290 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. \Ju7ie, 
be fed. The Uaupes Indians take much delight, and are 
very successful, in breeding birds and animals of all 
kinds. 
We staid here a week, and I went daily into the forest 
when the weather was not very wet, and generally ob- 
tained something interesting. I frequently met parties of 
women and boys, going to and returning from the rhossas. 
Sometimes they would run into the thicket till I had 
passed ; at other times they would merely stand on one 
side of the path, with a kind of bashful fear at encoun- 
tering a white man while in that state of complete 
nudity, which they know is strange to us. When about 
the houses in the village however, or coming to fill their 
water-pots or bathe in the river close to our habitation, 
they were quite unembarrassed, being, like Eve, “ naked 
and not ashamed. Though some were too fat, most of 
them had splendid figures, and many of them were very 
pretty. Before daylight in the morning all were astir, 
and came to the river to wash. It is the chilliest hour 
of the twenty-four, and when we were wrapping our > 
sheet or blanket more closely around us, we could hear ? 
the plunges and splashings of these early bathers. Bain 
or wind is all alike to them : their morning bath is never 
dispensed with. 
Fish were here very scarce, and we were obliged to 
live almost entirely on fowls, which, though very nice 
when well roasted and with the accompaniment of ham 
and gravy, are rather tasteless simply boiled or stewed, 
with no variation in the cookery, and without vegetables. . 
I had now got so thoroughly into the life of this part of-' 
the country, that, like everybody else here, I preferred 
