Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/259

 1851.] TH£ MATAMATA. 227

purgatives, and cooling drinks and baths, with quinine between the fits, he soon got better, — much to his astonishment, as he was almost afraid to submit himself to the treatment I recom- mended.

I spent a whole week here, for the fishermen were unsuccess- ful, and for five days no Peixe boi appeared. I, however, had plenty to do, as I skinned a small turtle and a " matamata (Chelys Matamata), that Senhor Joao gave me. This is an extraordinary river-tortoise, with a deeply-keeled and tubercled shell, and a huge flat broad head and neck, garnished with curious lobed fleshy appendages; the nostrils are prolonged into a tube, — giving the animal altogether a most singular appearance. Some of our Indians went every day to fish, and I several times sent the net, and thus procured many new species to figure and describe, which kept me pretty constantly at work, the intervals being filled up by visits to my patient, eating water-melons, and drinking coffee. This is a fine locality for fish, and as far as they are concerned I should have liked to stay a month or two, as there were many curious and interesting species to be found here, which I had not yet obtained.

At length one morning the Peixi boi we had been so long expecting, arrived. It had been caught the night before, with a net, in a lake at some distance. It was a nearly full-grown male, seven feet long and five in circumference. By the help of a long pole and cords four Indians carried it to a shed, where it was laid on a bed of palm-leaves, and two or three men set to work skinning it ; I myself operating on the paddles and the head, where the greatest delicacy is required, which the Indians are not accustomed to. After the skin was got off, a second operation was gone through, to take away the layer of fat beneath it, with which to fry the meat I intended to preserve ; the inside was then taken out, and the principal mass of meat at once obtained from the belly, back, and sides of the tail. This was all handed over to Senhor Joao, who undertook to prepare it for me ; his men being used to the work, from having some scores to operate upon every year. My Indians then cut away the remaining meat from the ribs, head, and arms for their own saucepans, and in a very short time left the skeleton tolerably bare. All this time I was at work myself at the paddles, and looking on to see that no bones