other part of the country. One of these was the well-known Hapale
Jacchus, a little creature resembling a kitten, banded with black
and grey all over the body and tail, and having a fringe of long
white hairs surrounding the ears. It was seated on the shoulder
of a young mulatto girl, as she was walking along the street, and
I was told had been captured in the island of Marajo. The other
was a species of Cebus, with a remarkably large head. It had
ruddy-brown fur, paler on the face, but presenting a blackish
tuft on the top of the forehead.

In the wet season serpents are common in the neighbourhood of
Para. One morning, in April, 1849, after a night of deluging
rain, the lamplighter, on his rounds to extinguish the lamps,
woke me up to show me a boa-constrictor he had just killed in the
Rua St. Antonio, not far from my door. He had cut it nearly in
two with a large knife, as it was making its way down the sandy
street. Sometimes the native hunters capture boa- constrictors
alive in the forest near the city. We bought one which had been
taken in this way, and kept it for some time in a large box under
our verandah. This is not, however, the largest or most
formidable serpent found in the Amazons region. It is far
inferior, in these respects, to the hideous Sucuruju, or Water
Boa (Eunectes murinus), which sometimes attacks man; but of this
I shall have to give an account in a subsequent chapter.

It frequently happened, in passing through the thickets, that a
snake would fall from the boughs close to me. Once for a few
moments I got completely entangled in the folds of one, a
wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and
not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part. It