dotted about without the slightest attempt at symmetrical arrangement,
except that they were built round an open space. The remainder of the
clearing consisted of cultivated ground divided into patches devoted in
about equal proportions to cassava and maize, with a little indigo here
and there. A whole forest of slender poles, connected with each other
by lianas, from which large quantities of fish were suspended, drying in
the sun, and which, by the way, gave off a most intolerable odour,
indicated that the inhabitants depended as much upon the river as upon
the soil for their subsistence.

Apparently some sort of festival or religious ceremony was in process of
being observed when Dick and Phil burst in so unceremoniously upon them,
for the entire population of the village, men, women, and children, were
squatted in a circle round the open space in the middle of the village.
Despite the scorching heat a large fire was blazing in the centre of the
open space, and round it sat the village band, consisting of four drums,
made of sections of trees with the inside cut away, leaving a thin
cylinder of wood, over one end of which was tightly strained a skin of
some sort which was slapped with the palm of the open hand, and about a
dozen flageolet players, their instruments being made of baked clay. It
was these last that emitted the unearthly braying, bellowing sounds
already mentioned. To this hideous medley of sounds a figure in the
middle of the circle was dancing, a figure so queer that for a second or
two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it. But
presently they saw that it was a man laced-up in a jaguar skin, with
teeth, claws, and tail complete, the face of the man peering out from
between the gaping jaws. He was not only dancing vigorously, if indeed
dancing it could be called, which consisted in leaping violently into
the air and springing from side to side over a bundle, the nature of
which the intruders could not at first make out, but also singing, or
rather howling, certain words which appeared to be gradually working his
audience up into a state of savage excitement; for at intervals one or
another of them, apparently moved out of himself, would yell furiously
and shake in the air a villainous-looking, triple-barbed spear.

For nearly a minute the people were so completely absorbed in the
movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor,
as the man in the jaguar skin