SPIDER-MONKE YS. 
Coaitas are more frequently kept in a tame state than any other kind of monkey. 
The Indians are very fond of them as pets, and the women often suckle them when 
young at their breasts. They become attached to their masters, and will sometimes 
follow them on the ground to considerable distances. I once saw a most ridiculously 
tame coaita. It was an old female, which accompanied its owner, a trader on the 
river, in all his voyages. By way of giving me a specimen of its intelligence and 
feeling, its master set to and rated it smartly, calling it scamp, heathen, thief, and 
so forth, all through the copious Portuguese vocabulary of vituperation. The poor 
monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this display 
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161 
the branches at a great height. I fired, but unfortunately only wounded it in 
the belly. It fell with a crash, headlong, about twenty or thirty feet, and then 
caught a bough with its tail, which grasped it instantaneously, so that the animal 
remained suspended in mid-air. Before I could reload, it recovered itself, and 
mounted nimbly to the topmost branches, out of the reach of a fowling-piece, where 
we could perceive the poor thing apparently probing its wound with its fingers. 
THE CHAMECK, OR THUMBED VARIETY OR THE RED-FACED SPIDER-MONKEY (i liat. size) 
