238 VOYAGE’ UF THE JAPAISOS. Crap. IX. 
journey. About twenty new species of fishes and a considerable 
number of small reptiles were added to my collection; but very few 
birds were met with worth preserving. A great number of the most 
conspicuous insects of the locality were new to me, and turned out to 
be species peculiar to this part of the Amazons valley. There is the 
most striking contrast between the productions of the Cupari and those 
of Altar do Chad in this department: the majority of the species 
inhabiting the one district being totally unknown in the other. At 
the same time a considerable proportion of the Cupari species were 
identical with those of Ega on the Upper Amazons, a region eight 
times further removed than the village just mentioned. The most 
interesting acquisition at this place was a large and handsome monkey, 
of a species I had not before met with—the white-whiskered Coaita, or 
spider monkey (Ateles marginatus). I saw a pair one day in the forest 
moving slowly along the branches of a lofty tree, and shot one of them ; 
the next day Joad Aracti brought down another, possibly the companion. 
The species is about the same size as the common black kind of which 
I have given an account ina former chapter, and has a similar lean 
body with limbs clothed with coarse black hair; but it differs in having 
the whiskers and a triangular patch on the crown of the head of a white 
colour. It is never met with in the alluvial plains of the Amazons, nor, 
I believe, on the northern side of the great river valley, except towards 
the head waters, near the Andes ; where Humboldt discovered it on the 
banks of the Santiago. I thought the meat the best flavoured I had 
ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste. 
During the time of our stay in this part of the Cupari, we could get 
scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this diet ill agreed with me, 
three successive days of it reducing me to a state of great weakness, I 
was obliged to make the most of our Coaité meat. We smoke-dried 
the joints instead of salting them; placing them for several hours on a 
framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to 
preserve fish when they have no salt, and which they call ‘“ muquiar.” 
Meat putrefies in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting 
is of no use unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and dried immediately 
in the sun. My monkeys lasted me about a fortnight, the last joint 
being an arm with the clenched fist, which I used with great economy, 
hanging it in the intervals between my frugal meals on a nail in the 
cabin. Nothing but the hardest necessity could have driven me so near 
to cannibalism as this, but we had the greatest difficulty in obtaining 
here a sufficient supply of animal food. About every three days the 
work on the montaria had to be suspended and all hands turned out for 
the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for 
although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely 
scattered to be available. Ricardo and Alberto occasionally brought in 
a tortoise or an ant-eater, which served us for one day’s consumption. 
We made acquaintance here with many strange dishes, amongst them 
Iguana eggs ; these are of oblong form, about an inch in length, and 
covered with a flexible shell. The lizard lays about two score of them 
in the hollows of trees. They have an oily taste; the men ate them 
raw, beaten up with farinha, mixing a pinch of salt in the mess; I could 
