Cuap. XI. BIVOUAC ON THE SANDS. 327 
twelve miles distant, in one of his fishing rambles, and my friend re- 
solved, before returning to Ega, to go there with his nets and drag it 
as we had formerly done the Aningal. Several mameluco families of 
Ega begged to accompany us to share the labours and booty; the 
Shumana family also joined the party ; we therefore formed a large 
body, numbering in all eight canoes and fifty persons. 
The summer season was now breaking up: the river was rising ; the 
sky was almost constantly clouded, and we had frequent rains. The 
mosquitoes also, which we had not felt whilst encamped on the sand- 
banks, now became troublesome. We paddled up the north-westerly 
channel, and arrived at a point near the upper end of Catua at ten 
o’clock p.m. There was here a very broad beach of untrodden white 
sand, which extended quite into the forest, where it formed rounded 
hills and hollows like sand dunes, covered with a peculiar vegetation: 
harsh, reedy grasses, and low trees matted together with lianas, and 
varied with dwarf spiny palms of the genus Bactris. We encamped for 
the night on the sands, finding the place luckily free from mosquitoes. 
The different portions of the party made arched coverings with the 
toldos or maranta-leaf awnings of their canoes to sleep under, fixing the 
edges in the sand. No one, however, seemed inclined to go to sleep, 
so after supper we all sat or lay around the large fires and amused our- 
selves. We had the fiddler with us, and in the intervals between the 
wretched tunes which he played, the usual amusement of story-telling 
beguiled the time: tales of hair-breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, 
and so forth. There were amongst us a father and son who had been 
the actors, the previous year, in an alligator adventure on the edge of 
the praia we had just left. The son, whilst bathing, was seized by the 
thigh and carried under water ; a cry was raised, and the father, rushing 
down the bank, plunged after the rapacious beast, which was diving 
away with his victim. It seems almost incredible that a man could 
overtake and master the large cayman in his own element; but such 
was the case in this instance, for the animal was reached, and forced to 
release his booty by the man’s thrusting his thumb into his eye. The 
lad showed us the marks of the alligator’s teeth on his thigh. We sat 
up until past midnight listening to these stories, and assisting the flow 
of talk by frequent potations of burnt rum. A large shallow dish was 
filled with the liquor and fired; when it had burnt for a few minutes, 
the flame was extinguished, and each one helped himself by dipping a 
tea-cup into the vessel. 
One by one the people dropped asleep, and then the quiet murmur of 
talk of the few who remained awake was interrupted by the roar of 
jaguars in the jungle about a furlong distant. There was not one only, 
but several of the animals. The older men showed considerable alarm, 
and proceeded to light fresh fires around the outside of our encamp- 
ment. I had read in books of travels of tigers coming to warm them- 
selves by the fires of a bivouac, and thought my strong wish to witness 
the same sight would have been gratified to-night. I had not, however, 
such good fortune, although I was the last to go to sleep, and my bed 
was the bare sand under a little arched covering open at both ends. 
The jaguars, nevertheless, must have come very near during the night, 
