Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/279

 gorgeously painted, to screen themselves from the burning sun. The women were very fond of bathing; likewise of shopping — a favorite amusement, I find, with the fair sex the world over.

While on an expedition with the botanists into the country we met many buffaloes. The natives yoked them together, as our farmers do oxen. They were the beasts of burden. The ladies also rode horseback upon them, with saddles cut out of solid wood. We saw buffaloes near the edge of the lakes, floundering about  in the mire, with only their eyes and noses out of water. Their flesh is as tough as sole leather, and as tasteless.

In and about the lakes and ponds we saw many birds feeding; herons, gulls, pelicans with their huge bills,  the diver with its long, arched neck, snow-white cranes,  flocks of ducks, eagles, and many other beautifully feathered and rare birds.

As for monkeys, I might say some of the woods were full of them. It was indeed amusing to see them, not in a cage in a menagerie, but in their homes in the woods,  cutting up all kinds of monkey-shines. They go in troops of from sixty to eighty, chasing each other, and  sometimes leaping a distance of fifteen to twenty feet,  from the limb of one tree to another, and such a snarling, squealing set we never fell in with before. Some of them had very broad noses, long tails, and were as  black and glossy as could be. To see them swing from the limb of a tree, by the end of their tails, was truly  laughable. We also started many flocks of beautiful green parrots and paroquets, and came across many hot  springs.