110 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



trayed an astonishing and stupid tameness. Neither the 

 size of the boat nor the commotion caused by the paddles 

 in any way affected them. They lay inshore, not twenty 

 feet from us, half out of water; they paid not the slightest 

 heed to our presence, and only reluctantly left when re- 

 peatedly poked at, and after having been repeatedly hit 

 with clods of mud and sticks; and even then one first 

 crawled up on shore, to find out if thereby he could not 

 rid himself of the annoyance we caused him. 



Next morning it was still raining, but we set off on a 

 hunt, anyway, going afoot. A couple of brown camaradas 

 led the way, and Colonel Rondon, Dom Joao, Kermit, and 

 I followed. The incessant downpour speedily wet us to 

 the skin. We made our way slowly through the forest, 

 the machetes playing right and left, up and down, at every 

 step, for the trees were tangled in a network of vines and 

 creepers. Some of the vines were as thick as a man's leg. 

 Mosquitoes hummed about us, the venomous fire-ants 

 stung us, the sharp spines of a small palm tore our hands 

 afterward some of the wounds festered. Hour after hour 

 we thus walked on through the Brazilian forest. We saw 

 monkeys, the common yellowish kind, a species of cebus; 

 a couple were shot for the museum and the others raced 

 off among the upper branches of the trees. Then we came 

 on a party of coatis, which look like reddish, long-snouted, 

 long-tailed, lanky raccoons. They were in the top of a 

 big tree. One, when shot at and missed, bounced down 

 to the ground, and ran off through the bushes; Kermit 

 ran after it and secured it. He came back, to find us 

 peering hopelessly up into the tree top, trying to place 

 where the other coatis were. Kermit solved the difficulty 



