212 
WANDERINGS IN 
THIRD 
JOURNEY. 
Indian 
dinner. 
telling them what we wanted, and by promising 
handsome presents of powder, shot, and hooks, they 
dropped their expedition, and invited us up to the 
settlement they had just left, and where we laid in a 
provision of cassava. 
They gave us for dinner boiled ant-bear and red 
monkey; two dishes unknown even at Beauvilliers 
in Paris, or at a London city feast. The monkey 
was very good indeed, but the ant-bear had been 
kept beyond its time; it stunk as our venison does 
in England; and so, after tasting it, I preferred 
dining entirely on monkey. After resting here, we 
went back to the river. The Indians, three in 
number, accompanied us in their own curial, and, 
on entering the river, pointed to a place a little way 
above, well calculated to harbour a cayman. The 
water was deep and still, and flanked by an im¬ 
mense sand-bank; there was also a little shallow 
creek close by. 
On this sand-bank, near the forest, the people 
made a shelter for the night. My own was already 
made; for I always take with me a painted sheet, 
about twelve feet by ten. This, thrown over a pole, 
supported betwixt two trees, makes you a capital 
roof with very little trouble. 
We showed one of the Indians the shark-hook. 
He shook his head, and laughed at it, and said it 
would not do. When he was a boy, he had seen his 
father catch the cay men, and on the morrow he would 
make something that would answer. 
In the mean time, we set the shark-hook, but it 
