240 ALLEN’S NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
of the large southern affluents of the Amazon. Here he 
could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and, as this diet 
did not agree with him, he was obliged to have recourse 
to the Coaita flesh. ‘I thought,” he says, ‘‘the meat the 
best flavoured I have ever tasted. It resembled beef, but 
had a richer and sweeter taste . . . We smoke-dried 
the joints instead of salting them ; placing them for several 
hours on a framework of sticks arranged over a fire. Nothing 
but the hardest necessity could have driven me so near to can- 
nibalism as this, but we had the greatest difficulty in obtaining 
here a sufficient supply of animal food.” Von Humboldt has 
also referred to the cooking of these Monkeys by the natives 
of the Upper Orinoko. ‘The manner of roasting these an- 
thropomorphous animals,” he writes, “contributes singularly 
to render their appearance disagreeable in the eyes of civilised 
Man. A little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, 
and raised one foot from the ground. The Monkey is skinned 
and bent into a sitting posture ; the head generally resting on 
the arms, which are meagre and long; but sometimes these 
are crossed behind the:back. When it is tied on the grating 
a very clear fire is kindled below . . ._. On seeing the 
natives devour an arm or jeg of a roasted Monkey, it is diff- 
cult not to believe that this habit of eating animals which so 
much resemble Man in their physical organisation, has in a 
certain degree contributed to diminish the horror of anthro- 
pophagy among savages. Roasted Monkeys, particularly those 
that have a very round head, display a hideous resemblance to 
a child ; the Europeans, therefore, who are obliged to feed on 
Quadrumanes, prefer separating the head and the hands, and 
serve up only the rest of the animal at their tables. The flesh 
of Monkeys is so lean and dry that Mr. Bonpland has pre- 
