202 



THE UCAYALI. 



same hanging from it, and partly concealed by the long gown, or cushma. 

 His wrists were also adorned with wide bracelets of white beads, and 

 above these a bracelet of lizard skins, set round with monkeys' teeth. 

 He wore a little silver shield hanging from his nose, and a narrow, thin 

 plate of silver, shaped like a paddle, two and a half inches long, thrust 

 through a hole in the lower lip, and hanging on the chin. He had 

 been to Cuzco, where he got his silver ornaments, and said it was a 

 journey of four moons. We anchored in thirty-six-feet water, and 

 found a current of three miles the hour. Calm, clear night ; much dew. 



October 11. — Stopped to breakfast on a beach on the left bank, back 

 of which, on the firm land, were two houses of Memos Indians. There 

 were twenty-two of them — men, women, and children — with three men 

 of the Shipebos tribe. There seemed to be no uniformity in their paint, 

 each one consulting his own taste ; though there was one man and a 

 woman, whom I understood to be man and wife, painted exactly alike. 

 The Remos were low and small ; the Shipebos taller. They were 

 dressed in the common costume of the Ucayali, (the cushma,) and had 

 their hair cut straight across the forehead, just above the eyes, so as to 

 show the face, set, as it were, in a frame of hair. They are all 

 filthy, and some have sarna. As far as I have observed, more women 

 have this disease than men. Passed more huts afterwards, and some 

 Indians seeking the young of the turtle on a beach. These people eat 

 anything. I have known them to eat the eggs of the turtle with the 

 young in them, and also turtle that had died a natural death and 

 had become offensive. 



October 12. — Passed a settlement of Conibos on the right bank, 

 numbering twenty-five or thirty. They said that the inhabitants of a 

 village called Huamuco, which Smyth places near this place, had gone 

 to the Pachitea. 



October 13. — At breakfast we found a smaller kind of turtle called 

 charapilla, better and more tender than the large turtle which is called 

 charapa. Stopped at a little settlement of Shipebos on the right bank — 

 twenty-five all told. Met three negroes, with a crew of Conibos, who 

 had been up the river for sarsaparilla. They gathered the principal part 

 of what they had (about sixty arrobas) in the Aguaytia, but had been 

 five days up the Pachitea, and six up the Ucayali, above the Pachitea. 

 They say that the Cashibos of that river would come to the beach in 

 hostile attitude ; but when they found that the strangers were not 

 Indians of the Ucayali, but wore trousers and had guns, they fled. 



Passed two houses of Conibos, about fifteen in number. One of 

 them, taking us for padres, insisted that Ijurra should baptize his child; 



