o that when she comes down she is reduced to a skeleton. The
intention of stinging her with ants is said to be to make her strong to
bear the burden of maternity.[144] Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl
at puberty is secluded in the house for a month, and allowed only a
small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken out into the midst
of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her four or five blows
with pieces of _sipo_ (an elastic climber), till she falls senseless or
dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four times at intervals
of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to
strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been made ready; the
_sipos_ are dipped into them and then given to the girl to lick, who is
now considered a marriageable woman.[145]

[Custom in South America of causing young men to be stung with ants as
an initiatory rite.]

The custom of stinging the girl at such times with ants or beating her
with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of
endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the
malignant influences with which a girl in this condition is believed to
be beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, by beating, by
incisions in the flesh, and by stinging with ants, have already come
before us.[146] In some Indian tribes of Brazil and Guiana young men do
not rank as warriors and may not marry till they have passed through a
terrible ordeal, which consists in being stung by swarms of venomous
ants whose bite is like fire. Thus among the Mauhes on the Tapajos
river, a southern tributary of the Amazon, boys of eight to ten years
are obliged to thrust their arms into sleeves stuffed with great
ferocious ants, which the Indians call _tocandeira_ (_Cryptocerus
atratus_, F.). When the young victim shrieks with pain, an excited mob
of men dances round him, shouting and encouraging him till he falls
exhausted to the ground. He is then committed to the care of old women,
who treat his fearfully swollen arms with fresh juice of the manioc; and
on his recovery he has to shew his strength and skill in bending a bow.
This cruel ordeal is commonly repeated again and again, till the lad has
reached his fourteenth year and can bear the agony without betraying any
sign of emotion. Then he is a man and can marry. A lad's age is reckoned
by the number of times he has passed through the ordeal.[147] An
eye-witness has