kindness. Most of the time was spent eating, walking around the
_malocas_, looking at dugouts, and at the farinha plants.

On the third day we went back to our _maloca_ where I prepared for
my return trip to civilisation. It was now the beginning of October.

I would, finally, have recorded many words of the Mangeroma language
had not my pencil given out after I had been there a month. The
pencil was an "ink-pencil," that is, a pencil with a solid "lead" of
bluish colour, very soft, sometimes called "indelible pencil." This
lead became brittle from the moisture of the air and broke into
fragments so that I could do nothing with it, and my recording was
at an end. Fortunately I had made memoranda covering the life and
customs before this.



CHAPTER X

THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE MANGEROMAS AND THE PERUVIANS


I was sitting outside the _maloca_ writing my observations in the
note-book which I always carried in my hunting-coat, when two young
hunters hurried toward the Chief, who was reclining in the shade of
a banana-tree near the other end of the large house. It was early
afternoon, when most of the men of the Mangeromas were off hunting in
the near-by forests, while the women and children attended to various
duties around the village. Probably not more than eight or ten men
remained about the _maloca_.