After Partaking Of This
I Was Informed That The King Desired To See Me, And That I Must
Proceed At Once To His Hut.
His majesty (?) lived on the other side of the river, close at hand.
This water was of course unbridged, so, in order to cross, I was
compelled to divest myself of my clothing and walk through it in
nature's garb.
The water came up to my breast, and once I thought the
clothes I carried on my head would get wet. Dressing on the other
side, I presented myself at the king's abode. There I was kindly
received, being invited to take up my quarters with him and his royal
family. The king was a tall man of somewhat commanding appearance,
but, save for the loin cloth, he was naked, like the rest. The queen,
a little woman, was as scantily dressed as her husband. She was very
shy, and I noticed the rest of the inmates of the hut peeping through
the crevices of the corn-stalk partition of an inner room. After
placing around the shapely neck of the queen a specially fine
necklace I had brought, and giving the king a large hunting-knife, I
was regaled with roasted yams, and later on with a whole watermelon.
Timoteo, my servant, whose native language was Guarani, could
understand most of the idiom of the Sun Worshippers, which we found
to be similar to that spoken by the civilized inhabitants of the
country. There must therefore have been some connection between the
two peoples at one time.
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