deer; Mr. Marcoy grasped a sheaf of pencils and a box of water-colors
with a warlike air, and the colonel's lips were crisped into a
singular smile, indicative of lively emotions. Hardly were the
travelers clothed and armed when the reeds parted with a rattling
noise, and three nude Indians, sepia-colored and crowned with tufts of
hair like horses' tails, leaped out like jacks-in-the-box. At sight of
the party standing to receive them they redoubled their clamor, then,
flourishing their arms and legs and turning continually round, they
gradually revolved into the presence of the explorers. They selected
as chiefs and sachems of the party such as bore weapons, being the
colonel, Marcoy and the two interpreters. These they clasped in a
warm, fulsome embrace: they were smeared from head to foot with rocoa
(crude arnotta), and their passage through the river having dissolved
this pigment, they printed themselves off, in this act of amity, upon
the persons and clothing of their hosts. While the white men, with a
very bad grace, were cleaning off these tokens of natural affection,
the new-comers went on to present their civilities all around. Two of
the porters they recognized at once, with their eagle eyesight, from
having relieved them of their shirts while the latter were working
out some penalty at the governor's farm of Sausipata, and proceeded to
claim a warm acquaintance on that basis; but the bearers, with equally
lively memories of the affront, responded simply with a frown and the
epithet of _Sua-sua_--double thief.

Pepe Garcia undertook a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand,
flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it
were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those
used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible
resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages.
Marcoy imbibed a strong impression that the only terms understood in