'^8 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



men of mixed blood. They were barefooted and scantily 

 clad, and each carried a long, clumsy spear and a keen 

 machete, in the use of which he was an expert. Now 

 and then, in thick jungle, we had to cut out a path, and 

 it was interesting to see one of them, although cumbered 

 by his unwieldy spear, handling his half-broken litde 

 horse with complete ease while he hacked at limbs and 

 branches. Of the two ordinarily with us one was much 

 the younger; and whenever we came to an unusually 

 doubtful-looking ford or piece of boggy ground the elder 

 man always sent the younger one on and sat on the bank 

 until he saw what befell the experimenter. In that rather 

 preposterous book of our youth, the "Swiss Family Rob- 

 inson," mention is made of a tame monkey called Nips, 

 which was used to test all edible-looking things as to the 

 healthfulness of which the adventurers felt doubtful; 

 and because of the obvious resemblance of function we 

 christened this younger hunter Nips. Our guides were 

 not only hunters but cattle-herders. The coarse dead 

 grass is burned to make room for the green young grass 

 on which the cattle thrive. Every now and then one of 

 the men, as he rode ahead of us, without leaving the 

 saddle, would drop a lighted match into a tussock of tall 

 dead blades; and even as we who were behind rode by 

 tongues of hot flame would be shooting up and a local 

 prairie fire would have started. 



Kermit took Nips off with him for a solitary hunt 

 one day. He shot two of the big marsh-deer, a buck 

 and a doe, and preserved them as museum specimens. 

 They were in the papyrus growth, but their stomachs 

 contained only the fine marsh-grass which grows in the 



