FLESH OF MONKEY 



315 



with worth preserving. A great number of the most con- 

 spicuous insects of the locaHty were new to me, and turned 

 out to be species pecuUar to this part of the Amazons 

 valley. There is the most striking contrast between the 

 productions of the Cuparl and those of Altar do Chao in 

 this department : the majority of the species inhabiting 

 the one district being totally unknown in the other. At 

 the same time a considerable proportion of the Cupari 

 species were identical with those of Ega on the Upper 

 Amazons, a region eight times further removed than the 

 village just mentioned. The most interesting acquisition 

 at this place was a large and handsome monkey, of a 

 species I had not before met with — the white-whiskered 

 Coaita, or spider monkey, Ateles marginatus. I saw a 

 pair one day in the forest moving slowly along the branches 

 of a lofty tree, and "shot one of them ; the next day Joao 

 Aracu brought down another, possibly the companion. 

 The species is of about the same size as the common black 

 kind of which I have given an account in a former chapter, 

 and has a similar lean body with limbs clothed with coarse 

 black hair ; but it differs in having the whiskers and a 

 triangular patch on the crown of the head of a white colour. 

 It is never met with in the alluvial plains of the Amazons, 

 nor, I believe, on the northern side of the great river valley, 

 except towards the head waters, near the Andes ; where 

 Humboldt discovered it on the banks of the Santiago. I 

 thought the meat the best flavoured I had ever tasted. 

 It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste. 

 During the time of our stay in this part of the Cupari, we 

 could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this 

 diet ill agreed with me, three successive days of it reducing 

 me to a state of great weakness, I was obliged to make the 

 most of our Coaita meat. We smoke-dried the joints 

 instead of salting them ; placing them for several hours 

 on a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan 

 adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have 

 no salt, and which they call ' muquiar Meat putrefies 

 in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting 

 is of no use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and 

 dried immediately in the sun. My monkeys lasted me 

 about a fortnight, the last joint being an arm with the 

 clenched fist, which I used with great economy, hanging 

 it in the intervals between my frugal meals on a nail in 

 the cabin. Nothing but the hardest necessity could have 



