Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Additional Studies of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians: With Special Reference to Those of Southern British Guiana
Wichabai is a comparatively new settlement about 4 miles north of Dadanawa, but on the opposite bank of the Rupununi. Mr. John Melville has a wonderful menagerie here. Leaving aside the dogs, pigs, and poultry, the number of tame pets certainly surprised me, and still more so, the unrestricted liberty they all enjoyed. The only exception was a specimen of the somewhat rare white-faced monkey that was still undergoing its probationary period on at waist cord. Other wise the marmosets, parrots, powis, mocking birds, trumpeters, and macaw were as free to come and go as I was. The last-mentioned, a lovely full-grown example of the red variety, is worthy of special mention. Though trained by Mr. Turner, of Dadanawa, the bird spends his time between both places; if his master goes the rounds of his station for a few days, Master Robert will ?y over to Wichaba and put in time there. The huge beak and claws made me fight somewhat shy of him at first, but in a couple of days we had become fast friends. I had only to call him and he would perch on my shoulder and accompany me for a bath in the lake; were I lying in my hammock, he would join me, turn on his back, and expect me to scratch his chest and armpits; were I taking a meal, he would want his share. When not eating, sleeping, or worrying me, his chief amuse ment seemed to consist in picking quarrels with the roosters, nipping the marmo sets' and other monkeys' tails, or ?ying in a circle among a crowd of carrion crows and scattering them in all directions. In his habits he was as clean as a house dog, and I learned that these had been inculcated at a very early age by gently kicking him along the ?oor whenever he was guilty of misconduct.
While rummaging round one of the outbuildings at Wichabai station I found a woman in front of a huge frame, weaving a cotton hammock, and to my de light recognized it as of a rare Atorai type, one side smooth and the other rough, and further peculiar in that it is woven with six wefts and two heddles. (i might mention that a heddle is an apparatus for bringing the vertical warps forward into a position suitable for passing the horizontal wefts behind them.) I noted the special technical details, made sketches, and got a small model con structed. Sandy's wife and her friend were paid off and sent back home.
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