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Leavens, bringing for sale their little harvests of rice, or a few logs of timber. It was interesting to see them in their little, heavily-laden montarias. Sometimes the boats were managed by handsome, healthy young lads, loosely clad in a straw hat, white shirt, and dark blue trousers, turned up to the knee.
Their canoes originally were made simply of the thick bark of trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape by means of woody lianas; these are now rarely seen, as most families possess montarias, which they have contrived to steal from the settlers from time to time. Their food is chiefly fish and turtle, which they are very expert in capturing.
As delay may be dangerous, I have told Senhor Pimento that I purpose starting this evening; and I have urged him to have his own montarias ready, and manned by negroes in whom he can place confidence.
They met large canoes and montarias occasionally coming down the stream, and saw them hauled up on shore, while their owners were cooking their breakfast in the woods; and once they came upon a solitary old Indian in a very curious position. They had entered a small stream in order to procure a few turtles' eggs, of which there were many in that place buried in the sand-banks.
They embarked, however, in montarias, determined upon vengeance; the monster was traced, and when, after a short lapse of time, he came up to breathe one leg of the man sticking out from his jaws was despatched with bitter curses.
After this it was thought necessary to make an effort to check the alligators; a number of men were therefore persuaded to sally forth in their montarias and devote a day to killing them. The young men made several hunting excursions during the fourteen days of our stay on Catua, and I, being associated with them in all their pleasures, made generally one of the party.
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