n8 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [February, 



his thoughts were far from eating, and then, when a cuya of 

 mingau was offered him, would quite contentedly drink it, and 

 be ready to start off before daybreak the next morning. Yet 

 he was as stout and jolly-looking as John Bull himself, fed daily 

 on fat beef and mutton. 



Most of the wild fruits — which are great favourites with these 

 people, especially the women and children — are of an acrid or 

 bitter taste, to which long practice only can reconcile a foreigner. 

 Often, when seeing a little child gnawing away at some strange 

 fruit, I have asked to taste it, thinking that it must be sweet to 

 please at that lollipop-loving age, and have found a flavour like 

 aloes or quassia, that I could not get out of my mouth for an 

 hour ; others equally relished are like yellow soap, and some as 

 sour as verjuice. 



These people almost always seem at work, but have very Httie 

 to show for it. The women go to dig up mandiocca or yams, 

 or they have weeding or planting to do, and at other times have 

 earthen pots to make, and their scanty clothing to mend and 

 wash. The men are always busy, either clearing the forest or 

 cutting down timber for a canoe or for paddles, or to make a 

 board for some purpose or other ; and their houses always 

 want mending, and then there is thatch to be brought from a 

 long distance ; or they want baskets, or bows and arrows, or 

 some other thing which occupies nearly their whole time, and 

 yet does not produce them the bare necessaries of life, or allow 

 them leisure to hunt the game that abounds in the forest around 

 them. This is principally the result of everybody doing every- 

 thing for himself, slowly and with much unnecessary labour, 

 instead of occupying himself with one kind of industry, and 

 exchanging its produce for the articles he requires. An Indian 

 spends a week in cutting down a tree in the forest, and fashion- 

 ing an article which, by the division of labour, can be made for 

 sixpence : the consequence is, that his work produces but six- 

 pence a week, and he is therefore all his life earning a scanty 

 supply of clothing, in a country where food may be had almost 

 for nothing. 



Having remained here a month, and obtained twenty-five 

 specimens of the umbrella-bird, I prepared to return to Barra. 

 On the last day my hunter went out he brought me a fine male 

 bird alive. It had been wounded slightly on the head, just 

 behind the eye, and had fallen to the ground stunned, for in 



