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Updated: May 22, 2025
An attempt which I made to live on vegetable food was quite a failure, and I could not eat the execrable salt-fish which Brazilians use. I had been many days without meat of any kind, and nothing more was to be found near Caripi, so I asked as a favour of Senor Raimundo permission to accompany him on one of his hunting-trips, and shoot a little game for my own use.
River Para and Bay of Marajo Journey to Caripi Negro Observance of Christmas A German Family Bats Ant-eaters Hummingbirds Excursion to the Murucupi Domestic Life of the Inhabitants Hunting Excursion with Indians White Ants
They proved to be a German family named Petzell, who were living in the woods, Indian fashion, about a mile from Caripi. Petzell explained to me how he came here. He said that thirteen years ago he came to Brazil with a number of other Germans under engagement to serve in the Brazilian army.
The carnivorous beetles at Caripi were, like those of Para, chiefly arboreal. Most of them exhibited a beautiful contrivance for enabling them to cling to and run over smooth or flexible surfaces, such as leaves.
Ants and white ants have much that is analogous in their modes of life they belong, however, to two widely different orders of insects, strongly contrasted in their structure and manner of growth. I amassed at Caripi a very large collection of beautiful and curious insects, amounting altogether to about twelve hundred species.
The common dung-beetles at Caripi, which flew about in the evening like the Geotrupes, the familiar "shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hum" of our English lanes, were of colossal size and beautiful colours. A blow from this fellow, as he came heavily flying along, was never very pleasant. All the tribes of beetles which feed on vegetable substances, fresh or decayed, were very numerous.
The Phaethorninae are certainly more numerousin the Amazons region that the Trochilinae. They are long and purseshaped. The young when first hatched have very much shorter bills than their parents. Snakes were very numerous at Caripi; many harmless species were found near the house, and these sometimes came into the rooms.
Campbell, who had married the daughter of a large Brazilian proprietor. Most of the occasional English and American visitors to Para had made some stay at Caripi, and it had obtained quite a reputation for the number and beauty of the birds and insects found there; I therefore applied for, and obtained permission, to spend two or three months at the place.
The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour, without silky lustre. One was brought to me alive at Caripi, having been caught by an Indian, clinging motionless inside a hollow tree. I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours. It had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely small eyes.
The hunters are not at all afraid of it, and speak always in disparaging terms of its courage. Of the Jaguar, they give a very different account. The only species of monkey I met with at Caripi was the same dark-coloured little Midas already mentioned as found near Para. After the first few weeks of residence, I ran short of fresh provisions.
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