LAND-TORTOISES.
Whilst the Abipones, Guaranies, and other Indians with whom I was acquainted, not only abstain from eating tortoises, but even detest the very idea of such a thing; the Chiquitos, on the contrary, make them their chief food during the greater portion of the year. They laboriously hunt after these animals, which are marked with various colours, in the woods and rocks, that provision may not fail them during those months in which their territories are inundated by an annual flood; for as there is more wood and mountain than plain country there, the deficiency of pasture renders it impossible that as many oxen can be raised and killed, for the support of the Indians, as in the colonies of the Guaranies and Abipones. The tortoise, therefore, supplies the place of beef among the Chiquitos.