such positions was to avoid the
floods, as also snakes and crawling creatures, and the noxious air which
floats close to the surface. All the natives' houses are not built in
this way, for when we went further inland we met with several standing
only a short distance from the ground--on some more elevated spot. The
natives are not very pleasant companions, as they anoint their bodies
all over with oil, which gives anything but a notion that they indulge
in cleanliness. Jerry, however, observed that it was probably nothing
when people got accustomed to it, and that as oil was a clean thing,
they might be more cleanly than people who wear dirty clothes and never
wash. Even these people do wash their children; and we were highly
amused in the morning on seeing a mother giving her little black-headed
papoose a bath. The bath was a big tub made out of the hollowed
seed-lobe of a species of palm. The fat little creature splashed about
and seemed to enjoy the bath amazingly. After this we agreed that the
natives had a good reason for anointing their bodies with oil, and that
they were not naturally a dirty people. With Pedro, who carried the
doctor's cases, and one of the natives as a guide, we made from thence a
long excursion inland. We were all together when Pedro stopped us.
"There is something curious up in the trees," he observed. We peered
through the branches, and a little way off saw two men--negroes they
seemed--seated at some distance from each other on the boughs of
different trees, perfectly motionless. Each of them had a tube at his
mouth about twelve feet long, and very slender. The mouthpiece was
thick--a short cylinder apparently--as the doctor told us, a receptacle
for wind. The weapon or instrument, he said, was a sarbacan. Numerous
beautiful birds were flying about in the neighbourhood, some of them the
most diminutive humming-birds. Soon as we looked down fell one, then
another and another. They were shot with little darts of hard wood
pointed at one end, and twisted round with wadding at the other to
prevent the wind escaping. Jerry said that at school he had often made
similar weapons on a small scale, and had killed insects with them.
After the sportsmen had shot off all their arrows they came down from
their perches to collect their game. We found that they were employed
by some naturalists at Para, and that the birds were wanted either for
stuffing or for the sake of their feathers.