Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/142

 design which I saw, was amongst the Tucúnas of the Upper Amazons, some of whom have a scroll-like mark on each cheek, proceeding from the corner of the mouth. The taste, as far as form is concerned, of the American Indian would seem to be far less refined than that of the Tahitian and New Zealander.

To amuse the Tushaúa, I fetched from the canoe the two volumes of Knight's Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature. The engravings quite took his fancy, and he called his wives, of whom, as I afterwards learnt from Aracú, he had three or four, to look at them; one of them was a handsome girl, decorated with necklace and bracelets of blue beads. In a short time others left their work, and I then had a crowd of women and children around me, who all displayed unusual curiosity for Indians. It was no light task to go through the whole of the illustrations, but they would not allow me to miss a page, making me turn back when I tried to skip. The pictures of the elephant, camels, orang-otangs, and tigers, seemed most to astonish them; but they were interested in almost everything, down even to the shells and insects. They recognised the portraits of the most striking birds and mammals which are found in their own country; the jaguar, howling monkeys, parrots, trogons, and toucans. The elephant was settled to be a large kind of Tapir; but they made but few remarks, and those in the Mundurucú language, of which I understood only two or three words. Their way of expressing surprise was a clicking sound made with the teeth, similar to the one we ourselves use, or a subdued ex-