the second day of my stay.

"The morning arrived, and the hunters assembled, to the number of forty
or fifty, in an open space by the malocca; and having got their arms and
equipments in readiness, all repaired to the _praya_, or narrow beach of
sand, which separated the river from the thick underwood of the forest.
Here some twenty or thirty _ubas_ (canoes hollowed out of tree-trunks)
floated on the water, ready to receive the hunters. They were of
different sizes; some capable of containing half a dozen, while others
were meant to carry only a single person.

"In a few minutes the ubas were freighted with their living cargoes,
consisting not only of the hunters, but of most of the women and boys of
the malocca, with a score or two of dogs.

"These dogs were curious creatures to look at. A stranger, ignorant of
the customs of the Jurunas, would have been at some loss to account for
the peculiarity of their colour. Such dogs I had never seen before.
Some were of a bright scarlet, others were yellow, others blue, and some
mottled with a variety of tints!

"What could it mean? But I knew well enough. _The dogs were dyed_!

"Yes, it is the custom among many tribes of South-American Indians to
dye not only their own bodies, but the hairy coat of their dogs, with
brilliant colours obtained from vegetable juices, such as the huitoc,
the yellow raucau (_annato_), and the blue of the wild indigo. The
light grey, often white, hair of these animals favours the staining
process; and the effect produced pleases the eye of their savage
masters.

"On my eye the effect was strange and fantastical. I could not restrain
my laughter when I first scanned these curs in their fanciful coats.
Picture to yourself a pack of scarlet, and orange, and purple dogs!

"Well, we were soon in the ubas, and paddling up-stream. The tuxava and
I occupied a canoe to ourselves. His only arms were a light fusil,
which I had given him as a present. It was a good piece, and he was
proud of it. This was to be its first trial. I had a rifle for my own
weapon. The rest were armed variously: some had guns, others the native
bow and arrows; some carried the gravatana, with arrows dipped in curari
poison; some had nothing but machetes, or cutlasses--for clearing the
underwood, in case the game had to be driven from the thickets.

"There was a part of the river, some two or three miles above the
malocca, where the channel was wider than elsewher