408 
EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA. 
Chap. YI.^ 
her race I had yet seen. She was tall, and very stout ; 
in colour much lighter than the ordinary Indian tint, 
and her ways altogether were more like those of a care- 
less, laughing country wench, such as might be met 
with any day amongst the labouring class in villages 
in our own country, than a cannibal. I heard this 
artless maiden relate, in the coolest manner possible, 
how she ate a portion of the bodies of the young men 
whom her tribe had roasted. But what increased 
greatly the incongruity of this business, the young 
widow of one of the victims, a neighbour of mine, 
happened to be present during the narrative, and 
showed her interest in it by laughing at the broken 
Portuguese in which the girl related the horrible 
story. 
In the fourth month of my sojourn at St. Paulo I had 
a serious illness, an attack of the " sizoens," or ague of 
the country, which, as it left me with shattered health 
and damped enthusiasm, led to my abandoning the plan 
I had formed of proceeding to the Peruvian towns of 
Pebas and Moyobamba, 250 and 600 miles further west, 
and so completing the examination of the Natural 
History of the Amazonian plains up to the foot of the 
Andes. I made a very large collection at St. Paulo, 
and employed a collector at Tabatinga and on the 
banks of the Jauari for several months, so that I 
acquired a very fair knowledge altogether of the pro- 
ductions of the country bordering the Amazons to the 
end of the Brazilian territory, a distance of 1900 miles 
from the Atlantic at the mouth of the Para ; but beyond 
