Human Flesh Boiled in Fish-Sauce. 
289 
Kio Negro Smith died of dropsy. Lieutenant Gulliver continued his 
journey on the Rio Negro, travelled down the Amazon and arrived at 
Para whence he went to Trinidad. In the diary mentioned the travellers 
note: “On the Rupununi we reached the Canb settlement Annay and 
were cordially received by the chief who immediately had lish and 
pepper pot set before us.” After they had fairly satisfied their hunger 
with the dish, another pepper-pot was set before them that contained 
a large piece of meat and two human hands. At first the travellers 
believed they were the hands of an ape as yet unknown to them and, as 
their very resemblance made them shudder, refused it with the excuse 
that when travelling it was forbidden them to eat the flesh of four-footed 
animals. While the chief was now gnawing at a hand with evident grati- 
fication he asked them what the fish and sauce had tasted like, and upon 
being told that it was excellent, he assured them that human flesh was 
certainly best suited for fish-sauce, for which reason he always had the 
former boiled with it, as had been the case here, he having only recently 
returned from a punitive expedition against the Macusis of wLom he had 
made several prisoners and was now killing one by one. 
818. The horror and fright that overcame both travellers could not be 
adequately enough described, and yet they had to suppress their feelings. 
The hope that the chieftain’s statements might prove false had neverthe- 
less to be only too soon abandoned when they actually found in the 
middle of the village a house that was closely surrounded with high 
palisades in which they noticed several Macusis. Lieutenant Gulliver, 
who felt sick, lay down in his hammock, but Smith remained awake all 
night through the continual dread that their host might easily develop a 
taste for the flesh of a white man. When about to bathe next morning 
in a pond close by, the Indians tried every method to restrain them, 
telling them in the meantime that everybody who bathed here would 
die within a year. Both of them, however, insisted upon their bath am! 
as chance would have it neither survived the expiration of the twelve- 
month. Smith died on the Barra do Rio Negro and Gulliver fulfilled 
the prophecy soon after his arrival in Trinidad, where he committed 
suicide for some unknown reason by hanging himself. So much for the 
diary which, otherwise posted up with a great amount of truth, 
undoubtedly contains in this particular portion of it nothing else but one 
of those many narratives of adventure to which one in Germany so 
aptly applies the name of “fisli-story.” The Annay Indians well knew' 
plenty of things to tell my brother about these two white men, but 
nothing concerning the enchanted pond which one sought in vain in the 
neighbourhood. 
819. Not far from the mouth of the Annay a Macusi had built his 
lonely residence on top of the uncommonly high bank, to which a sort 
of ladder led from the w r ater edge. As one of our boats was still behind 
we climbed up to the house, and found two of his wives, instead of the 
owner, at home— the third had accompanied her husband. It was one of 
the rare cases of polygamy among the Macusis w hich we personally 
became acquainted with. Close to the house a tame young giant-crane 
( Mycterla Americana Linn., the Tararanm of the Macusis) attracted my 
