food daily.[138] When a girl of the Peguenches tribe perceives in herself the first signs of womanhood, she is secluded by her mother in a corner of the hut screened off with blankets, and is warned not to lift up her eyes on any man.  Next day, very early in the morning and again after sunset, she is taken out by two women and made to run till she is tired; in the interval she is again secluded in her corner.  On the following day she lays three packets of wool beside the path near the house to signify that she is now a woman.[139] Among the Passes, Mauhes, and other tribes of Brazil the young woman in similar circumstances is hung in her hammock from the roof and has to fast there for a month or as long as she can hold out.[140] One of the early settlers in Brazil, about the middle of the sixteenth century, has described the severe ordeal which damsels at puberty had to undergo among the Indians on the south-east coast of that country, near what is now Rio de Janeiro.  When a girl had reached this critical period of life, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head.  Then she was placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal from the shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood.  Next the ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot, and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no one could see her.  Here she had to stay for three days without eating or drinking.  When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground.  If she had a call of nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl’s body.  Being replaced in her hammock, she was now allowed to get some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh.  Thus she continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back.  During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin.  The third month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as usual.[141]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of Guiana; custom of beating the girls and of causing them to be stung by ants.]

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shews the first signs of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut.  For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts of her body.  So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast rigorously.  When they have abated, she may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest