for the stay-at-homes to read, I could easily invent a thousand
lies far more entertaining than any real experiences. He had
come to me, he said, to propose something. He had lived twenty
years at that place, and had got accustomed to the climate, but
it would not do for me to remain any longer if I wished to live.
I must go away at once to a different country--to the mountains,
where it was open and dry. "And if you want quinine when you are
there," he concluded, "smell the wind when it blows from the
south-west, and you will inhale it into your system, fresh from
the forest." When I remarked despondingly that in my condition
it would be impossible to quit Manapuri, he went on to say that a
small party of Indians was now in the settlement; that they had
come, not only to trade, but to visit one of their own tribe, who
was his wife, purchased some years ago from her father. "And the
money she cost me I have never regretted to this day," said he,
"for she is a good wife not jealous," he added, with a curse on
all the others. These Indians came all the way from the
Queneveta mountains, and were of the Maquiritari tribe. He,
Panta, and, better still, his good wife would interest them on my
behalf, and for a suitable reward they would take me by slow,
easy stages to their own country, where I would be treated well
and recover my health.

This proposal, after I had considered it well, produced so good
an effect on me that I not only gave a glad consent, but, on the
following day, I was able to get about and begin the preparations
for my journey with some spirit.

In about eight days I bade good-bye to my generous friend Panta,
whom I regarded, after having seen much of him, as a kind of