The young men made several hunting excursions during the fourteen days of our stay on Catuá, and I, being associated with them in all their pleasures, made generally one of the party. These were, besides, the sole occasions on which I could add to my collections, whilst on these barren sands. Only two of these trips afforded incidents worth relating.
The first, which was made to the interior of the wooded island of Catuá, was not a very successful one. We were twelve in number, all armed with guns and long hunting-knives. Long before sunrise, my friends woke me up from my hammock, where I lay, as usual, in the clothes worn during the day; and after taking each a cup-full of cashaça and ginger (a very general practice in early morning on the sand-banks), we commenced our walk. The waning moon still lingered in the clear sky, and a profound stillness pervaded sleeping camp, forest, and stream. Along the line of ranchos glimmered the fires made by each party to dry turtle-eggs for food, the eggs being spread on little wooden stages over the smoke. The distance to the forest from our place of starting was about two miles, being nearly the whole length of the sand-bank, which was also a very broad one; the highest part, where it was covered with a thicket of dwarf willows, mimosas, and arrow grass, lying near the ranchos. We loitered much on the way, and the day dawned whilst we were yet on the road, the sand at this early hour feeling quite cold to the naked feet. As soon as we were able to distinguish things, the surface of the praia was seen to be dotted with small black objects. These were newly-hatched Aiyussa turtles, which were making their way in an undeviating line to the water, at least a mile distant. The young animal of this species is distinguishable from that of the large turtle and the Tracaja, by the edges of the breast-plate being raised on each side, so that in crawling it scores two parallel lines on the sand. The mouths of these little creatures were full of sand, a circumstance arising from their having to bite their way through many inches of superincumbent sand to reach the surface on emerging from the buried eggs. It was amusing to observe how constantly they turned again in the direction of the distant river, after being handled and set down on the sand with their heads facing the opposite quarter. We saw also several skeletons of the large cayman (some with the horny and bony hide of the animal nearly perfect) embedded in the sand; they reminded me of the remains of Ichthyosauri fossilised in beds of lias, with the difference of being buried in fine sand instead of in blue mud. I marked the place of one which had a well-preserved skull, and the next day returned to secure it. The specimen is now in the British Museum collection. There were also many footmarks of jaguars on the sand.
We entered the forest, as the sun peeped over the tree-tops far away down river. The party soon after divided, I keeping with a section which was led by Bento, the Ega carpenter, a capital woodsman. After a short walk we struck the banks of a beautiful little lake, having grassy margins and clear dark water, on the surface of which floated thick beds of water-lilies. We then crossed a muddy creek or watercourse that entered the lake, and then found ourselves on a restinga, or tongue of land between two waters. By keeping in sight of one or the other of these, there was no danger of our losing our way: all other precautions were therefore unnecessary. The forest was tolerably clear of underwood, and consequently, easy to walk through. We had not gone far before a soft, long-drawn whistle was heard aloft in the trees, betraying the presence of Mutums (Curassow birds). The crowns of the trees, a hundred feet or more over our heads, were so closely interwoven that it was difficult to distinguish the birds: the practised eye of Bento, however, made them out, and a fine male was shot from the flock, the rest flying away and alighting at no great distance. The species was the one of which the male has a round red ball on its beak (Crax globicera). The pursuit of the others led us a great distance, straight towards the interior of the island, in which direction we marched for three hours, having the lake always on our right.
