136 



CARIPI 



worth the risk and discomfort of the passage to witness 

 the seamanhke abiHty displayed by Indians on the water. 

 The httle boat rode beautifully, rising well with each 

 wave, and in the course of an hour and a half we arrived 

 at Caripi, thoroughly tired and wet through to the skin. 



I will here make a few observations regarding the 

 Paca and the Cutia, although there is Uttle to relate of 

 their habits in addition to what is contained in natural 

 history books. The Paca is the Coelogenys Paca of 

 zoologists, and the Cutia the Dasyprocta Aguti, or a 

 local variety of that species. Both differ much from 

 our hare and rabbit, which belong to the same order of 

 animals, their fur being coarse and bristly, and their 

 ears short and broad. Their flesh is widely different in 

 taste from that of our English Rodents. The meat of 

 the Paca, in colour, grain, and flavour, resembles young 

 pork ; it is much drier, however, and less palatable than 

 pork. The skin is thick, and boils down to a jelly, when 

 it makes a capital soup with rice. Both animals live 

 exclusively in the forests, both dry and moist, being 

 found, perhaps, most abundantly in the ygapos and is- 

 lands. When these are flooded in the wet season, they 

 escape to the drier lands by swimming across the inter- 

 vening channels. At Murucupi I saw several semi- 

 domesticated individuals of both species, which had been 

 caught when young, and were suffered to run freely about 

 the houses. The Paca was not so famihar as the Cutia, 

 which generally makes use of a hole or a box in a corner 

 for a hiding-place, and comes out readily to be fed by 

 children. I once saw a tame Cutia running about the 

 woods nibbling the fruits fallen from the Inaja palm-tree 

 (Maximiliana regia), and when I tried to catch it, instead 

 of betaking itself to the thicket, it ran off to the house 

 of its owners, which was about two hundred yards off. 

 When feeding, this species sometimes sits upright, and 

 takes its food in the fore paws like a squirrel. 



The Paca and the Cutia belong to a peculiar family 

 of the Rodent order which is confined to South America, 

 and which connects the Rodents to the Pachydermata, 

 the order to which the elephant, horse, and hog belong. 

 One of the principal points of distinction from other 

 families is the strong, blunt form of the claws, which 

 in one of the forms (the Capybara) are very broad, and 

 approximate in shape to the hoofs of the Pachydermata. 



