Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/133

 most interesting acquisition at this place was a large and handsome monkey, of a species I had not before met with—the white-whiskered Coaitá, or spider monkey, Ateles marginatus. I saw a pair one day in the forest moving slowly along the branches of a lofty tree, and shot one of them; the next day JoaoJoaõ [sic] Aracú brought down another, possibly the companion. The species is of about the same size as the common black kind of which I have given an account in a former chapter, and has a similar lean body with limbs clothed with coarse black hair; but it differs in having the whiskers and a triangular patch on the crown of the head of a white colour. It is never met with in the alluvial plains of the Amazons, nor, I believe, on the northern side of the great river valley, except towards the head waters, near the Andes; where Humboldt discovered it on the banks of the Santiago. I thought the meat the best flavoured I had ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste. During the time of our stay in this part of the Cuparí, we could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this diet ill agreed with me, three successive days of it reducing me to a state of great weakness, I was obliged to make the most of our Coaitá meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting them; placing them for several hours on a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, and which they call "muquiar." Meat putrefies in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and dried immediately in the sun. My monkeys lasted me about