After each message the operator explained its meaning.  The purport of this first message was so important to me that I awaited the translation with much the same feelings that a prisoner listens for the verdict of the jury when it files back into the court-room.

Questions and answers now came in rapid succession.  “A white man is coming with us; he seems to have a good heart, and to be of good character.”

Whereupon the deciding answer was translated:  “You are all welcome provided you place your arms in the bottom of the canoe.”

Next message:  “We ask you to place your arms in the maloca; we are friends.”

After the last message we paddled briskly ahead, and at the end of one hour’s work we made a turn of the creek and saw a large open space where probably five hundred Indians had assembled outside of two round malocas, constructed like ours.  How much I now regretted leaving my precious camera out in the forest, but that was a thing of the past and the loss could not be repaired.  The view that presented itself to my eyes was a splendid and rare one for a civilised man to see.  The crowd standing on the banks had never seen a white man before; how would they greet me?

Little dogs barked, large scarlet araras screamed in the tree-tops, and the little children hid themselves behind their equally fearful mothers.  The tribal Chief, a big fellow, decorated with squirrel tails and feathers of the mutum bird around, his waist and with the tail feathers of the scarlet and blue arara-parrot adorning his handsome head, stood in front with his arms folded.

We landed and the operator dismantled his musical apparatus and laid it carefully in the bottom of the canoe.  The two Chiefs embraced each other, at the same time uttering their welcome greeting “He—­He.”  I was greeted in the same cordial manner and we all entered the Chief’s maloca in a long procession.  Here in the village of the kindred tribe we stayed for two days, enjoying unlimited hospitality and kindness.  Most of the time was spent eating, walking around the malocas, looking at dugouts, and at the farinha plants.

On the third day we went back to our maloca where I prepared for my return trip to civilisation.  It was now the beginning of October.

I would, finally, have recorded many words of the Mangeroma language had not my pencil given out after I had been there a month.  The pencil was an “ink-pencil,” that is, a pencil with a solid “lead” of bluish colour, very soft, sometimes called “indelible pencil.”  This lead became brittle from the moisture of the air and broke into fragments so that I could do nothing with it, and my recording was at an end.  Fortunately I had made memoranda covering the life and customs before this.

CHAPTER X

THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE MANGEROMAS AND THE PERUVIANS