ot the
signal to start.

Away between the islands, in the Bay of Arenapo, the mouth of the
Japura, six thousand six hundred feet wide, was seen for an instant.
This large tributary comes into the Amazon through eight mouths, as if
it were pouring into some gulf or ocean. But its waters come from afar,
and it is the mountains of the republic of Ecuador which start them on
a course that there are no falls to break until two hundred and ten
leagues from its junction with the main stream.

All this day was spent in descending to the island of Yapura, after
which the river, less interfered with, makes navigation much easier. The
current is not so rapid and the islets are easily avoided, so that there
were no touchings or groundings.

The next day the jangada coasted along by vast beaches formed by
undulating high domes, which served as the barriers of immense pasture
grounds, in which the whole of the cattle in Europe could be raised and
fed. These sand banks are considered to be the richest turtle grounds in
the basin of the Upper Amazon.

On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the
island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be dark.

On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there
appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and
powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues of
the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira.

These Indians went and came, watching the raft, which remained
stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes
formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened
outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has been
extracted.

Joam Garral quitted for an instant the work which took up all his
time, to warn his people to keep a good guard and not to provoke these
Indians.

In truth the sides were not well matched. The Muras are remarkably
clever at sending through their blow-tubes arrows which cause incurable
wounds, even at a range of three hundred paces.

These arrows, made of the leaf of the _"coucourite"_ palm, are feathered
with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like a needle,
and poisoned with _"curare."_

Curare, or _"wourah,"_ the liquor "which kills in a whisper," as the
Indians say, is prepared from the sap of one of the euphorbiaceae and the
juice of a bulbous strychnos, not to mention the paste of venomous ants
and