There were the gigantic _"pria-rucus,"_ ten and twelve feet long,
cuirassed with large scales with scarlet borders, whose flesh was not
much appreciated by the natives. Neither did they care to capture
many of the graceful dolphins which played about in hundreds,
striking with their tails the planks of the raft, gamboling at the
bow and stern, and making the water alive with colored reflections
and spurts of spray, which the refracted light converted into so many
rainbows.

On the 16th of June the jangada, after fortunately clearing several
shallows in approaching the banks, arrived near the large island of
San Pablo, and the following evening she stopped at the village of
Moromoros, which is situated on the left side of the Amazon.
Twenty-four hours afterward, passing the mouths of the Atacoari or
Cocha--or rather the _"furo,"_ or canal, which communicates with the
lake of Cabello-Cocha on the right bank--she put in at the rising
ground of the mission of Cocha. This was the country of the Marahua
Indians, whose long floating hair, and mouths opening in the middle
of a kind of fan made of the spines of palm-trees, six inches long,
give them a cat-like look--their endeavor being, according to Paul
Marcoy, to resemble the tiger, whose boldness, strength, and cunning
they admire above everything. Several women came with these Marahuas,
smoking cigars, but holding the lighted ends in their teeth. All of
them, like the king of the Amazonian forests, go about almost naked.

The mission of Cocha was then in charge of a Franciscan monk, who was
anxious to visit Padre Passanha.

Joam Garral received him with a warm welcome, and offered him a seat