Long ago I
discovered that this demand for immediate physical sensation was a
necessary corollary of doctoring, so I always give two medicines--one
for its curative properties, and the other, bitter, sour, acid or
anything disagreeable, for arousing and sustaining faith in my
ability.

The Indian's medicine plants, like his true name, he keeps to himself,
and although I feel certain that Grandmother had somewhere a toothache
bush, or pain leaves--yarbs and simples for various miseries--I could
never discover them. Half a dozen tall tobacco plants brought from
the far interior,