238 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



to give him, which amounted to eight dollars, and 

 ordered him back in his own curial to Mrs. Peter- 

 son's, on the hill at the first falls. I then asked 

 the negro if there were any Indian settlements in 

 the neighbourhood ; he said he knew of one, a day 

 and a half off. We went in quest of it, and about 

 one o'clock the next day the negro showed us the 

 creek where it was. 



The entrance was so concealed by thick bushes 

 that a stranger would have passed it without 

 knowing it to be a creek. In going up it we 

 found it dark, winding, and intricate beyond any 

 creek that I had ever seen before. When Orpheus 

 came back with his young wife from Styx, his 

 path must have been similar to this, for Ovid 

 says it was 



"Arduus, obliquus, ealigine densus opaca,** 



and this creek was exactly so. 



When we had got about two-thirds up it, we 

 met the Indians going a fishing. I saw, by the 

 way their things were packed in the curial, that 

 they did not intend to return for some days. 

 However, on telling them what we wanted, and 

 by promising handsome presents of powder, shot, 

 and hooks, they dropped their expedition, and 

 invited us up to the settlement they had just left, 

 and where we laid in a provision of cassava. 



They gave us for dinner boiled ant-bear and 

 red monkey; two dishes unknown even at Beau- 

 villiers in Paris, or at a London city feast. The 

 monkey was very good indeed, but the ant-bear 

 had been kept beyond its time; it stunk, as our 

 venison does in England ; and so, after tasting it, 



