Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/179

 to range. On most days, however, they brought two or three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or Vacca marina. On this last-mentioned occasion we made quite a holiday; the canoe was stopped for six or seven hours, and all turned out into the forest to help to skin and cook the animal. The meat was cut into cubical slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these on a long stick. Fires were made, and the spits stuck in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast. A drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails and slime which were scattered about. The meat has somewhat the taste of very coarse pork; but the fat, which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour. The animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in length, and nine in girth at the broadest part. The manatee is one of the few objects which excite the dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstanding its commonness. The fact of its suckling its young at the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, seems to strike them as something very strange. The animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, lead-coloured skin, reminded me of those Egyptian tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped to the human figure.

It rarely happened that we caught anything near the canoe; but one day, as we were slowly progressing along a remanso past a thick bed of floating grasses, the men caught sight of a large Pirarucú: the fish