palm.

It is with the needle-like spines of this species that many tribes of
Indians puncture their skins in tattooing themselves, and other uses are
made by them of different parts of this noble tree. The macaws, parrots,
and other fruit-eating birds, are fonder of the nuts of the pupunha than
perhaps any other species; and so, too, would be the fruit-eating
quadrupeds if they could get at them. But the thorny trunk renders them
quite inaccessible to all creatures without wings, excepting man
himself. No; there is one other exception, and that is a creature
closely allied to man, I mean the _monkey_.

Notwithstanding the thorny stem, which even man cannot scale without a
contrivance; notwithstanding the apparently inaccessible
clusters--inaccessible from their great height--there is a species of
monkey that manages now and then to get a meal of them. How do these
monkeys manage it? Not by climbing the stem, for the thorns are too
sharp even for them. How then? Do the nuts fall to the ground and allow
the monkeys to gather them? No. This is not the case. How then? We shall
see!

Guapo and Leon had returned to the camp, taking with them the pupunha
fruit and the firewood. A fire was kindled, the cooking-pot hung over it
on a tripod, and they all sat around to wait for its boiling.

While thus seated, an unusual noise reached their ears coming from the
woods. There were parrots and macaws among the palms making noise
enough, and fluttering about, but it was not these. The noise that had
arrested the attention of our travellers was a mixture of screaming, and
chattering, and howling, and barking, as if there were fifty sorts of
creatures at the making of it. The bushes, too, were heard "switching
about," and now and then a dead branch would crack, as if snapped
suddenly. To a stranger in these woods such a blending of sounds would
have appeared very mysterious and inexplicable. Not so to our party.
They knew it was only a troop of monkeys passing along upon one of their
journeys. From their peculiar cries, Guapo knew what kind of monkeys
they were.

"_Marimondas_," he said.

The marimondas are not true "howlers," although they are of the same
tribe as the "howling monkeys." They belong to the genus _Ateles_, so
called because they want the thumb, and are therefore _imperfect_ or
_unfinished_ as regards the hands. But what the ateles want in hands is
supplied by another member--the tail, and this they have to all
p