Arriving at length at the head of the lake, Bento struck off to the left across the restinga, and we then soon came upon a treeless space choked up with tall grass, which appeared to be the dried-up bed of another lake. Our leader was obliged to climb a tree to ascertain our position, and found that the clear space was part of the creek, whose mouth we had crossed lower down. The banks were clothed with low trees, nearly all of one species, a kind of araca (Psidium), and the ground was carpeted with a slender delicate grass, now in flower. A great number of crimson and vermilion-coloured butterflies (Catagramma Peristera, male and female) were settled on the smooth, white trunks of these trees. I had also here the great pleasure of seeing for the first time, the rare and curious Umbrella Bird (Cephalopterus ornatus), a species which resembles in size, colour, and appearance our common crow, but is decorated with a crest of long, curved, hairy feathers having long bare quills, which, when raised, spread themselves out in the form of a fringed sunshade over the head. A strange ornament, like a pelerine, is also suspended from the neck, formed by a thick pad of glossy steel-blue feathers, which grow on a long fleshy lobe or excrescence. This lobe is connected (as I found on skinning specimens) with an unusual development of the trachea and vocal organs, to which the bird doubtless owes its singularly deep, loud, and long-sustained fluty note. The Indian name of this strange creature is Uirá-mimbéu, or fife-bird,[[4]] in allusion to the tone of its voice. We had the good luck, after remaining quiet a short time, to hear its performance. It drew itself up on its perch, spread widely the umbrella-formed crest, dilated and waved its glossy breast-lappet, and then, in giving vent to its loud piping note, bowed its head slowly forwards. We obtained a pair, male and female; the female has only the rudiments of the crest and lappet, and is duller-coloured altogether than the male. The range of this bird appears to be quite confined to the plains of the Upper Amazons (especially the Ygapó forests), not having been found to the east of the Rio Negro.
[4] Mimbéu is the Indian name for a rude kind of pan-pipes used by the Caishânas and other tribes.
Bento and our other friends being disappointed in finding no more Curassows, or indeed any other species of game, now resolved to turn back. On reaching the edge of the forest, we sat down and ate our dinners under the shade; each man having brought a little bag containing a few handsfull of farinha, and a piece of fried fish or roast turtle. We expected our companions of the other division to join us at midday, but after waiting till past one o’clock without seeing anything of them (in fact, they had returned to the huts an hour or two previously), we struck off across the praia towards the encampment. An obstacle here presented itself on which we had not counted. The sun had shone all day through a cloudless sky untempered by a breath of wind, and the sands had become heated by it to a degree that rendered walking over them with our bare feet impossible. The most hardened footsoles of the party could not endure the burning soil. We made several attempts; we tried running, having wrapped the cool leaves of Heliconiæ round our feet, but in no way could we step forward many yards. There was no means of getting back to our friends before night, except going round the praia, a circuit of about four miles, and walking through the water or on the moist sand. To get to the waterside from the place where we then stood was not difficult, as a thick bed of a flowering shrub, called tintarána, an infusion of the leaves of which is used to dye black, lay on that side of the sand-bank. Footsore and wearied, burthened with our guns, and walking for miles through the tepid shallow water under the brain-scorching vertical sun, we had, as may be imagined, anything but a pleasant time of it. I did not, however, feel any inconvenience afterwards. Everyone enjoys the most lusty health whilst living this free and wild life on the rivers.
The other hunting trip which I have alluded to was undertaken in company with three friendly young half-castes. Two of them were brothers, namely, Joao (John) and Zephyrino Jabutí: Jabutí, or tortoise, being a nickname which their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in this country, had descended as the surname of the family. The other was José Frazao, a nephew of Senhor Chrysostomo, of Ega, an active, clever, and manly young fellow, whom I much esteemed. He was almost a white, his father being a Portuguese and his mother a Mameluca. We were accompanied by an Indian named Lino, and a Mulatto boy, whose office was to carry our game.
Our proposed hunting-ground on this occasion lay across the water, about fifteen miles distant. We set out in a small montaria, at four o’clock in the morning, again leaving the encampment asleep, and travelled at a good pace up the northern channel of the Solimoens, or that lying between the island Catuá and the left bank of the river. The northern shore of the island had a broad sandy beach reaching to its western extremity. We gained our destination a little after daybreak; this was the banks of the Carapanatúba,[[5]] a channel some 150 yards in width, which, like the Ananá already mentioned, communicates with the Cupiyó. To reach this we had to cross the river, here nearly two miles wide. Just as day dawned we saw a Cayman seize a large fish, a Tambakí, near the surface; the reptile seemed to have a difficulty in securing its prey, for it reared itself above the water, tossing the fish in its jaws and making a tremendous commotion. I was much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be the neck of a bird; it did not remain long in view, but soon plunged again beneath the stream.