calling birds-in imitating, that is, the note of any bird which they think may be in the neighbourhood, and so attracting them to their destruction. The Indian name for a bird is almost always an imitation of its cry. This Indian habit of mimicry was well illustrated on one occasion, when two of my Indians started from our camp in two directions to shoot a maam (Tinamus), neither knowing that the other was going. Presently one, hearing the cry of a maam some distance on his right, began to imitate it to draw the bird nearer. The other heard a maam cry on his left, and he too began to imitate it. Each mistook the cry of the other for that of a real bird, and the two continued calling each other and drawing nearer through the thick bush, until they met; each, thinking that he was just about to see his bird, found the other had mimicked the cry of the maam only too well. They came back to camp in very bad temper.

From what has been said it will be sufficiently evident that the objects for which the Indian hunts or fishes are many and various; and it is very rarely that he is unsuccessful. It is, however, noticeable that the Indian can generally hunt successfully only in a district which he knows, and that Indians in travelling through a strange country seldom attempt to hunt, and when they do, meet with but small success. As the provisions which he thus gets have to be carried home, often a journey of some days, and as even after that they have to last for some time, the meat and most of the fish is smoked or babracoted; the rest of the fish is salted, as has already been described in the case of the pacu shot in the falls. A babracot is a stage of green sticks, built over a fire, on which the meat is laid and exposed for a long time to the action of the smoke. Meat, fish, and even eggs treated in this way become very tasteless, but retain their nutritive powers for a long while, and may either be eaten without further preparation or may be further cooked.

Land tortoises being very common in the forest, the Indian collects these, slings them with a piece of bush-rope across his shoulders, and so carries them home alive. Sometimes also

THE RETURN FROM HUNTING.

249

he carries with him one or two of the round, porcelain-like eggs of these tortoises. In the open savannah country, where such a signal may be seen from a long distance, the hunters, when yet far from home, make a big fire, as a signal to announce their coming to their women-kind at home, that due preparation in the shape of a large amount of bread and drink may be prepared. At last they arrive at home, deliver over the meat into the hands of the women, and sink into their hammocks to rest for several days.

CHAPTER XII.

AGRICULTURE.

An Indian Field-Method of Cultivation-Cassava-Abandonment of Field-Maize in the Mountains-Drought and Famine.

THE Indians living in the forest use the clearings in which their houses stand as chief provision fields; but even they generally have one or more other fields at favourable spots in the neighbouring forest. The fields of the savannah Indians are, on the contrary, almost invariably at some considerable distance, often indeed very far from their houses; for the ground round the houses is unshaded, stony, and unproductive, and it is only in the moist and shady coppices that provisions flourish.

One only uses the word 'field' of the spots cultivated by the Indians in default of a more apt term. A stranger on first seeing an Indian field, with its surrounding wall of natural forest, might well think it a place no longer cultivated, but some former clearing in the forest in which the natural growth had once more sprung up unchecked. The cassava and other cultivated plants are lost among the bushy off-shoots which have sprung from the stumps of felled trees, the trunks and branches of which lie just where they fell among the tangled growth. The bark has fallen from some of these trunks, and their white wood glistens in the sun; others are blackened and charred by fire; others again have retained their bark, as on the day they fell. Often, among all this, it is almost impossible to discern the narrow foottrodden track which, winding in and out among the fallen trunks and the cassava plants, leads through the field.

This is how the field was made. A fitting place having

been chosen-cassava, the main object of cultivation, flourishes best in sandy soil-the men cut down the undergrowth and fell the trees. Then, when it seems likely that the weather will be dry, they set fire to the fallen refuse. The leaves and smaller branches of the trees, together with the cut and now withered undergrowth, slowly burn; but the tree-trunks and the larger branches are only more or less charred. The fire smoulders long, often for many days; and when at last it dies out, there is an open space in the forest, floored with hot white ashes, and empty but for prostrate trunks, the crooked branches of which stand up into the air, and but for any palms which may have been there for these are always allowed to stand if they are of a kind with edible fruit. The men have now finished their share of the work.

At the beginning of the following wet season the women come, guarded, if the field is far from home, against sudden attacks of jaguars or snakes by a few wretchedly lean dogs, and carrying on their backs baskets heavy with a load of cassava sticks to be used as cuttings. Here and there, at somewhat irregular intervals, they loosen small patches of the soil, hardly more than a foot in diameter, and in each of these they insert three or four cassava sticks. The field is then virtually formed.

From time to time, while the cassava is growing, the women do just so much weeding as is absolutely necessary to prevent the cultivated plants from being choked by the wild growths which spring up side by side with them; and while so doing, pine-tops, banana, and plaintain suckers, pumpkin and water-melon seeds, yams, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, papaws, cashews, tobacco, and, above all, red and yellow podded peppers (Capsicums) are planted wherever there is

space.

During the ten months which generally pass before the cassava reaches maturity, not only shoots from the wild. plants which formerly occupied the ground, but also those creepers and other plants which in this, even more than in most other climates, are never seen while the land is left in

a natural state, but always appear wherever man makes a clearing, spring up with new and surprising vigour. Of these weeds which infest Indian fields, first the razor-grass (Scleria scindens) throws its endless stems and grass-like leaves, stems and leaves alike as keenly edged as knives, over the cassava and other plants, and then, having overrun the clearing, flings itself up on to the trees which edge the surrounding forest and, finding no yet higher thing to which to reach, hangs its tangled ends like a curtain from branch and bush. Passion-flowers send out long tendrils, which creep along the ground and up on to the bushes, where they hang their flowers, according to their kind, some large and purple, others crimson, others white (Passiflora laurifolia), and one (P. fætida) the small pale-coloured petals of which, buried in large moss-like green sepals, remind one of a flower common in old-fashioned English gardens, called with quaint variety 'Love-in-a-mist' and 'Devil-in-a-bush * (Nigella damascena). Various kinds of pea-flowers and convolvulus add to the confusion. Before long, the hollow and straight stems of the trumpet-wood (Cecropia peltata), each crowned with a single rosette of a few big maple-shaped leaves, rise over everything, and with marvellous rapidity reach a height of from twenty to thirty feet.

At last, in the ninth or tenth month, seeds appear among the hemp-like leaves at the ends of the straggling branches of the cassava plants. This is a sign that the roots are ready for use. Again the work is done by the women. They cut down the cassava and the weed-bush, and dig up the roots, not all at once, but as they are required. Some short straight lengths of the stems of the cassava-sufficient to reproduce the number of plants which have been dug up-are cut and inserted in the ground as before, and in the same spots. By the way, an old Indian tradition tells that when cassava was first given to the Indians, after their first appearance upon earth, they knew not how to make it reproduce itself; when they tried to sow the seeds or to plant the tubers, it always failed to grow; but, just as the stock was dying out,