511 



The air is indeed cooler and more healthful. 

 The river is free from crocodiles ; you can bathe 

 without apprehension, and by night as well as 

 by day are less tormented by the stings of insects 

 than on the Oroonoko. Father Zea hoped to 

 reestablish his health by visiting the missions of 

 Rio Negro. He talked of those places with that 

 enthusiasm, which is felt in all the colonies of 

 the continent for every thing far off. 



The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again 

 excited in us that interest, which every where 

 attaches man in a cultivated state to the study 

 of men in a savage condition, and the successive 

 developement of his intellectual faculties. How 

 difficult to recognize in this infancy of society, 

 in this assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate 

 Indians, the primitive character of our species ! 

 Human nature is not here displayed with those 

 features of artless simplicity, of which poets in 

 every language have drawn such enchanting 

 pictures. The savage of the Oroonoko appeared 

 to us to be as hideous as the savage of the Mis- 

 sisippi, described by that philosophical traveller*, 

 who best knew how to paint man under different 

 climates. We are eager to persuade ourselves, 

 that these natives, crouching before the fire, or 

 seated on large shells of turtles, their bodies 

 covered with earth and grease, their eyes stu- 



* Mr. de Volnej. 



