in 
YOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. 
Chap, II. 
houses. I was inclined to doubt the fact of a serpent 
striking at its prey from the water, and thought an 
alHgator more likely to be the culprit, although we 
had not yet met with alligators in the river. Some 
days afterwards the young men belonging to the dif- 
ferent sitios agreed together to go in search of the 
serpent. They began in a systematic manner, forming 
two parties each embarked in three or four canoes, 
and starting from points several miles apart, whence 
they gradually approximated, searching all the little 
inlets on both sides the river. The reptile was found 
at last sunning itself on a log at the mouth of a muddy 
rivulet, and despatched with harpoons. I saw it the 
day after it was killed : it was not a very large speci- 
men, measuring only eighteen feet nine inches in length 
and sixteen inches in circumference at the widest part 
of the body. I measured skins of the Anaconda after- 
wards, twenty-one feet in length and two feet in girth. 
The reptile has a most hideous appearance, owing to its 
being very broad in the middle and tapering abruptly 
at both ends. It is very abundant in some parts of the 
country ; nowhere more so than in the Lago Grande, 
near Santarem, where it is often seen coiled up in the 
corners of farm-yards, and detested for its habit of 
carrying off poultry, young calves, or whatever animal 
it can get within reach of 
At Ega a large Anaconda was once near making a 
meal of a young lad about ten years of age belonging 
to one of my neighbours. The father and his son went 
one day in their montaria a few miles up the Teffe to 
gather wild fruit ; landing on a sloping sandy shore. 
