TWSEOT-FOOD OF THE .NATIVES. 411 



explaining this coexistence of rivers differently coloured, 

 within a small extent of territory, but shall merely observe, 

 that at the mouth of the Pacimoni, and on the borders of the 

 lake Vasiva, we were again struck with the purity and ex- 

 treme transparency of the brown waters. Ancient Arabian 

 travellers have observed, that the Alpine branch of the Nile, 

 which joins the Bahr el Abiad near Haltaja, has green 

 waters, which are so transparent, that the fish may be seen 

 at the bottom of the river. 



We passed some turbulent rapids before we reached the 

 mission of Mandavaca. The village, which bears also the 

 name of Quirabuena, contains only sixty natives. The state 

 of the Christian settlements is in general so miserable, that, 

 in the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on a length of fifty 

 leagues, not two hundred inhabitants are found. The banks 

 of this river were indeed more peopled before the arrival of 

 the missionaries; the Indians have withdrawn into the 

 woods, toward the east; for the western plains are almost 

 deserted. The natives subsist during a part of the year on 

 those large ants of which I have spoken above. These 

 insects are much esteemed here, as spiders are in the south- 

 ern hemisphere, where the savages of Australia deem them 

 delicious. We found at Mandavaca the good old mission- 

 ary, who had already spent " twenty years of mosquitos in 

 the basques del Cassiquiare" and whose legs were so spotted 

 by the stings of insects, that the colour of the skin could 

 scarcely be perceived. He talked to us of his solitude, and 

 of the sad necessity which often compelled him to leave the 

 most atrocious crimes unpunished in the two missions of 

 Mandavaca and Vasiva. In the latter place, an Indian 

 alcalde had, a few years before, eaten one of his wives, after 

 having taken her to his conuco* and fattened her by good 

 feeding. The cannibalism of the nations of Gruiana is never 

 caused by the want of subsistence, or by the superstitions of 

 their rebgion, as in the islands of the South Sea; but is 

 generally the effect of the vengeance of a conqueror, and (as 

 the missionaries say) "of a vitiated appetite." Victory 

 over a hostile tribe is celebrated by a repast, in which some 

 parts of the body of a prisoner are devoured. Sometimes a 



* A hut surrounded with cultivated ground ; a sort of country-house, 

 which the natives prefer to residing in the miaaiona. 



