80 VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. Chap. II. 



Curua palm tree ; the natives call a place of this kind 

 a Pindobal. The rigid, elegantly pinnated leaves, 

 twenty feet in length, grow, as I have before described, 

 directly out of the ground. I had frequently occasion 

 to notice in the virgin forests some one kind of palm, 

 growing abundantly in society in one limited tract 

 although scarce elsewhere, no difference of soil, alti- 

 tude, or humidity being apparent to account for the 

 phenomenon. The Pindobal covered an area of pro- 

 bably four or five acres, and the whole lay under the 

 shade of the tall forest trees. The last half mile of 

 our road led through a more humid part of the forest 

 near the low shores of the lake. We here saw a 

 Couxio monkey (Pithecia satanas), a large black species 

 which, as I have before mentioned, has a thick cap of 

 hair on the head parted at the crown. He was seated 

 alone on a branch fingering a cluster of flowers that 

 lay within his reach. My companion fired at him, but 

 missed, and he then slowly moved away. The borders 

 of the path were enlivened with troojDS of small and 

 delicate butterflies. I succeeded in capturing, in about 

 half an hour, no less than eight species of one genus, 

 Mesosemia ; a group remarkable for having the wings 

 ornamented with central eye-like spots encircled by fine 

 black and gray concentric lines arranged in different 

 patterns according to the species. 



I was so much pleased with the situation of this set- 

 tlement, and the number of rare birds and insects 

 which tenanted the forest, that I revisited it in the 

 following year, and spent four months making collec- 



