185 1. J ^ ^ TTA CK OF FR VER. 2z$ 



to prevent infection. One day conversing with his Excellency 

 about the Indians, I put him up to a much cheaper way than 

 powder and ball for exterminating them. " Instead of burning 

 the clothes," said I, "just order them to be put in the way of 

 the Indians : they are sure to take possession of them, and 

 they'll die off like wildfire. He followed my advice, and in a 

 few months there was no more heard of the depredations of 

 the Indians. Four or five nations were totally destroyed." 

 "For," added he, "the bixiga plays the devil among the 

 Indians." I could hardly help a shudder at this cool account 

 of such a cold-blooded massacre, but said nothing, consoling 

 myself with the idea that it was probably one of the ingenious 

 fabrications of Frei Joze's fertile brain ; though it showed that 

 he would look upon the reality as a very politic and laudable 

 action. 



At Pedreiro I bought a couple of fine turtles, and stayed half 

 a day to kill and cook one. It was very fat, so we fried almost 

 all the meat and put it in a large pot with the oil, as it keeps 

 a long time, and, boiled up with a little rice, makes an excellent 

 dinner when fish are not to be had. The insides, all of which 

 are eatable, together with the meat adhering to the upper and 

 lower shell, and some of the eggs (of which there were near two 

 hundred) were sufficient for all the crew for two days. At 

 Carvoeiro I stayed a day to get my guns mended, some large 

 hooks made, and the tolda (which the Indians had made very 

 badly in Barra) repaired. Senhor Vasconcellos gave me a 

 curious flat-headed species of river-tortoise I had not before 

 met with ; he had kept it in a small pond two years, having 

 brought it from the lower Amazon. Here I had strong 

 symptoms of fever, and expected I was going to have an 

 attack of the much-dreaded ' seizaos,' for which Carvoeiro 

 is a noted locality. Looking after the arrangement of the 

 canoe in the hot sun did not do me much good ; and 

 shortly after leaving, I found myself quite knocked up, with 

 headache, pains in the back and limbs, and violent fever. I 

 had commenced operations that morning by taking some 

 purgative medicine, and the next day I began taking doses of 

 quinine, drinking plentifully cream-of-tartar water, though I 

 was so weak and apathetic that at times I could hardly muster 

 resolution to move myself to prepare them. It is at such 

 times that one feels the want of a friend or attendant ; for of 



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