Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/257

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to prevent infection. One day conversing with his Excellency about the Indians, I put him up to a much cheaper way than powder and ball for exterminating them. " Instead of burning the clothes," said I, "just order them to be put in the way of the Indians : they are sure to take possession of them, and they'll die off like wildfire. He followed my advice, and in a few months there was no more heard of the depredations of the Indians. Four or five nations were totally destroyed." "For," added he, "the bixiga plays the devil among the Indians." I could hardly help a shudder at this cool account of such a cold-blooded massacre, but said nothing, consoling myself with the idea that it was probably one of the ingenious fabrications of Frei Joze's fertile brain ; though it showed that he would look upon the reality as a very politic and laudable action.

At Pedreiro I bought a couple of fine turtles, and stayed half a day to kill and cook one. It was very fat, so we fried almost all the meat and put it in a large pot with the oil, as it keeps a long time, and, boiled up with a little rice, makes an excellent dinner when fish are not to be had. The insides, all of which are eatable, together with the meat adhering to the upper and lower shell, and some of the eggs (of which there were near two hundred) were sufficient for all the crew for two days. At Carvoeiro I stayed a day to get my guns mended, some large hooks made, and the tolda (which the Indians had made very badly in Barra) repaired. Senhor Vasconcellos gave me a curious flat-headed species of river-tortoise I had not before met with ; he had kept it in a small pond two years, having brought it from the lower Amazon. Here I had strong symptoms of fever, and expected I was going to have an attack of the much-dreaded ' seizaos,' for which Carvoeiro is a noted locality. Looking after the arrangement of the canoe in the hot sun did not do me much good ; and shortly after leaving, I found myself quite knocked up, with headache, pains in the back and limbs, and violent fever. I had commenced operations that morning by taking some purgative medicine, and the next day I began taking doses of quinine, drinking plentifully cream-of-tartar water, though I was so weak and apathetic that at times I could hardly muster resolution to move myself to prepare them. It is at such times that one feels the want of a friend or attendant ; for of


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