SOUTH AMERICA. 
39 
condemned to perpetual solitude and silence. There 
was not one four-footed animal to be seen, nor even 
the marks of one. It would have been as silent as 
midnight, and all as still and unmoved as a monu¬ 
ment, had not the jabiru in the marsh, and a few 
vultures soaring over the mountain’s top, shown 
that it was not quite deserted by animated nature. 
There were no insects, except one kind of fly, about 
one-fourth the size of the common house-fly. It 
bit cruelly, and was much more tormenting than the 
mosquito on the sea-coast. 
This seems to be the native countiy of the Arrow- 
root. Wherever you passed through a patch of 
wood in a low situation, there you found it growing 
luxuriantly. 
The Indian place you are now at, is not the 
proper place to have come to, in order to reach the 
Portuguese frontiers. You have advanced too much 
to the westward. But there was no alternative. 
The ground betwixt you and another small settle¬ 
ment (which was the right place to have gone to) 
was overflowed; and thus, instead of proceeding 
southward, you were obliged to wind along the foot 
of the western hills, quite out of your way. 
But the grand landscape this place affords, makes 
you ample amends for the time you have spent in 
reaching it. It would require great descriptive 
powers to give a proper idea of the situation these 
people have chosen for their dwelling. 
The hill they are on is steep and high, and full of 
immense rocks. The huts are not all in one place, 
FIRST 
JOURNEY. 
Arrow- 
root. 
