THE AMERICAI^ RACE. 67 



While engaged in this favourite exercise, he shakes off his 

 habitual indolence, the latent powers and vigour of his mind 

 are roused, and he becomes active, persevering, and indefatig- 

 able. His sagacity in finding his prey is only equalled by his 

 address in killing it. His reason and his senses being con- 

 stantly directed to this one object, the former displays such 

 fertility of invention and the latter acquire such a degree of 

 acuteness, as appear almost incredible. He discerns the foot- 

 steps of a wild beast, or detects it among the dark foliage, 

 where its vestiges or presence would escape every other eye ; he 

 follows it with certainty through the pathless forest, and is 

 able to subsist where the best European hunter would perish 

 from want. If he attacks his game openly, his fatal arrow 

 seldom errs from the mark ; if he endeavours to circumvent 

 it by art, it is almost impossible to avoid his toils. 



Among several tribes the young men are not permitted to 

 marry until they have given such proofs of their skill in hunt- 

 ing as put it beyond doubt that they are capable of providing- 

 for a family. Their ingenuity, always on the stretch and 

 sharpened by emulation, as well as necessity, has struck out 

 many inventions which greatly facilitate success in the chase. 



Slow, and with noiseless step, so as scarcely to disturb the 



I fallen leaves beneath his feet, the wily Macusi Indian ap- 

 proaches. His weapons are strong, and peculiar, and of so 

 slight an appearance as to form a strange contrast to their 

 terrific power. A colossal species of Bamboo (Arundinacea 

 SchombiLrgkii), whose perfectly cylindrical culm often rises to 

 the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its first 

 •' knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe ; and the slender arrows 

 which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim, are made 

 of the leaf-stalks of a species of palm tree (^Maxi'miliana regla), 

 hard and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. You would 

 hardly suppose these fragile missiles capable of inflicting the 

 slightest wound at any distance, and yet they strike more 

 surely and efiectively than the rifleman's bullet, for their 

 point is dipped in the deadly juice of the Strychnos Urari, 

 whose venomous powers are not inferior to those of the bush- 

 master's fang. 



In vain, suspended by his prehensile tail, the Miriki, the 

 largest of the Brazilian monkeys, retires to the highest 



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