e-ranch, some
fifty miles from Cuyaba. Then he went to live in Cuyaba with a kinsman
on his father's side, from whom he took the name of Rondon; his own
father's name was DaSilva. He studied in the Cuyaba Government School,
and at sixteen was inscribed as one of the instructors. Then he went
to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks,
and succeeded finally in getting into the military school. After five
years as pupil he served three years as professor of mathematics in
this school; and then, as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian
army, he came back to his home in Matto Grosso and began his life-work
of exploring the wilderness.

Next day we journeyed to the telegraph station at Bonofacio, through
alternate spells of glaring sunshine and heavy rain. On the way we
stopped at an aldea-village of Nhambiquaras. We first met a couple of
men going to hunt, with bows and arrows longer than themselves. A
rather comely young woman, carrying on her back a wickerwork basket,
or creel, supported by a forehead band, and accompanied by a small
child, was with them. At the village there were a number of men,
women, and children. Although as completely naked as the others we had
met, the members of this band were more ornamented with beads, and
wore earrings made from the inside of mussel-shells or very big snail-
shells. They were more hairy than the ones we had so far met. The
women, but not the men, completely remove the hair from their bodies--
and look more, instead of less, indecent in consequence. The chief,
whose body was painted red with the juice of a fruit, had what could
fairly be styled a mustache and imperial; and one old man looked
somewhat like a hairy Ainu, or perhaps even more like an Australian
black fellow. My companion told me that this probably represented an
infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto blood, from runaway
slaves of the old days, when some of the Matto Grosso mines were
worked by slave labor. They also thought it possible that this
infiltration of African negroes might be responsible for the curious
shape of the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy,
ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to those of the
other Indian tribes of this region; whereas they were not unlike the
ordinary beehive huts of the agricultural African negroes. There were
in this village several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of
the big huts. These we