408 EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA. Chap. VI. 



her race I had yet seen. She was tall, and very stout ; 

 in colour much lighter than the ordinary Indian tint, 

 and her ways altogether were more like those of a care- 

 less, laughing country wench, such as might be met 

 with any day 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 a collector at Tabatinga and on the 

 banks of the Jauari for several months, so that I 

 acquired a very fair knowledge altogether of the pro- 

 ductions of the country bordering the Amazons to the 

 end of the Brazilian territory, a distance of 1900 miles 

 from the Atlantic at the mouth of the Para ; but beyond 



