INSECT-EOOD OF THE NATIVES. 
•Ill 
explaining this coexistence of rivers differently coloured, 
within a small extent of territory, but shall merely observe, 
that at the mouth of the Pacimoni, and on the borders of the 
lake Vasiva, we were again struck with the purity and ex- 
treme transparency of the brown waters. Ancient Arabian 
travellers have observed, that the Alpine branch of the Nile, 
which joins the Bahr el Abiad near Halfaja, has green 
waters, which are so transparent, that the fish may be seen 
at the bottom of the river. 
We passed some turbulent rapids before we reached the 
mission of Mandavaca. The village, which bears also the 
name of Quirabuena, contains only sixty natives. The state 
of the Christian settlements is in general so miserable, that, 
m the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on a length of fifty 
leagues, not two hundred inhabitants are found. The banks 
of this river were indeed more peopled before the arrival of 
the missionaries; the Indians have withdrawn into the 
Woods, toward the east; for the western plains are almost 
deserted. The natives subsist during a part of the year on 
those large ants of which I have spoken above. These 
insects are much esteemed here, as spiders are in the south- 
ern hemisphere, where the savages of Australia deem them 
delicious. We found at Mandavaca the good old mission- 
ary, who had already spent “ twenty years of mosquitos in 
the losques del Cassiquiare,” and whose legs were so spotted 
V the stings of insects, that the colour of the skin could 
scarcely be perceived. He talked to us of his solitude, and 
°f the sad necessity which often compelled him to leave the 
most atrocious crimes unpunished in the two missions of 
Mandavaca and Vasiva. In the latter place, an Indian 
alcalde had, a few years before, eaten one of his wives, after 
caving taken her to his conuco,* and fattened her by good 
meding. The cannibalism of the nations of Guiana is never 
caused by the want of subsistence, or by the superstitions of 
their religion, as in the islands of the South Sea ; hut is 
generally the effect of the vengeance of a conqueror, aud (as 
the missionaries say) “of a vitiated appetite.” Victory 
°Ver a hostile tribe is celebrated by a repast; in which some 
Parts of the body of a prisoner are devoured. Sometimes a 
A hut surrounded with cultivated ground; a sort of country-house, 
hlc h the natives prefer to residing in the missions. 
