Tattooing is very little practised by the Uaupes; they all, however, have a row of circular punctures along the arm, and one tribe, the Tucanos, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the chin. They also pierce the lower lip, through which they hang three little threads of white beads. All the tribes bore their ears, and wear in them little pieces of grass ornamented with feathers. The Cobeus alone expand the hole to so large a size that a bottle cork could be inserted. The dead are almost always buried in the houses, but several tribes have the horrid custom of disinterring the corpse about a month after the funeral, and putting it in a great oven over the fire till all the volatile parts are driven off with an intolerable stench. The black carbonaceous mass which remains is then pounded into a fine powder and mixed in several large vats of caxiri, or maize-beer. This is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished, for they imagine that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers. The belief, which is also common among the Negroes, that death in the prime of life does not proceed from a natural cause, but is owing to the evil practices of some enemy, leads to the same fatal consequences. Some poison given at a festival in a bowl of caxiri is generally used to avenge the dead; this is of course again retaliated--on perhaps the wrong party--and thus a long succession of murders may result from what at first was a mere groundless suspicion. The Macus, one of the lowest and most uncivilised tribes of Indians in the Amazons district, lead a vagrant life similar to that of the African Bushmen, but with this advantage--that they have greater facility in procuring food, and live in a country abounding in water. They have no fixed place of abode, but sleep at night on a bundle of palm leaves, or stick up a few leaves to make a shed if it rains, or sometimes with bush-ropes construct a rude hammock, which, however, serves only once. They eat all kinds of birds, and fish, roasted or boiled in palm spathes, and all sorts of wild fruits. They have little or no iron, and use the tusks of the wild pig to scrape and form their bows and arrows, which they anoint with poison. As the Bushmen do with their neighbours, they often attack the houses of other Indians, situated in solitary places, and are consequently equally detested by the surrounding tribes.