Page:Iracéma, the honey-lips (1886).djvu/80
CHAPTER XXII.
Poty saluted his friend and spoke as follows:—
"Ere the father of Jacaúna and Poty, the valiant warrior Jatobá, ruled over all the Pytiguára warriors, the Great Tomahawk of the Nation was in the right hand of Batuireté,[1] the Head Chief, Sire of Jatobá. It was he who came along the sea-beach to the river of the Jaguars, and expelled the Tabajáras into the interior, and dictated to each tribe the limits of its lands. Then he entered the inner regions as far as the Serra which takes his name.
"When his stars were many,[2] so many that his Camocim no longer contained all the nuts that mark the number of his years, his body began to incline earthwards, his arm stiffened like the branch of the unbending Ubiratan, and his eyes grew dark. He then called the warrior Jatobá and said, 'Let my son take the Tomahawk of the Pytiguára Nation. Tupan wills not that Batuireté should carry it any more to war, since he has taken from him the strength of his body, the use of his arm, and the light of his eyes. But Tupan has been good to him, since he gave him a son like the warrior Jatobá."
"Jatobá took the Tomahawk of the Pytiguáras. Batuireté assumed the staff of his old age and set out. He crossed the vast uninhabited regions to the luxuriant prairies, where run the waters that come from the quarter of the night. As the old warrior dragged his limbs along their banks, and the light of
his eyes would not let him behold nor the fruits, nor
- ↑ Batuireté, "celebrated snipe." The soubriquet of this great Chief signifies that he was a "brave swimmer." It is also the name of a very fertile Serra, and the region which he occupied.
- ↑ Suas estrellas erão muitas. The savages counted their years by the heliacal rising of the Pleiades, and also by keeping a cashew-nut of each spring.