Chap. III. 
COW-FISH. 
165 
to range. On most days, however, they brought two or 
three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or 
Vacca marina. On this last-mentioned occasion we made 
quite a hoHday ; the canoe was stopped for six or seven 
hours, and all turned out into the forest to help to skin 
and cook the animal. The meat was cut into cubical 
slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these 
on a long stick. Fires were made, and the spits stuck 
in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast. A 
drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the 
fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails 
and slime which were scattered about. The meat has 
somewhat the taste of very coarse pork ; but the fat, 
which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a 
greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour. The 
animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in 
length, and nine in girth at the broadest part. The 
manatee is one of the. few objects which excite the 
dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstand- 
ing its commonness. The fact of its suckling its young at 
the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, 
seems to strike them as something very strange. The 
animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded 
head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, 
lead- coloured skin, reminded me of those Egyptian 
tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped 
to the human figure. 
It rarely happened that we caught anything near the 
canoe ; but one day, as we were slowly progressing 
along a remanso past a thick bed of floating grasses, 
the men caught sight of a large Pirarucu : the fish 
