116 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



truth, and nothing but the truth. It appeared, however, 

 that his palace was nothing but a hut, the monarch a needy 

 savage, the heir-apparent nothing to inherit but his 

 father's chib, and bow and arrows, and his officers of state 

 wild and uncultivated as the forests through which they 

 strayed. 



There was nothing in the hut of this savage, saving the 

 presents he had received from government, but what was 

 barely sufficient to support existence ; nothing that indi- 

 cated a power to collect a hostile force ; nothing that 

 showed the least progress towards ci\'ilization. All was 

 rude and barbarous in the extreme, expressive of the 

 utmost poverty and a scanty population. 



You may travel six or seven days without seeing a hut. 

 and when you reach a settlement it seldom contains more 

 than ten. 



The farther you advance into the interior the more you 

 are convinced that it is thinly inhabited. 



The day after passing the place where the white man 

 lived you see a creek on the left hand, and shortly after 

 the path to the open country. Here you drag the canoe 

 up into the forest, and leave it there. Your baggage must 

 now be carried by the Indians. The creek you passed in 

 the river intersects the path to the next settlement : a 

 large Mora has fallen across it, and makes an excellent 

 bridge. After walking an hour and a half you come to 

 the edge of the forest, and a savanna unfolds itself to the 

 view. 



The fin ^t park that England boasts falls far short of 

 this delightful scene. There are about two thousand acres 

 of grass, with here and there a clump of trees, and a few 

 bushes and single trees scattered up and down by the hand 

 of Nature. The ground is neither hilly nor level, but 

 diversified with moderate rises and falls, so gently running 



