Chap. II. 
FLESH OF MONKEY. 
119 
most interesting acquisition at this place was a large and 
handsome monkey, of a species I had not before met 
with — the white-whiskered Coaita, or spider monkey, 
Ateles marginatus. I saw a pair one day in the forest 
moving slowly along the branches of a lofty tree, and 
shot one of them ; the next day Joao Aracu brought 
down another, possibly the companion. The species is of 
about the same size as the common black kind of which 
I have given an account in a former chapter, and has a 
similar lean body with limbs clothed with coarse black 
hair ; but it differs in having the whiskers and a trian- 
gular patch on the crown of the head of a white colour. 
It is never met with in the alluvial plains of the Ama- 
zons, nor, I believe, on the northern side of the great 
river valley, except towards the head waters, near the 
Andes ; where Humboldt discovered it on the banks of 
the Santiago. I thought the meat the best flavoured I 
had ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer 
and sweeter taste. During the time of our stay in this 
part of the Cupari, we could get scarcely anything but 
fish to eat, and as this diet ill agreed with me, three 
successive days of it reducing me to a state of great 
weakness, I was obliged to make the most of our Coaita 
meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting 
them ; placing them for several hours on a framework 
of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the 
natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, and 
which they call muquiar." Meat putrefies in this cli- 
mate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no 
use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and dried 
immediately in the sun. My monkeys lasted me about 
