Cuap. XIII. FAILING HEALTH. 385 
amongst the labouring class in villages in our own country, than a 
cannibal. I heard this artless maiden relate, in the coolest manner 
possible, how she ate a portion of the bodies of the young men whom 
her tribe had roasted. But what increased greatly the incongruity of 
this business, the young widow of one of the victims, a neighbour of 
mine, happened to be present during the narrative, and showed her 
interest in it by laughing at the broken Portuguese in which the girl 
related the horrible story. 
In the fourth month of my sojourn at St. Paulo I had a serious illness, 
an attack of the “sizoens,” or ague of the country, which, as it left me 
with shattered health and damped enthusiasm, led to my abandoning 
the plan I had formed of proceeding to the Peruvian towns of Pebas 
and Moyobamba, 250 and 600 miles further west, and so completing 
the examination of the Natural History of the Amazonian plains up to 
the foot of the Andes. I made a very large collection at St. Paulo, and ° 
employed acollector at Tabatinga and on the banks of the Jauari forseveral 
months, so that I acquired a very fair knowledge altogether of the produc- 
tions of the country bordering the Amazons to the end of the Brazilian terri- 
tory, a distance of 1,900 miles from the Atlantic at the mouth of the Para ; 
but beyond the Peruvian boundary I found now I should be unable to 
go. My ague seemed to be the culmination of a gradual deterioration 
of health, which had been going on for several years. I had exposed 
myself too much in the sun, working to the utmost of my strength six 
days a week, and had suffered much, besides, from bad and insufficient 
food. The ague did not exist at St. Paulo; but the foul and humid 
state of the village was, perhaps, sufficient to produce ague in a person 
much weakened from other causes. The country bordering the shores 
of the Solimoens is healthy throughout; some endemic diseases 
certainly exist, but these are not of a fatal nature, and the epidemics 
which desolated the Lower Amazons from Para to the Rio Negro, 
between the years 1850 and 1856, had never reached this favoured land. 
Ague is known only on the banks of those tributary streams which have 
dark-coloured water. 
I always carried a stock of medicines with me; and a small phial of 
quinine, which I had bought at Para in 1851, but never yet had use for, 
now came in very useful. I took for each dose as much as would lie 
on the tip of a penknife-blade, mixing it with warm chamomile tea. 
The first few days after my first attack I could not stir, and was 
delirious during the paroxysms of fever ; but the worst being over, I 
made an effort to rouse myself, knowing that incurable disorders of the 
liver and spleen follow ague in this country if the feeling of lassitude is 
too much indulged. So every morning I shouldered my gun or insect- 
net, and went my usual walk in the forest. The fit of shivering very 
often seized me before I got home, and I then used to stand still and 
brave it out. When the steamer ascended in January, 1858, Lieutenant 
Nunes was shocked to see me so much shattered, and recommended 
me strongly to return at once to Ega. I took his advice, and embarked 
with him, when he touched at St. Paulo on his downward voyage, on the 
2nd of February. I still hoped to be able to turn my face westward 
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