WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 119 



But, bad as the walking is through it, it is easier than 

 where you cross over the bare hills, w^here you have to 

 tread on sharp stones, most of them lying edgewise. 



The ground gone over these two last days seems con- 

 demned to perpetual solitude and silence. There was not 

 one four-footed animal to be seen, nor even the marks of 

 one. It would have been as silent as midnight, and all as 

 still and unmoved as a monument, had not the Jabiru in 

 the marsh, and a few Vultures soaring over the mountain's 

 top, shown that it was not quite deserted by animated na- 

 ture. There w^ere no insects, except one kind of fly, about 

 one-fourth the size of the common house-Hy. It bit cruelly, 

 and was much more tormenting than the mosquito on the 

 sea-coast. 



This seems to be the native country of the Arrowroot. 

 Wherever you passed through a patch of wood in a low 

 situation, there you found it growing luxuriantly. 



The Indian place you are now at is not the proper place 

 to have come to in order to reach the Portuguese frontiers. 

 You have advanced too much to the westward. But 

 there was no alternative. The ground betwixt you and 

 another small settlement (which was the right place to 

 have gone to) was overflowed; and thus, instead of pro- 

 ceeding southw^ard, you were obliged to wind along the 

 foot of the western hills, quite out of your w^ay. 



But the grand landscape this place affords makes you 

 ample amends for the time you have spent in reaching it. 

 It would require great descriptive powers to give a proper 

 idea of the situation these people have chosen for their 

 dwelling. 



The hill they are on is steep and high, and full of im- 

 mense rocks. The huts are not all in one place, but 

 dispersed wherever they have found a place level enough 

 for a lodgement. Before you ascend the hiU you see at 



