THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS 195 



course, in the right, but the colonel could not afford to 

 have his men take sides in a tribal quarrel. 



It was only a two hours' march across to the Papa- 

 gaio at the Falls of Utiarity, so named by their discoverer. 

 Colonel Rondon, after the sacred falcon of the Parecis. 

 On the way we passed our Indian friends, themselves bound 

 thither; both the men and the women bore burdens — the 

 burdens of some of the women, poor things, were heavy — 

 and even the small naked children carried the live hens. 

 At Utiarity there is a big Parecis settlement and a tele- 

 graph station kept by one of the employees of the com- 

 mission. His pretty brown wife is acting as schoolmis- 

 tress to a group of little Parecis girls. The Parecis chief 

 has been made a major and wears a uniform accordingly. 

 The commission has erected good buildings for its own 

 employees and has superintended the erection of good 

 houses for the Indians. Most of the latter still prefer the 

 simplicity of the loin-cloth, in their ordinary lives, but 

 they proudly wore their civilized clothes in our honor. 

 When in the late afternoon the men began to play a regu- 

 lar match game of headball, with a scorer or umpire to 

 keep count, they soon discarded most of their clothes, 

 coming down to nothing but trousers or a loin-cloth. Two 

 or three of them had their faces stained with red ochre. 

 Among the women and children looking on were a couple 

 of little girls who paraded about on stilts. 



The great waterfall was half a mile below us. Lovely 

 though we had found Salto Bello, these falls were far su- 

 perior in beauty and majesty. They are twice as high and 

 twice as broad; and the lay of the land is such that the 

 various landscapes in which the waterfall is a feature are 



