"The Tuchão of the Malocca, called Mandu-assu, received me with cordiality, and offered me his cabin. Fatigued from the journey, and finding there some birds and rare plants, I remained several days.
"Mandu-assu marvelled to see me carefully preserve the birds the hunter killed, and the leaves of plants, or wood, that possessed medicinal virtues. He never left me; accompanied me through the forests, and gave me many plants of whose properties I was ignorant.
"Rendered still more communicative by the small presents I made him, he gave me not only all the particulars I wished upon the cultivation and preparation of the guaraná, but also answered fully all my questions.
"I left him for the Malocca of Mossé, whose chief was his relative. This chief was more distant and savage than Mandu-assu, and received me with suspicion. I was not discouraged, as I only went to induce him to exchange, for some articles, his paricá, or complete apparatus for taking a kind of snuff which the great people of the country frequently use.
"My cause, however, was not altogether lost; my hunter, who had been in a cabin of the village, took me to see a young Indian who had been bitten the evening previous by a surucucurano serpent. I opened the wound, bled him, and again used the volatile salts. Whilst I operated, a young Indian woman, singularly beautiful, sister of the wounded man, supported the leg. She watched me with astonishment, and, whilst I was binding up the wound with cotton soaked in alkali, (salts,) she disappeared, and I saw her no more.
"The Indian was relieved. The old Tuchão knew of it; and, to thank me for it, or rather, I believe, to test me, presented me with a calabash, in which he poured a whitish and disgusting drink, exhaling a strong door of corruption. This detestable liquor was the cachiri, (masato,) a drink that would make hell vomit; but the Indians passionately love it. I knew by experience that by refusing to drink I would offend this proud Mahué, and that if I remained in this Malocca I should assuredly die from want, because even a calabash of water would be refused me. I shut my eyes and drank.
"The cachiri is the substance of the manioc root, softened in hot water, and afterwards chewed by the old women of the Malocca. They spit it into great earthen pans, when it is exposed to a brisk fire until it boils. It is then poured into pots and suffered to stand until a putrid fermentation takes place.
"The Indian afterwards took his paricá. He beat, in a mortar of sapucaia, a piece of hard paste, which is kept in a box made of a shell; poured this pulverized powder upon a dish presented by another Indian, and with a long pencil of hairs of the tamandua bandeira, he spread it evenly without touching it with the fingers; then taking pipes joined together, made of the quills of the gaviâo real, (royal eagle,) and placing it under his nose, he snuffed up with a strong inspiration all the powder contained in the plate. His eyes started from his head; his mouth contracted; his limbs trembled. It was fearful to see him; he was obliged to sit down, or he would have fallen; he was drunk, but this intoxication lasted but five minutes; he was then gayer.
"Afterwards, by many entreaties, I obtained from him his precious paricá, or rather one of them, for he possessed two.
"At the Malocca of Taguariti, where I was the next day, the Tuchão, observing two young children returning from the woods laden with sarsaparilla, covered with perspiration, and overcome, as much by the burden they carried as the distance they had travelled, called them to him, beat some paricá, and compelled them to snuff it.