188 THE HIGHLAND WILDERNESS [chap, vi 



coverer, 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 telegraph station kept 

 by one of the employes of the Commission. His pretty 

 brown wife is acting as schoolmistress to a group of 

 little Parecis girls. The Parecis chief has been made 

 a major, and wears a uniform accordingly. The Com- 

 mission 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 honour. When in 

 the late afternoon the men began to play a regular 

 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 

 superior in beauty and majesty. They are twice as 

 high and twice as broad ; and the lie of the land is such 

 that the various landscapes in which the waterfall is a 

 feature are more striking. A few hundred yards above 

 the falls the river turns at an angle and widens. The 

 broad, rapid shallows are crested with whitecaps. Be- 

 yond this wide expanse of flecked and hurrying water 

 rise the mist columns of the cataract ; and as these 

 colunms are swayed and broken by the wind the forest 



