CESTRUS FLIES 



507 



reached the settlement of the horde who had eaten the 

 two men, it was found evacuated, with the exception of 

 one girl, who had been in the woods when the rest of 

 her people had taken flight, and whom the guards brought 

 with them to St. Paulo. It was gathered from her, and 

 from other Indians on the Jauari, that the young men 

 had brought their fate on themselves through improper 

 conduct towards the Majerona women. The girl, on 

 arriving at St. Paulo, was taken care of by Senhor Jose 

 Patricio, baptised under the name of Maria, and taught 

 Portuguese. I saw a good deal of her, for my friend 

 sent her daily to my house to fill the water-jars, make 

 the fire, and so forth. I also gained her good-will by 

 extracting the grub of an QEstrus fly ^ from her back, 

 and thus cured her of a painful tumour. She was de- 

 cidedly the best-humoured and, to all appearance, the 

 kindest-hearted specimen of her race I had yet seen. She 

 was tall, and very stout ; in colour much lighter than the 

 ordinary Indian tint, and her ways altogether were more 

 like those of a careless, laughing country wench, such as 

 might be met with any day amongst the labouring class 

 in villages in our own country, than a cannibal. I heard 

 this artless maiden relate, in the coolest manner possible, 

 how she ate a portion of the bodies of the young men 

 whom her tribe had roasted. But what increased greatly 

 the incongruity of this business, the young widow of one 



^ A species of CEstrus or gadfly, on the upper Amazons, 

 fxxes on the flesh of man as breeding place for its grub. I 

 extracted five at different times from my own flesh. The first 

 was fixed in the calf of my leg, causing there a suppurating 

 tumour, which, being unaware of the existence of this CEstrus, 

 I thought at first was a common boil. The tumour grew and 

 the pain increased until I became quite lame, and then, on 

 carefully examining the supposed boil, I saw the head of a 

 grub moving in a small hole at its apex. The extraction of 

 the animal was a difficult operation, it being an inch in 

 length and of increasing breadth from head to tail, besides 

 being secured to the flesh of the inside of the tumour by 

 two horny hooks. An old Indian of Ega showed me the most 

 effective way of proceeding, which was to stupify the grub 

 with strong tobacco juice, causing it to relax its grip in the 

 interior, and then pull it out of the narrow orifice of the 

 tumour by main force. 



