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THE CAPTIVITY OF HANS STADE

they also mix up some in order to make the drink when the Abati is ripe. Returning from war they would have some of the Abati for brewing the drinks with which to eat their enemies, when they have caught any, and to rejoice a whole year thereat when the Abati time (again) comes.

We had also to expect them in August, when they go in search of a certain kind of fish which passes from the ocean into such fresh waters as flow into the sea, in order to lay its spawn therein. The same are called in their language Bratti,[1] the Spaniards call them Lysses. About the same period they are accustomed to sally forth together and make war, in order that their expedition may be better assisted by supplies of food. And of these fish they catch many with small nets, also they shoot them with arrows; they take home with them many fried, and they also make therefrom a flour which they call Pira Kui.[2]

    not the vinho de mel, the classical mead of Scandinavia its name, Garápa, is now applied to the fermented juice of the sugar-cane.

  1. The well-known Paraty, a term applied by some writers to the Sparus or Tainha, which the annotator of Father Anchieta says is a white mullet (Mugil Albula Linn.) Southey (ii, 635) erroneously writes the word Talinhas. In chapter 41 we find that the Portuguese name of the Bratti (Paraty) or Lysses (Lissa) is "Doynges" (Tainbas), which are described to be as large as a good-sized pike. According to Nieuhoff, the Dutch of Pernambuco called these fish "Herders."
  2. P. Anchieta writes (Epistola quam plurimarum rerum naturalium quæ S. Vincentii, nunc S. Pauli, Provinciam incolunt, sistens descriptionem, § vii) Pirâ-iquê, i.e., piscium ingressus, the spawning season when the fish, which his annotator compares with herring-shoals, repair to fresh water. In chapter 41, and part 2, chapter 26, we find this signification given to Pirakaen, which must not be confounded with Pira-caem ("fish badly roasted"). Pirá or Pyrá is the generic Tupi word for fish whereas Píra or Pýra is the itch. The Piracemas of S. Paulo were shoals of fish, chiefly the Saguairú, left upon the grassy banks by the sudden falling of the floods. Anchieta (loc. cit. § iii) translates Piracêma, piscium exitus, and tells us that it happened twice a year, in September and December, that is just after the height of the rains.