taken from the animals only a few weeks previously, they had already
been partly destroyed by the gnawing of rats. A tapir, weighing nearly
seven hundred and fifty pounds, had been shot the day before and was
being cut up for food when we arrived. We were invited to stay and
take dinner here, and I had my first opportunity of tasting roast
tapir. I found that it resembled roast beef very much, only sweeter,
and the enjoyment of this food belongs among the very few pleasant
memories I preserve of this trip.

While they were getting dinner ready, I noticed what I took to be a
stuffed parrot on a beam in the kitchen. But when I touched its tail
I found that it was enough alive to come near snapping my finger
off. It was a very large arara parrot with two tail feathers, each
about thirty-six inches long, a magnificent specimen worthy of a place
in a museum. Parrots of this particular species are very difficult
to handle, being as stupid and malicious as they are beautiful. They
often made me think of dandies who go resplendent in fine clothes
but are less conspicuous for mental excellences.

After having indulged in black coffee, we were invited to give the
house and the surroundings a general inspection. Directly behind the
structure was the smoking hut, or _defumador_, as it is called. Inside
this are a number of sticks inclined in pyramid form and covered with
palm-leaves. In the floor a hole was dug for the fire that serves for
coagulating the rubber-milk. Over this pit is hung a sort of frame for
guiding the heavy stick employed in the smoking of the rubber. At this
time the process had not become for me the familiar story that it was
destined to be. Beneath the hut were several unfinished paddles and a
canoe under construction. The latter are invariably of the "dugout"
type. A shape is roughly cut from a tree-trunk and then a fire is