can scarcely call it an insect after using a big game pistol on it,
is still occupying the hut. About nine months later I was telling
Captain Barnett, of the R.M.S. _Napo_ which picked me up on the Amazon
on my way home, about my ill success in hunting the spider. "Lange,"
he asked, "why didn't you try for him with a frying-pan?"



CHAPTER III

OTHER INCIDENTS DURING MY STAY IN REMATE DE MALES


Remate De Males, with Nazareth and São Francisco, is set down in the
midst of absolute wilderness. Directly behind the village is the
almost impenetrable maze of tropical jungle. If with the aid of a
machete one gets a minute's walk into it, he cannot find his way out
except by the cackling of the hens around the houses. A dense wall
of vegetation shuts in the settlement on every side. Tall palms stand
above the rest of the trees; lower down is a mass of smaller but more
luxuriant plants, while everywhere is the twining, tangled _lianas_,
making the forest a dark labyrinth of devious ways. Here and there
are patches of tropical blossoms, towering ferns, fungoid growths, or
some rare and beautiful orchid whose parasitical roots have attached
themselves to a tree trunk. And there is always the subdued confusion
that betokens the teeming animal life.

Looking up the Itecoahy River, one can see nothing but endless forest
and jungle. And the same scene continues for a distance of some eight
or nine hundred miles until reaching the headwaters of the river