AN INDIAN MAJOR 189 



appears through and between them. From below the 

 view is one of singular grandeur. The fall is over a 

 shelving ledge of rock, which goes in a nearly straight 

 line across the river's course. But at the left there is 

 a salient in the clifF-line, and here, accordingly, a great 

 cataract of foammg water comes down almost as a 

 separate body, in advance of the line of the main fall. 

 I doubt whether, excepting of course, Niagara, there is a 

 waterfall in North America which outranks this if both 

 volume and beauty are considered. Above the fall the 

 river flows through a wide valley with gently sloping 

 sides. Below, it slips along, a torrent of whity-green 

 water, at the bottom of a deep gorge ; and the sides of 

 the gorge are clothed with a towering growth of tropical 

 forest. 



Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his 

 major's uniform, came to breakfast, and bore himself 

 with entire propriety. It was raining heavily — it rained 

 most of the time — and a few minutes previously I had 

 noticed the cacique's two wives, with three or four other 

 young women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was 

 a picturesque group. The women were all mothers, 

 and each carried a nursing child. They wore loin- 

 cloths or short skirts. Each carried on her back a 

 wickerwork basket supported by a head-strap which 

 went around her forehead. Each carried a belt slung 

 diagonally across her body, over her right shoulder ; in 

 this the child was carried, against and perhaps astride 

 of her left hip. They were comely women, who did 

 not look jaded or cowed ; and they laughed cheerfully, 

 and nodded to us as they passed through the rain, on 

 their way to the fields. But the contrast between them 

 and the chief, in his soldier's uniform, seated at break- 

 fast, was rather too striking ; and incidentally it etched. 



