ve, although with much difficulty, all the information I desired
which was to me of interest.

The creatures with whom I had thus formed a connection for a few days,
and as I saw them, seemed rather to be a large family of monkeys than
human beings. Their voices very much resembled the shrill cries of
those animals, and in their gestures they were exactly like them. The
only difference I could see was that they knew how to handle a bow
and a lance, and to make a fire. To describe them properly I shall
give a sketch of their forms and physiognomies.

The Ajeta, or little negro, is as black as ebony, like the Africans;
his greatest height is four feet and a-half; his hair is woolly,
and as he takes no trouble about cutting it, and knows not how to
arrange it, it forms around his head a sort of crown, which gives him
an odd aspect, and, at a distance makes him appear as if surrounded
with a kind of halo; his eye is yellowish, but lively and brilliant,
like that of an eagle. The necessity of living by the chase, and of
pursuing his prey, produces the effect on this organ of giving to
it the most extraordinary vivacity. The features of the Ajetas have
something of the African black, but the lips are not so prominent;
while young their forms are pretty; but their lives being spent in the
woods, sleeping always in the open air without shelter, eating much
one day and often having nothing--long fastings, followed by repasts
swallowed with the voracity of wild beasts--gave them a protruding
stomach, and made their extremities lank and shrivelled. They never
wear any clothing, unless a belt of the rind of a tree, from eight to
ten inches in breadth, which they tie round their waist; their arms
are composed of a bamboo lance, a bow of the palm tree, and poisoned
arrows. Their food consists of roots, of fruits, and of the products
of the chase; the flesh they eat nearly raw; and they live in tribes
composed of from fifty to sixty individuals. During the day, the old
men, the infirm, and the children, remain near a large fire, while
the others are engaged in hunting; when they have a sufficiency of
food to last for some days, they remain round their fire, and sleep
pell-mell among the cinders.

It is extremely curious to see collected together fifty or sixty of
these brutes of every age, and each more or less deformed; the old
women especially are hideous, their decrepit limbs, their big bellies
and their extraordinary heads of h