INTERESTING FISH 
yellow; but to my mind they could bear no comparison 
with even the ugliest European wild flowers. They were 
coarse in shape and crude in colour, and in their beauty 
there was the same difference as there would be between 
the lovely, refined face of an aristocratic woman and that 
of a handsome, massive, peasant girl. 
Water was certainly not lacking in that country. We 
crossed the Rio Striminho, then the Rio Stacco, flowing 
from southwest to northeast into a lagoon formed by the 
Rio Claro. We camped on the bank of the Rio Stacco, 
and found the water delicious. 
The negro Filippe killed a wild boar. My men had 
a great time preparing a huge dinner. They absolutely 
gorged themselves. Personally I never touch pig in any 
shape or form, as I cannot get over the idea that its 
meat is poisonous for any thoroughly healthy person. 
It may, of course, not be so to people who are not abso¬ 
lutely healthy. The very sight and odour of it make me 
quite ill, and I fully share the idea of Mohamme¬ 
dans that the meat, certainly of tame pigs, is most 
unclean. 
As we went on we had good sport, my men taking the 
greatest delight in fishing in the rivers on the banks of 
which we halted. The travelling was easy over flat 
country. We made short marches for some days, in order 
to let the animals recover their lost strength. In the 
river Las Almas (elevation 1,250 feet), 20 metres wide 
and 3 feet deep, flowing northwest, we caught a beautiful 
pintado fish, so called because of its spotted appearance. 
That fish possessed a huge, flat head, with long feelers, 
two on the nose, at the side of the nostrils, to be accurate, 
two under its lower mandible. The mouth was enormous 
in comparison with the total length of the fish, and could 
be opened at an extraordinarily wide angle. Inside were 
most peculiar teeth in sets of twos, while the mouth was 
lined with thousands of hard, tiny, sharp points. The 
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