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54

THE CAPTIVITY OF HANS STADE

Caput XIX.

How, when they were sailing back again with me our people arrived, purposing to retake me from them, and they turned and faced them and skirmished with them.

There lies a small island close to the island where I had been captured, in which rest certain water-birds called Uwara,^[1] having red feathers. They asked me if their enemies the Tuppin Ikins had that year also been there, and had caught the birds with their young. I said "Yes," but they nevertheless determined to see for themselves. For they esteem greatly the feathers which come from the birds, almost all their ornaments being made of feathers. And a peculiarity of the said birds Uwara is that when they are young, the first feathers which they grow are whitish grey; the next however, when they become fledged, are of a blackish grey, with these they fly about a year, after which they become as red as any red paint.^[2] And they sailed to the island, expecting to find the birds. Now when they had proceeded about the distance of two musket-shots from the spot where their canoes had been, they looked back, when it

↑ See chap. 14 and Part 2, chap. 34, where the Uwara-pirange (for piranga, i.e., red ibis) is very well described. Yves d'Evreux calls this brilliant phenicopter Courlier rouge—red curlew. The modern orthography is Guará; Alencar, however, writes Gará, deriving it from yg or ig, water, and ara a macaw, which it resembles in its glowing colours, Guará must not be confounded with Guára, the Brazilian wolf (Canis Brasiliensis), derived from "u", to eat; "g", relative, and "ára", the desinent-G-u-ára, the eater, and G-u-ára-ā, the great eater.
The islet alluded to in the text is evidently the Ilha do Arvoredo, a rocky lump some eight miles S.S.W. of the Barra da Bertioga, and close to the shore of Santo Amaro. It need hardly be remarked that the ibis is not a seafowl.
↑ These words are evidently copied by A. Gonçalves Dias, when he says of the ibis, "Nasce bianca, torna-se preta e por fim de um encarnardo vivissimo". The feathers were used for the Acangátaras, or dress coronals and the kilts of the Tupi savages.

[1] See chap. 14 and Part 2, chap. 34, where the Uwara-pirange (for piranga, i.e., red ibis) is very well described. Yves d'Evreux calls this brilliant phenicopter Courlier rouge—red curlew. The modern orthography is Guará; Alencar, however, writes Gará, deriving it from yg or ig, water, and ara a macaw, which it resembles in its glowing colours, Guará must not be confounded with Guára, the Brazilian wolf (Canis Brasiliensis), derived from "u", to eat; "g", relative, and "ára", the desinent-G-u-ára, the eater, and G-u-ára-ā, the great eater.
The islet alluded to in the text is evidently the Ilha do Arvoredo, a rocky lump some eight miles S.S.W. of the Barra da Bertioga, and close to the shore of Santo Amaro. It need hardly be remarked that the ibis is not a seafowl.

[2] These words are evidently copied by A. Gonçalves Dias, when he says of the ibis, "Nasce bianca, torna-se preta e por fim de um encarnardo vivissimo". The feathers were used for the Acangátaras, or dress coronals and the kilts of the Tupi savages.

[1]

[2]