1851.] 
AN INDIAN MALOCCA. 
275 
in the time of high flood, for all the river-banks being 
overflowed, it is only at some rocky point which still 
keeps above water that a fire can be made ; and as these 
are few and far between, we frequently had to pass the 
whole day on farinha and water, with a piece of cold 
fish or a pacova, if we were so lucky as to have any. 
All these points, or sleeping places, are well known to 
the traders in the river, so that whenever we reached 
one, at whatever hour of the day or night, we stopped to 
make our coffee and rest a little, knowing that we should 
only get to another haven after eight or ten hours of 
hard pulling and paddling. 
On the second day we found a small Sucuruju ” 
[Bunectes murinus)^ about a yard long, sunning itself on 
a bush over the water ; one of our Indians shot it with 
an arrow, and when we staid for the night roasted it for 
supper. I tasted a piece, and found it excessively tough 
and glutinous, but without any disagreeable flavour ; and 
well stewed, it would, I have no doubt, be very good. 
Having stopped at a sitio we purchased a fowl, which, 
boiled with rice, made us an excellent supper. 
On the 7th we entered a narrow winding channel, 
branching from the north bank of the river, and in about 
an hour reached a malocca,’’ or native Indian lodge, 
the first we had encountered. It was a large, substan- 
tial building, near a hundred feet long, by about forty 
wide and thirty high, very strongly constructed of round, 
smooth, barked timbers, and thatched with the fan- 
shaped leaves of the Carana palm. One end was square, 
with a gable, the other circular ; and the eaves, hang- 
ing over the low walls, reached nearly to the ground. 
T 2 
