178 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
brisk fire, is one of the choicest morsels I ever 
tasted; and although I call it "a morsel," it is a 
meal for three. It is, in fact, half luscious fat; and 
a notable character of most Amazon fishes is their 
excessive plumpness, which renders the broth made 
by boiling them quite as delicious as the fish itself. 
An Amazonian would actually as soon think of 
throwing away the fish as the water in which it had 
been boiled ! 
During the night of the 5th our Yuma Indian 
gave us the slip, and took with him our montaria, 
the captain's cup, and the Mamaluco's cutlass, bow 
and arrows, hooks and lines, looking-glass and fry- 
ing-pan. His tribe, like their near neighbours the 
Muras, are renowned for craftiness and pilfering. 
He had been on bad terms with the Mamaluco 
throughout the voyage, and took this way of 
revenging himself, as also of escaping to the 
freedom of his native forests, which were not far 
distant. We had now but one sailor left, the 
Mamaluco, who, spite of his crabbed disposition, 
worked well when not under the influence of 
cachaca — a thing which happened to him two or 
three times during the voyage, when he profited 
by my temporary absence to help himself from my 
demijohn ; but his worn, dissipated look bore 
witness to habitual devotion to the fiery liquid. 
He was a bit of a philosopher in his way, and used 
to amuse me with his cynical views of life, that 
showed him to be as completely ddsillMsionnd as 
any man about town, or even as Ecclesiastes him- 
self. One evening he lay on deck watching a cock- 
roach, as it struggled to release itself from its old 
