66 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



silent as midnight, and all as still and unmoved as 

 a monument, had not the Jabirn in the marsh, and 

 a few Vultures soaring over the mountain's top, 

 shown that it was not quite deserted by animated 

 nature. There were no insects, except one kind 

 of fly, about one-fourth the size of the common 

 house-fly. It bit cruelly, and was much more tor- 

 menting than the mosquito on the sea-coast. 



This seems to be the native country of the Ar- 

 rowroot. Wherever you passed through a patch 

 of wood in a low situation, there you found it 

 growing luxuriantly. 



The Indian place you are now at is not the 

 proper place to have come to in order to reach the 

 Portuguese frontiers. You have advanced too 

 much to the westward. But there was no alterna- 

 tive. The ground betwixt you and another small 

 settlement (which was the right place to have 

 gone to) was overflowed; and thus, instead of 

 proceeding southward, you were obliged to wind 

 along the foot of the western hills, quite out of 

 your way. 



But the grand landscape this place affords 

 makes you ample amends for the time you have 

 spent in reaching it. It would require great de- 

 scriptive powers to give a proper idea of the situ- 

 ation these people have chosen for their dwelling. 



The hill they are on is steep and high, and full 

 of immense rocks. The huts are not all in one 

 place, but dispersed wherever they have found a 

 place level enough for a lodgement. Before you 

 ascend the hill you see at intervals an acre or two 

 of wood, then an open space, with a few huts on it, 

 then wood again, and then an open space, and so 



