A Maté _yerbal_, or plantation, having been found, and a sum paid to Government for the collection of its leaves, a party of from twenty-five to thirty Indians settle down there with the intention of passing some five or six months. They make themselves as comfortable as circumstances will permit, by building wigwams covered with palm or banana leaves. Their next care is to beat, with mallets, a good hard and smooth earthen floor, about six feet square, which is called a _tatacua_. Over this is built an arch of poles, on which is spread the boughs of the _Ilex_, and under which a lively fire is kindled, that the leaves may be thoroughly dried without being scorched. This result being effected, the fire is swept off the hearth, and the dried branches being spread thereon, the leaves are beaten off with sticks, which operation reduces them to a coarse powder. Sometimes they are pounded in mortars, made by digging holes in the ground, well rammed; but now-a-days the Maté is generally treated in a more scientific and cleanly manner, the leaves being heated, as tea in China, in large iron pans set in brick work. The dried leaves are then taken to the Maté mill, which may be worked by water power, or by mules, the wooden stampers being worked by teeth placed spirally round the circumference of a revolving cylinder. A good-sized mill will turn out three tons of Maté in a day. The crushed leaves are then tightly packed in bags of damp bullock’s hide, sewn up and left to dry, when they become as hard as stones. These sacks generally weigh from 200 to 220 lbs., and this quantity is considered a good day’s work for a peon. The collectors suffer terribly during this six months of forest life, and the severe labour of collecting, in those tropical forests, is especially fatal to the unfortunate peons. Its use is as universal as tea in China. The method of taking it has not varied for centuries; and a description of it in 1713[133] is as good as if written to-day. [Illustration]