320 Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



joined, was very lovely ; and for the first time we had an 

 open space in front of and above us, so that after nightfall 

 the stars, and the great waxing moon, were glorious over- 

 head, and against the rocks in midstream the broken water 

 gleamed like tossing silver. 



The huge catfish which the men had caught was over 

 three feet and a half long, with the usual enormous head, 

 out of all proportions to the body, and the enormous 

 mouth, out of all proportion to the head. Such fish, al- 

 though their teeth are small, swallow very large prey. 

 This one contained the nearly digested remains of a mon- 

 key. Probably the monkey had been seized while drink- 

 ing from the end of a branch ; and once engulfed in that 

 yawning cavern there was no escape. We Americans 

 were astounded at the idea of a catfish making prey of a 

 monkey; but our Brazilian friends told us that in the 

 lower Madeira and the part of the Amazon near its mouth 

 there Is a still more gigantic catfish which in similar fash- 

 ion occasionally makes prey of man. This is a grayish- 

 white fish over nine feet long, with the usual dispropor- 

 tionately large head and gaping mouth, with a circle of 

 small teeth ; for the engulfing mouth itself is the danger, 

 not the teeth. It is called the piraiba — ^pronounced in 

 four syllables. While stationed at the small city of Itacoa- 

 tiara, on the Amazon, at the mouth of the Madeira, the 

 doctor had seen one of these monsters which had been 

 killed by the two men it had attacked. They were fishing 

 in a canoe when it rose from the bottom — for it is a 

 ground fish — and raising itself half out of the water 

 lunged over the edge of the canoe at them, with open 

 mouth. They killed it with their falcons, as machetes are 



