shown that it was not
quite deserted by animated nature. There were no insects, except one
kind of fly about one-fourth the size of the common house-fly. It bit
cruelly, and was much more tormenting than the mosquito on the sea-coast.

This seems to be the native country of the arrowroot. Wherever you
passed through a patch of wood in a low situation, there you found it
growing luxuriantly.

The Indian place you are now at is not the proper place to have come to
in order to reach the Portuguese frontiers. You have advanced too much
to the westward. But there was no alternative. The ground twixt you and
another small settlement (which was the right place to have gone to) was
overflowed; and thus, instead of proceeding southward, you were obliged
to wind along the foot of the western hills, quite out of your way.

But the grand landscape this place affords makes you ample amends for the
time you have spent in reaching it. It would require great descriptive
powers to give a proper idea of the situation these people have chosen
for their dwelling.

The hill they are on is steep and high, and full of immense rocks. The
huts are not all in one place, but dispersed wherever they have found a
place level enough for a lodgment. Before you ascend the hill you see at
intervals an acre or two of wood, then an open space, with a few huts on
it, then wood again, and then an open space, and so on, till the
intervening of the western hills, higher and steeper still, and crowded
with trees of the loveliest shades, closes the enchanting scene.

At the base of this hill stretches an immense plain, which appears to the
eye, on this elevated spot, as level as a bowling-green. The mountains
on the other side are piled one upon the other in romantic forms, and
gradually retire, till they are indiscernible from the clouds in which
they are involved. To the south-south-west this far-extending plain is
lost in the horizon. The trees on it, which look like islands on the
ocean, add greatly to the beauty of the landscape; while the rivulet's
course is marked out by the aeta-trees which follow its meanders.

Not being able to pursue the direct course from hence to the next Indian
habitation on account of the floods of water which fall at this time of
the year, you take a circuit westerly along the mountain's foot.

At last a large and deep creek stops your progress: it is wide and rapid,
and its banks very steep. There is neither