236 VOYAGE UP THE TAPA/JOS. Cuap. IX. 
was not a very large specimen, measuring only eighteen feet nine 
inches in length and sixteen inches in circumference at the widest part 
of the body. I measured skins of the Anaconda afterwards, twenty- 
one feet in length and two feet in girth. The reptile has a most 
hideous appearance, owing to its being very broad in the middle, and 
tapering abruptly at both ends. It is very abundant in some parts of 
the country, nowhere more so than in the Lago Grande, near Santarem, 
where it is often seen coiled up in the corners of farmyards, and is 
detested for its habit of carrying off poultry, young calves, or whatever 
animal it can get within reach of. 
At Ega a large Anaconda was once near making a meal of a young 
lad about ten years of age, belonging to one of my neighbours. The 
father and his son went one day in their montaria a few miles up the 
Teffé to gather wild fruit; landing on a sloping sandy shore, where the 
boy was left to mind the canoe whilst the man entered the forest. The 
beaches of the Teffé form groves of wild guava and myrtle trees, and 
during most months of the year are partly overflown by the river. 
Whilst the boy was playing in the water under the shade of these trees, 
a huge reptile of this species stealthily wound its coils around him, 
unperceived until it was too late to escape. His cries brought the 
father quickly to the rescue, who rushed forward, and seizing the 
Anaconda boldly by the head, tore his jaws asunder. ‘There appeared 
to be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous bulk, 
and lives to a great age, for I heard of specimens having been killed 
which measured forty-two feet in length, or double the size of the 
largest I had an opportunity of examining. The natives of the Amazons 
country universally believe in the existence of a monster water-serpent, 
said to be many score fathoms in length, which appears successively in 
different parts of the river. They call it the Mai d’agoa—the mother, 
or spirit, of the water. This fable, which was doubtless suggested by the 
occasional appearance of Sucurujtis of unusually large size, takes a great 
variety of forms, and the wild legends form the subject of conversation 
amongst old and young, over the wood fires in lonely settlements. 
August 6th and 7th.—On leaving the sitio of Antonio Malagueita we 
continued our way along the windings of the river, generally in a south- 
east and south-south-east direction, but sometimes due south, for about 
fifteen miles, when we stopped at the house of one Paulo Christo, a 
mameluco whose acquaintance I had made at Aveyros. Here we spent 
the night and part of the next day, doing in the morning a good five 
hours’ work in the forest, accompanied by the owner of the place. In 
the afternoon of the 7th we were again under weigh: the river makes a 
bend to the east-north-east for a short distance above Paulo Christo’s 
establishment ; it then turns abruptly to the south-west, running from 
that direction about four miles. The hilly country of the interior then 
commences, the first token of it being a magnificently wooded bluff, 
rising nearly straight from the water to a height of about 250 feet. 
The breadth of the stream hereabout was not more than sixty yards, 
and the forest assumed a new appearance, from the abundance of the 
Urucuri palm, a species which has a noble crown of broad fronds, with 
symmetrical rigid leaflets. 
