and prepared for breakfast. It was a pretty spot--a clean, white,
sandy beach beneath the shade of wide-spreading trees. Joaquim
made a fire. He first scraped fine shavings from the midrib of a
Bacaba palm-leaf; these he piled into a little heap in a dry
place, and then struck a light in his bamboo tinderbox with a
piece of an old file and a flint, the tinder being a felt-like
substance manufactured by an ant (Polyrhachis bispinosus). By
gentle blowing, the shavings ignited, dry sticks were piled on
them, and a good fire soon resulted. He then singed and prepared
the cutia, finishing by running a spit through the body and
fixing one end in the ground in a slanting position over the
fire. We had brought with us a bag of farinha and a cup
containing a lemon, a dozen or two of fiery red peppers, and a
few spoonsful of salt. We breakfasted heartily when our cutia was
roasted, and washed the meal down with a calabash full of the
pure water of the river.

After breakfast the dogs found another cutia, which was hidden in
its burrow two or three feet beneath the roots of a large tree,
and it took Raimundo nearly an hour to disinter it. Soon
afterwards we left this place, crossed the channel, and, paddling
past two islands, obtained a glimpse of the broad river between
them, with a long sandy spit, on which stood several scarlet
ibises and snow-white egrets. One of the islands was low and
sandy, and half of it was covered with gigantic arum-trees, the
often-mentioned Caladium arborescens, which presented a strange
sight. Most people are acquainted with the little British
species, Arum maculatum, which grows in hedge-bottoms, and many,
doubtless, have admired the larger kinds grown in hothouses; they
can therefore form some idea of a forest of arums. On this islet