Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/67

 ing new patterns for printed calicoes and other goods, while the ugly insects were supposed to be valuable for "remedios," or medicine. We found it best quietly to assent to this, as it saved us a deal of questioning, and no other explanation that we could give would be at all intelligible to them.

One day, while I was in the woods pursuing some insects, I was suddenly attacked by a whole swarm of small wasps, whose nest, hanging from a leaf, I had inadvertently disturbed. They covered my face and neck, stinging me severely, while in my haste to escape, and free myself from them, I knocked off my spectacles, which I did not perceive till I was at some distance from the spot, and as I was quite out of any path, and had not noticed where I was, it was useless to seek them. The pain of the stings, which was at first very severe, went off altogether in about an hour; and as I had several more glasses with me, I did not suffer any inconvenience from my loss.

The soil here is red clay, in some places of so bright a colour as to be used for painting earthenware. Igaripés are much rarer than they were lower down, and where they occur form little valleys or ravines in the high bank. When Senhor Seixus arrived, he insisted on our all taking our meals with him, and was in every way very obliging to us. His son, a little boy of six or seven, ran about the house completely naked.

The neighbours would drop in once or twice a day to see how the brancos (white people) got on, and have a little conversation, mostly with Mr. Leavens, who spoke Portuguese fluently. One inquired if in America (meaning in the United States) there was any "terra firma," appearing to have an idea that it was all a cluster of islands. Another asked if there were campos, and if the people had mandiocca and seringa. On being told they had neither, he asked why they did not plant them, and said he thought it would answer well to plant seringa-trees, and so have fresh milk every day to make indiarubber shoes. When told that the climate was too cold for mandiocca or seringa to grow if planted, he was quite astonished, and wondered how people could live in a country where such necessaries of life could not be grown; and he no doubt felt a kind of superiority over us, on account of our coming to his country to buy india-rubber and cocoa, just as the inhabitants