DEPARTURE FROM LA PRISION 15 



whom I had employed to cut a track to the base of 

 Tm-agua returned. It had taken them nine days to per- 

 form the work. They were tired, they said, and would 

 like a rest, so we fixed upon the morning of the 11th for 

 our departure. The Indians came early. It was a raw 

 drizzly morning, with heavy banks of clouds piled up 

 towards the east and appearing to almost touch the tops 

 of the trees. Such threatening weather denoted abund- 

 ance of rain, and I knew that we would be soaked through 

 and through before getting very far. Nevertheless I 

 decided to start at once, for the trip had been forcibly put 

 off so often, that it seemed at one time as if some strange 

 fatality stood in the way of our long-contemplated journey 

 to the mountain. No time was lost in preparing the 

 packs. Oval frames about three feet in length, made of 

 thick pieces of pliable creeper with strips of bark woven 

 between, had been prepared. The articles to form the 

 pack were placed between two of these frames, which 

 were then securely tied together. Each pack weighed 

 from fifty to sixty pounds, and was carried by a broad 

 band of bark stretched across the forehead, the pack rest- 

 ing on the shoulders and back. The method of carrying 

 loads by a broad band across the head is common to most 

 of the American tribes. In certain parts even men 

 and women are carried across the mountains in chairs in 

 this manner. Throwing the body slightly forward, the 

 carriers proceed at a jog-trot, and thus cover long dis- 

 tances with a considerable weight. 



When we filed out of the settlement our party con- 

 sisted of the three Indians, Isidor, Maite, and Sylvestre, 

 Raoul Turban (a taxidermist), and my boy, Guy, The 

 moment an Indian comes in contact with Venezuelans 

 he adopts some Spanish name. Maite is a corruption of 



