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 corner of the hut. In the morning she
may cook her food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel
of her own. After about ten days the magician comes and undoes the
spell by muttering charms and breathing on her and on the more
valuable of the things with which she has come in contact. The pots
and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and the fragments
buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten by
her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the
second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now
"clean," and can mix again with people. Other Indians of Guiana,
after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a
month, expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.
Sometimes, in addition to being stung with ants, the sufferer has to
fast day and night so long as she remains slung up on high in her
hammock, so that when she comes down she is reduced to a skeleton.
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