Soon after embarking to proceed on our voyage, we looked into a curious little nook under the trees, where, in the centre of the stream, lay a canoe with two people, a man and his wife, in it.  They were not over-encumbered with garments, but the man had some curious feather ornaments on his arms.  At first they seemed inclined to paddle away, but a shout from one of our canoemen brought them alongside, and from the affectionate greeting which was exchanged between the parties we found that they were relations, or at all events great friends.  Pedro informed us that they invited us to their dwelling.  We were delighted to accept the invitation, as we particularly wished to see the way of life of the aborigines.  We paddled on some little distance, when our new friends, leading the way pushed in among the tall reeds till we found ourselves close to some long poles with a platform on the top and a ladder leading to it.  We followed them up the ladder, when we found ourselves in a sort of hut, thickly thatched over with palm-leaves. Looking out, we saw several similar habitations.  It seemed something like living up in trees.  We concluded that the object the natives had in view in placing their habitations in such positions was to avoid the floods, as also snakes and crawling creatures, and the noxious air which floats close to the surface.  All the natives' houses are not built in this way, for when we went further inland we met with several standing only a short distance from the ground--on some more elevated spot.  The natives are not very pleasant companions, as they anoint their bodies all over with oil, which gives anything but a notion that they indulge in cleanliness.  Jerry, however, observed that it was probably nothing when people got accustomed to it, and that as oil was a clean thing, they might be more cleanly than people who wear dirty clothes and never wash.  Even these people do wash their children; and we were highly amused in the morning on seeing a mother giving her little black-headed papoose a bath.  The bath was a big tub made out of the hollowed seed-lobe of a species of palm.  The fat little creature splashed about and seemed to enjoy the bath amazingly.  After this we agreed that the natives had a good reason for anointing their bodies with oil, and that they were not naturally a dirty people.  With Pedro, who carried the doctor's cases, and one of the natives as a guide, we made from thence a long excursion inland.  We were all together when Pedro stopped us. "There is something curious up in the trees," he observed.  We peered through the branches, and a little way off saw two men--negroes they seemed--seated at some distance from each other on the boughs of different trees, perfectly motionless.  Each of them had a tube at his mouth about twelve feet long, and very slender.  The mouthpiece was thick--a short cylinder apparently--as the doctor told us, a receptacle for wind.  The weapon or instrument, he said, was a sarbacan.  Numerous beautiful birds were flying about in the neighbourhood, some of them the most diminutive humming-birds.  Soon as we looked down fell one, then another and another.  They were shot with little darts of hard wood pointed at one end, and twisted round with wadding at the other to prevent the wind escaping.  Jerry said that at school he had often made similar weapons on a small scale, and had killed insects with them. After the sportsmen had shot off all their arrows they came down from their perches to collect their game.  We found that they were employed by some naturalists at Para, and that the birds were wanted either for stuffing or for the sake of their feathers.  We saw several snakes as we continued our walk, and I must own that I felt very uncomfortable when they appeared hanging from the boughs of the trees or crawling along among the thick grass.  Many of them were perfectly harmless, but others, we were told, were fearfully venomous.  Once we very narrowly escaped a rattlesnake which appeared close to us, but Providence has ordered it that most of these creatures should be more afraid of man than man need be of them, and they make off rapidly at his approach. If, however, they are trodden on, or are disturbed waiting for their prey, they become savage, and revenge themselves on the intruders.  In most instances, the only chance of saving the life of a person bitten is at once to suck the wound.