Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/211

 1 85 1.] NEW COFFEE. 181

been lately using up an enormous quantity of farinha, hoping when they had finished the last basket that I should be unable to purchase any more in the village, and should therefore be obliged to return. The day before I had just bought a fresh basket, and the sight of that appears to have supplied the last stimulus necessary to decide the question, and make them fly from the strange land and still stranger white man, who spent all his time in catching insects, and wasting good caxaea by putting fish and snakes into it. However, there was now nothing to be done, so I took my insect-net, locked up my house, put the key (an Indian-made wooden one) in my pocket, and started off for the forest.

I had luckily, a short time before, bought a fine Venezuelan cheese and some dried beef, so that, with plenty of cassava- bread and plantains, I could get on very well. In the evening some of my usual visitors among the Indians dropped in, and were rather surprised to see me lighting my fire and preparing my dinner ; and on my explaining the circumstances to them, they exclaimed that my Indians were "mala gente" (bad fellows), and intimated that they had always thought them no better than they should be. I got some of the boys to fetch me water from the river, and to bring me in a stock of fuel, and then, with coffee and cheese, roasted plantains and cassava- bread, I lived luxuriously. My coffee, however, was just finished, and in a day or two I had none. This I could hardly put up with without a struggle, so I went down to the cottage of an old Indian who could speak a little Spanish, and begged him, " por amor de Dios, ' to get me some coffee from a small plantation he had. There were some ripe berries on the trees, the sun was shining out, and he promised to 'set his little girl to work immediately. This was about ten in the morning. I went into the forest, and by four returned, and found that my coffee was ready. It had been gathered, the pulp washed off, dried in the sun (the longest part of the business), husked, roasted, and pounded in a mortar ; and in half an hour more I enjoyed one of the most delicious cups of coffee I have ever tasted.

As I wanted to remain a fortnight longer, I tried to persuade one of the brown damsels of the village to come and make my fire and cook for me; but, strange to say, not one would venture, though in the other villages of the Rio Negro I might