WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AINIERICA 213 



of communicating his intentions by writing, he 

 has fallen upon a plan of communication sure and 

 simple. When two or three families have de- 

 termined to come down the river and pay you a 

 visit, they send an Indian beforehand with a 

 string of beads. You take one bead off every 

 day; and on the day that the string is headless, 

 they arrive at your house. _^ 



In finding their way through these pathless 

 wilds, the sun is to them what Ariadne's clue was 

 to Theseus. When he is on the meridian, they 

 generally sit down, and rove onwards again as 

 soon as he has sufficiently declined to the west; 

 they require no other compass. "WTien in chase, 

 they break a twig on the bushes as they pass by 

 every three or four hundred paces, and this often 

 prevents them from losing their way on their 

 return. 



You will not be long in the forests of Guiana, 

 before you perceive how very thinly they are 

 inhabited. You may wander for a week together 

 without seeing a hut. The wild beasts, snakes, 

 the swamps, the trees, the uncurbed luxuriance 

 of everything around you, conspire to inform you 

 that man has no habitation here — man has sel- 

 dom passed this way. 



