Among the Ajetas old age is highly respected. It is always one of the oldest men who governs the assembled body. All the savages of this race live, as I have stated, in large families of from sixty to eighty persons. They ramble about through the forests, without having any fixed spot for their abode; and they change their encampment according to the greater or less quantity of game which they find in various places. While thus living in a state of nature altogether primitive, these savages have no instrument of music, and their language imitating, as I have stated, the cries of monkeys, has very few sounds, which are extremely difficult for a stranger to pronounce, how much soever may be his eagerness to study them. They are excellent hunters, and make a wonderful use of the bow. The young negroes, however little, of each sex, while their parents are out hunting, amuse themselves on the banks of the rivulets with their small bows. If by chance they see any fish in the translucent stream they let fly an arrow at it, and it is seldom that they miss their aim. All the weapons of the Ajetas are poisoned; a simple arrow could not cause a wound so severe as to stop a strong animal, such as a deer, in its course; but if the dart has been smeared with the poison known to them, the smallest puncture of it produces in the wounded animal an inextinguishable thirst, and death ensues upon satisfying it. The hunters then cut out the flesh around the wound, and use the remainder as food, without any danger; but if they neglect this precaution, the meat becomes so exceedingly bitter that even the Ajetas themselves cannot eat it. Never having given credit to the famous boab of Java, I made experiments at Sumatra on the sort of poison of which the Malays make use to poison their weapons. I discovered that it was simply a strong solution of arsenic in citron juice, with which they coated their arms several times. I tried to find the poison used by the Ajetas. They led me to the foot of a large tree, and tore off a piece of its bark, and told me that that was the poison they used. I chewed some of it before them; it was insupportably bitter, but otherwise not injurious in its natural state. But the Ajetas make a preparation of it, the secret of which they refused to impart to me. When their poison is made up as a paste, they give to their arms a thin coating of it, about an eighth of an inch in thickness.