The Very
Few Words Of Portuguese My Companions Spoke Or Understood Rendered
Conversation Difficult, So The Stillness Was Broken Only By The
Gentle Splash Of The Paddles.
On each side the dense forest seemed
absolutely impenetrable, but we at last arrived at an opening.
As we
drew ashore I noticed that an Indian path led directly inland.
Leaving our dug-out moored with a fibre rope to a large mangrove
tree, we started to thread our way through the forest, and finally
reached a clearing. Here we came upon a crowd of almost naked and
extremely dejected-looking women. Many of these, catching sight of
me, sped into the jungle like frightened deer. The chief's wife,
however, at a word from him, received me kindly, and after accepting
a brass necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable.
Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts,
alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching.
Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the
earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that
they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt
himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief
business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on
the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their
bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, made
from wild cotton, which there seems to abound. Writing of mosquitos,
let me say these Indian specimens were a terror to us all.
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