ling waters. Instead it showed opaline hues and tints of topaz and
amethyst. At all times, and under all lights, it was majestic and
beautiful.

Colonel Rondon had given the Indians various presents, those for the
women including calico prints, and, what they especially prized,
bottles of scented oil, from Paris, for their hair. The men held a
dance in the late afternoon. For this occasion most, but not all, of
them cast aside their civilized clothing, and appeared as doubtless
they would all have appeared had none but themselves been present.
They were absolutely naked except for a beaded string round the waist.
Most of them were spotted and dashed with red paint, and on one leg
wore anklets which rattled. A number carried pipes through which they
blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing. One of
them had his pipe leading into a huge gourd, which gave out a hollow,
moaning boom. Many wore two red or green or yellow macaw feathers in
their hair, and one had a macaw feather stuck transversely through the
septum of his nose. They circled slowly round and round, chanting and
stamping their feet, while the anklet rattles clattered and the pipes
droned. They advanced to the wall of one of the houses, again and
again chanting and bowing before it; I was told this was a demand for
drink. They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking-
fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then
reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought
in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a
fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them.
During the first part of the dance the women remained in the houses,
and all the doors and windows were shut and blankets hung to prevent
the possibility of seeing out. But during the second part all the
women and girls came out and looked on. They were themselves to have
danced when the men had finished, but were overcome with shyness at
the thought of dancing with so many strangers looking on. The children
played about with unconcern throughout the ceremony, one of them
throwing high in the air, and again catching in his hands, a loaded
feather, a kind of shuttlecock.

In the evening the growing moon shone through the cloud-rack. Anything
approaching fair weather always put our men in good spirits; and the
muleteers squatted in a circle, by a fire near a pile of packs, and
listened to a long monoto