Certain Apes Keep Themselves Select. 
275 
dub from the owner while lighting. Although I offered them knives und 
other objects for the clubs, they refused to part with them though they 
willingly bartered the elegant feather hats. Their settlement lay several 
hundred paces in from the waterside, but the time did not admit of my 
accompanying them there. 
788. Wherever the foliage of the banks became thicker, the branches 
swarmed with monkeys, of which the really pretty bushy-tail Hurua 
apes ( Pitliecia chiropotes Geoffr. ) constituted the greatest number. 
The beautifully-parted long hair and abundant proud beard and 
whiskers, which on my return I hardly found surpassed by those of 
young Germany, as well as the long-haired fox-like tails, lent the lively 
intelligent looking animals an unusually friendly, but at the same time 
comical, appearance. Being the first seen on my trip, I naturally had to 
jump on land and try my luck in hunting which on this occasion proved 
successful. 1 shot a male and female, though almost regretted my 
action on hearing the latter's pitiful yelp of agony, enough to pierce one’s 
heart, she being only badly wounded: it sounded exactly like the bitter 
cry of a child in pain. The beard of the female is not so thick and long, 
neither is the tail so bushy as that of the male. I never met them again 
so plentifully as here on the Rupununi. The howler monkeys ( Mycetes ) 
already before sunrise, and always squatting with their faces turned 
towards it, commenced their horrible noise from the highest tree- 
tops: at sunset they sang it a deafening slumber song. It is extra 
ordinary that the Mycetes are never found associated with other species, 
but keep strictly apart from the remaining light-footed gentry. This is 
also the case with Pitliecia chiropotes and P. leucocepliala, while the roll- 
1 ail apes debus apeilla, C. capiicinus and often CalUtlu i.v are found 
in company. The flesh of the Mycetes, except for the peculiar smell 
which is like that of our billy goat, is fairly tasty. It is only after the 
Indian has scalded or singed its hair, and put it in the pot, or, for 
purposes of roasting, has stuck it on a wooden spit, that one's antipathy 
is roused on seeing it in this condition for the first time. One cannot 
but believe that he must be sharing a cannibal feast at which a little baby 
is being set before him, and it certainly requires great strength of mind 
for anybody with a stomach at all sensitive to take knife and fork to such 
a dish. After I had skinned my Pitliecia e the carcases were claimed by 
the Indians for their breakfast, to supplement the tail of a young kaiman 
that they had killed during my absence This latter spoil seemed to me 
nicer than I had expected; the cooked flesh looked snow-white, and had 
quite the taste of the larger fish. 
789. The palms now became more plentiful, there soon being 
associated with the genera hitherto exclusively prevailing a number of 
Badris, Geonoma , Maximiliana, the elegant Euterpe edulis Mart, and the 
peculiar Desmoncus poly acanthus Mart,, which cannot keep upright of 
itself and accordingly has to cling on to other trees and bushes with 
the sharp barbs of its leaves, if it wants to raise its lanky top heaven- 
ward, and not creep along the ground. The latter is certainly just as 
dangerous as the f< piinpler" palms and often enough, in following up 
game on my hunting excursions, has it held me back at the cost of much 
