talls in an old-fashioned public room of an
inn, each of which is inhabited by a separate family. The chief, or
tushaua, resides at the semicircular end, where he has a private
entrance. The furniture consists of hammocks, with various pots and
cooking utensils made of clay, as well as baskets. Their canoes are
formed out of a single tree, hollowed and forced open by cross-pieces.
Some are forty feet in length. The dead are nearly always buried in the
houses: a large house having sometimes one hundred graves in it.

From the Rio Negro to the Andes there is a large region, inhabited
entirely by savages of whom little is known, except that they are mostly
cannibals, and kill all their first-born children. On the other side of
the Amazon also is a still larger tract of virgin forest, where not a
single civilised man is to be found.

THE PURUPURUS.

Among these tribes, the Purupurus, although thorough savages, are
perhaps the best-known. They wear no clothes whatever; their
habitations are small huts rudely formed of boughs, which they set up on
the sand. Their canoes are of the rudest construction, having flat
bottoms and upright sides. They use neither the bow nor the gravatana,
but instead have a weapon called the palheta, from which they can cast
an arrow, as from a sling, with wonderful dexterity. In the septum of
the nose and in the ears they bore holes, in which they wear rings.

THE CATAUIXIS.

In their immediate neighbourhood, the Catauixis tribe is found. Though
they go naked, they build houses, and use bows and gravatanas. Their
canoes are constructed of the bark of a tree taken off entire. They are
also cannibals, and murder the people of other tribes whom they can
surprise.

Many of the least barbarous tribes have frequently large meetings, when
they dress up in feather ornaments of parrots and macaws in a variety of
curious disguises. The chief wears a head-dress of toucan feathers,
with the erect tail-plumes rising from the crown. The mask dresses are
long cloaks, made of the inner bark of a tree. Sometimes they
manufacture head-pieces, by stretching the cloth over a basketwork
frame, to represent the heads of monkeys and other animals. When thus
dressed, they perform a monotonous seesaw and stamping dance,
accompanied by singing and drumming. Often this sport is kept up for
several days and nights in succession. During the time, they drink
large quantities of caxiri, while they smoke