CHAP. IX A BOA-CONSTRICTOR. 239 
only do with them when mixed with Tucupi sauce, of which we had a 
large j2r fuli always ready to temper unsavoury morsels. 
One day as T was entomologising alone and unarmed, in a dry Ygapo, 
where the trees were rather wide apart and the ground coated to the 
depth of eight or ten inches with dead leaves, I was near coming into 
collision with a boa-constrictor. I had just entered a little thicket to 
capture an insect, and whilst pinning it, was rather startled by a rushing 
noise in the vicinity I looked up to the sky, thinking a squall was 
coming on, but not a breath of wind stirred in the treetops. On 
stepping out of the bushes I met face to face a huge serpent coming 
down a slope, and making the dry twigs crack and fly with his weight 
as he moved over them. I had very frequently met with a smaller boa, 
the Cutim-boia, in a similar way, and knew from the habits of the family 
that there was no danger, so I stood my ground. On seeing me the» 
reptile suddenly turned, and glided at an accelerated pace down the 
path. Wishing to take a note of his probable size and the colours and 
markings of his skin, I set off after him; but he increased his speed, 
and I was unable to get near enough for the purpose. There was very 
little of the serpentine movement in his course. The rapidly moving 
and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the 
thick bed of fallen leaves, rather than a serpent with skin of varied colours. 
He descended towards the lower and moister parts of the Ygapd. The 
huge trunk of an uprooted tree here lay across the road ; this he glided 
over in his undeviating course, and soon after penetrated a dense 
swampy thicket, where, of course, I did not choose to follow him. 
I suffered terribly from heat and mosquitoes as the river sank with 
the increasing dryness of the season, although I made an awning of the 
sails to work under, and slept at night in the open air, with my hammock 
slung between the masts. But there was no rest in any part; the canoe 
descended deeper and deeper into the gulley, through which the river 
flows between high clayey banks, as the water subsided, and with the 
glowing sun overhead we felt at midday as if in a furnace. I could 
bear scarcely any clothes in the daytime, between eleven in the morning 
and five in the afternoon wearing nothing but loose and thin cotton 
trousers and a light straw hat, and could not be accommodated in Joaé 
Aract’s house, as it was a small one and full of noisy children. One 
night we had a terrific storm. The heat in the afternoon had been 
greater than ever, and at sunset the sky had a brassy glare: the black 
patches of cloud which floated in it being lighted up now and then by 
flashes of sheet lightning. The mosquitoes at night were more than 
usually troublesome, and I had just sunk exhausted into a doze, towards 
the early hours of morning, when the storm began ; a complete deluge 
of rain, with incessant lightning and rattling explosions of thunder. It 
lasted for eight hours ; the grey dawn opening amidst the crash of the 
tempest. The rain trickled through the seams of the cabin roof on to 
my collections, the late hot weather having warped the boards, and it 
gave me immense trouble to secure them in the midst of the confusion. 
Altogether I had a bad night of it; but what with storms, heat, 
mosquitoes, hunger, and, towards the last, ill health, I seldom had a 
good night’s rest on the Cupari. 
