1H VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. Chap. II. 



houses. I was inclined to doubt the fact of a serpent 

 striking at its prey from the water, and thought an 

 alligator more likely to be the culprit, although we 

 had not yet met with alligators in the river. Some 

 days afterwards the young men belonging to the dif- 

 ferent sitios agreed together to go in search of the 

 serpent. They began in a systematic manner, forming 

 two parties each embarked in three or four canoes, 

 and starting from points several miles apart, whence 

 they gradually approximated, searching all the little 

 inlets on both sides the river. The reptile was found 

 at last sunning itself on a log at the mouth of a muddy 

 rivulet, and despatched with harpoons. I saw it the 

 day after it was killed : it was not a very large speci- 

 men, measuring only eighteen feet nine inches in length 

 and sixteen inches in circumference at the widest part 

 of the body. I measured skins of the Anaconda after- 

 wards, twenty-one feet in length and two feet in girth. 

 The reptile has a most hideous appearance, owing to its 

 being very broad in the middle and tapering abruptly 

 at both ends. It is very abundant in some parts of the 

 country ; nowhere more so than in the Lago Grande, 

 near Santarem, where it is often seen coiled up in the 

 corners of farm-yards, and detested for its habit of 

 carrying off poultry, young calves, or whatever animal 

 it can get within reach of. 



At Ega a large Anaconda was once near making a 

 meal of a young lad about ten years of age belonging 

 to one of my neighbours. The father and his son went 

 one day in their montaria a few miles up the Teffe to 

 gather wild fruit ; landing on a sloping sandy shore, 



