312 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



the ball would bounce beautifully. This satisfied 

 me, and I gave him the fish-hooks, which he re- 

 ceived without the least change of countenance. 



I bounced the ball repeatedly for two months 

 after, but I found that it still remained in its 

 infancy. At last I suspected that the savage (to 

 use a vulgar phrase) had come Yorkshire over 

 me; and so I determined to find out how he had 

 managed to take me in. I cut the ball in two, and 

 then saw what a taught trick he had played me. 

 It seems he had chewed some leaves into a lump, 

 the size of a walnut, and then dipped them in the 

 liquid gum-elastic. It immediately received a 

 coat about as thick as a sixpence. He then rolled 

 some more leaves round it, and gave it another 

 coat. He seems to have continued this process 

 till he made the ball considerably larger than the 

 one I had procured; and in order to put his 

 roguery out of all chance of detection, he made 

 the last and outer coat thicker than a dollar. 

 This Indian would, no doubt, have thriven well 

 in some of our great towns. 



Finding that the rainy season was coming on, 

 I left the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo with 

 regret, towards the close of December, 1824 ; and 

 reached once more the shores of England, after 

 a long and unpleasant passage. 



Ere we part, kind reader, I could wish to draw 

 a little of thy attention to the instructions which 

 are to be found at the end of this book. Twenty 

 years have now rolled away since I first began to 

 examine the specimens of zoology in our museums. 

 As the system of preparation is founded in error, 

 nothing but deformity, distortion, and dispro- 



