232 



MOSQUITOES — INDIANS. 



rock, the Piedra di Culimacari, which they found to 

 be in lat. 2° 0' 42" north, and long. 61° 13' 26" west. 

 The determination was of great importance in a 

 geographical and political point of view, for the 

 greatest errors existed in maps, and the equator had 

 been considered as the boundary between the Spanish 

 and Portuguese possessions. 



Leaving the Rock of Culimacari at half after one 

 in the morning, they proceeded against the current, 

 which was very rapid. The waters of the Casi- 

 quiare are white, and the mosquitoes again com- 

 menced their invasions, becoming more numerous 

 as the boat receded from the black stream of the Rio 

 Negro. In the whole course of the Casiquiare they 

 did not find in the Christian settlements a population 

 of 200 individuals, and the free Indians have retired 

 from its banks. During a great part of the year the 

 natives subsist on ants. At the mission of Manda- 

 vaca, which they reached in the evening, they found 

 a monk who had spent twenty years in the country, 

 and whose legs were so spotted by the stings of 

 insects that the whiteness of the skin could scarcely 

 be perceived. He complained of his solitude, and 

 the sad necessity which often compelled him to 

 leave the most atrocious crimes unpunished. An 

 indigenous alcayde, or overseer, had a few years 

 before eaten one of his wives, after fattening her by 

 good feeding. " You cannot imagine," said the 

 missionary, " all the perversity of this Indian family. 

 You receive men of a new tribe into the village ; 

 they appear to be good, mild, and industrious ; but 

 suffer them to take part in an incursion to bring in 

 the natives, and you can scarcely prevent them from 

 murdering all they meet, and hiding some portions 

 of the dead bodies." The travellers had in their 

 canoe a fugitive Indian from the Guaisia, who in a 

 few weeks had become sufficiently civilized to be 

 very useful. As he was mild and intelligent, they 

 had some desire of taking him into their service ; 



