Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

TARAPOTO TO CANELOS 113
thick, nose straight or slightly Roman, forehead
lowish, rather receding, and with the bump of
locality universally strikingly developed. Their
hair is cut off straight just over the eyes, and
allowed to hang down long behind, usually reach-
ing the middle of the back. They
streak their
faces daily with anatto, and sometimes pour the
juice of jagua over their bodies, but this is not done
(as by the inhabitants of Tarapoto) to hide spotted
skins, as they are quite free from caracha.
The characteristic dress is a sort of poncho called
a cueshma, which is a long narrow rectangular piece
of cloth (coarse cotton, the manufacture of Anito or
Tarapoto) with a slit in the middle through which
the head is passed ; as it is narrow it covers the
body
before and behind to below the knees, but not
at the sides, so that the arms are free. The legs
are encased in breeches of the same material, tight,
but not fastened at the knees. ... A few of them
who have been down to the Amazon wear shirt and
trousers. The women are none of them pretty,
though there are some countenances not unpleasing.
They cut their hair like the men, and as the latter
are of slender make the two sexes can scarcely be
distinguished at a distance. Generally a pollena
constituted the article of dress of the women, the
body from the waist upwards being naked, but they
hang a profusion of beads (white, red, ami
round their necks, and sometimes use armlets ot
the same. .
. .
The forests on the opposite side ot the river
abound in animals, and those who go in search of
the tapir rarely fail in killing one.
and I paid two men to one three yards of
VOL. II