quick rate, until a spot
on shore is discovered easy of access and offering a dry fire-place and
some fuel for the preparation of breakfast. If it be on one of the long
sand-banks, a roof is made of one of the sails, that rarely serve for
anything else; if in the wood, the undergrowth, in the shade of some
large tree, is cleared for the reception of our little table and
tent-chairs.

The functions of the culinary _chef_ for the white faces, limited to the
preparation of a dish of black beans, with some fish or turtle, are
simple enough, but, to be appreciated, certainly require the hearty
appetite acquired by active life in the open air. The Indians have to
cook by turns for their respective boats' crews; their unalterable bill
of fare being a pap of flour of Indian corn or mandioca, with fresh or
dried fish, or a piece of _jacare_ (alligator).

Most of those who are not busy cooking spend their time preparing new
bast shirts, the material for which is found almost everywhere in the
neighborhood of our halting-places. Soon the wood is alive with the
sound of hatchets and the crack of falling trees; and, even before they
are summoned to breakfast, they return with pieces of a silky bast of
about four and a half yards long and somewhat less than one and a
quarter yard wide. Their implements for shirt-making are of primitive
simplicity,--a heavy wooden hammer with notches, called maceta, and a
round piece of wood to work upon. Continuously beaten with the maceta,
the fibres of the bast become loosened, until the originally hard piece
of wood gets soft and flexible, and about double its former breadth.
After it has been washed, wrung out to remove the sap, and dried in
the sun, it has the appearance of a coarse woollen stuff of a bright
whitish-yellow or light brown, disclosing two main layers of wavy fibres
held together by smaller filaments. A more easily prepared and better
working-garment for a tropical climate is hardly to be found than this,
called cascara by the Indians of Bolivia, and turury by those of the
Amazon. Its cut is as simple and classical as its material. A hole is
cut in the middle of a piece about ten feet long, to pass the head
through, and the depending skirt is sewn together on both sides, from
below up to the height of the girdle, which usually is a piece of cotton
string or liana.

Another branch of industry our Indians were busy at, in their hours of
leisure, was the fabrication of straw hats,