e
might obtain some news as to which tribe they belonged to. Of course he
followed the high ground and passed through several Indian villages, but
he was sure that they had not come from these, for in that case they would
have gone on foot to the mission instead of taking the trouble to pass
through the forest in a canoe. He walked sixty miles the next day and then
reached the farthest edge of the inundation, and leaving the high ground
followed it.

"He had taken with him a bag of flour from the mission, and kept on for a
week; then he thought he must have gone beyond the spot where you had been
landed. He had walked, he thought, fifty miles a day, and was more than
three hundred from the high ground, and concluded that unless the canoe
had come a long distance up the river they would never have made so long a
passage through the forest. Then he went back again, keeping further away
from the water. Four days later he came upon a group of Indian huts, and
there heard that a strange white man had arrived at a village twenty miles
distant, two days before. None knew from whence he came, for he had fallen
down as soon as he arrived, and was lying ill. Pita could not understand
how you could have arrived in such a state, unless indeed you had killed
your captors after landing, and had then wandered in the forest until you
chanced upon the village. He hastened there, greatly disturbed in his
mind, in the first place, at the thought of your illness, and next because
the tribe was a very savage one and ate human flesh.

"When he entered the village the natives crowded round him. He was an
Indian like themselves, but his dress showed that he consorted with the
hated white men. Pita, however, pushed them aside, and to their
astonishment spoke to them in their own language. Pita's mother, indeed,
had been one of that very tribe, and her father a great chief among them,
so that when he told them who he was, he was heartily welcomed and treated
with great respect. It was lucky for me that he arrived, for only the day
before I too, when I gained news of your whereabouts, had reached the
village, and upon entering had at once been made prisoner. I gathered from
what I could understand of their language that I was to be eaten. I think
that the manner in which you entered their village, and the mystery as to
how you could have come there, saved your life. It seemed to them as
something supernatural, and they were attending you carefull