The chief carried a curious tobacco-box,
an iron spike about two feet long, with a hollow socket, bound
With
iguana-skin; this served for either tobacco-box, club, or dagger.
Throughout the whole of this marshy country it is curious to observe the
number of white ant-hills standing above the water in the marshes: these
Babel towers save their inmates from the deluge; working during the dry
season, the white ants carry their hills to so great a height (about ten
feet), that they can live securely in the upper stories during the
floods. The whole day we are beset by crowds of starving people,
bringing small gourd-shells to receive the expected corn. The people of
this tribe are mere apes, trusting entirely to the productions of nature
for their subsistence; they will spend hours in digging out field-mice
from their burrows, as we should for rabbits. They are the most pitiable
set of savages that can be imagined; so emaciated, that they have no
visible posteriors; they look as though they had been planed off, and
their long thin legs and arms give them a peculiar gnat-like appearance.
At night they crouch close to the fires, lying in the smoke to escape
the clouds of mosquitoes. At this season the country is a vast swamp,
the only dry spots being the white ant-hills; in such places the natives
herd like wild animals, simply rubbing themselves with wood-ashes to
keep out the cold.
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