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Show TErPE~ A D DESETIT . 35 sw·e of the luxuriant climber which twine around their massive trunk . .Agouti~, small potted antelope , cuirassed armudillocs, which, like rats, tartle the hare in its subterranean holes, herds of lazy chiguire,, beautifully striped vivcrrro which poison the air with their odor, the large maneless lion, potted jaguars, (often called tiger ) trong enough to drag away a young bull after killing himthe e, and many other form of animal life, (30) wander through the treele plain. Thus, almo t exclusively inhabited by these wild animals, the teppe would offer little attraction or means of subsistence to those nomadic native hordes, who, like the Asiatics of Hindostan, prefer yegetable nutriment, if it were not for the occasional presence of single individuals of the fan palm, the Mauritia. The benefits of this life- upporting tree are widely celebrated; it alone, from the mouth ofthe Orinoco to north of the Sierra de Imataca, feeds the unsubdued nation of the Guaranis. (31) When this people were more numerous, and lived in closer contiguity, not only did they support their hut on the cut trunks of palm trees as pillars on which rested a scaffolding forming the floor, but they also, it is said, twined from the leaf- talks of the Mauritia cords and mats, which, skilfully interwoven and suspended from stem to stem, enabled them in the rainy season, when the Delta is overflowed, to live in the trees like the apes. The floor of these raised cottages is partly covered with a coating of damp clay, on which the women make fires for household purposes-the flames appearing at night from the river to be suspended high in air. The Guaranis still owe the preservation of their physical, and perhaps also their moral, independence, to the half-submerged, marshy soil over which they move with a light and -rapid step, and to their elevated dwellings in the trees-a habitation never likely to be chosen from motives of religious enthusiasm by an American Stylites. (32) But the Mauritia affords to the Guaranis not merely a secure dwelling-place, but also various kinds of food. Before the flower of the male palm tree breaks through its tender sheath, and only at that period of vegetable metamorphosis, the pith of the stem of the tree contains a meal resembling sago, which, like the farina of the jatropha root, is dried in thin breadlike slices. The fermented juice of the tree forms the sweet, intoxi- |
