The Indians, ugly as they were, gave Madame Pfeiffer a hospitable welcome.  After an evening meal, in which roasted monkey and parrot were the chief dishes, they performed one of their characteristic dances.  A quantity of wood was heaped up into a funeral pile, and set on fire; the men then danced around it in a ring.  They threw their bodies from side to side with much awkwardness, but always moving the head forward in a straight line.  The women then joined in, forming at a short distance behind the men, and imitating all their movements.  A horrible noise arose; this was intended for a song, the singers at the same time distorting their features frightfully.  One of them performed on a kind of stringed instrument, made out of the stem of a cabbage-palm, and about two feet, or two feet and a half, in length.  A hole was cut in it slantwise, and six fibres of the stem were kept up in an elevated position at each end, by means of a small bridge.  The fingers played upon these as upon a guitar, drawing forth a very low, harsh, and disagreeable tone.  The dance, thus pleasingly accompanied, was called the Dance of Peace and Joy.

A wilder measure was next undertaken by the men alone.  They first equipped themselves with bows, arrows, and stout clubs; then they formed a circle, indulged in the most rapid and fantastic movements, and brandished their clubs as if dealing death to a hundred foes.  Suddenly they broke their ranks, strung their bows, placed their arrows ready, and represented all the evolutions of shooting after a flying foe, giving utterance to the most piercing cries, which resounded through the forest-glades.  Madame Pfeiffer, believing that she was really surrounded by enemies, started up in terror, and was heartily glad when the dance ended.

[Cape Horn:  page51.jpg]

From Rio Janeiro Madame Pfeiffer sailed in an English ship, the John Renwick, on the 9th of December, bound for Valparaiso in Chili.  She kept to the south, touching at Santos, where the voyagers celebrated New-Year’s Day, and reaching the mouth of the Rio Plata on the 11th of January.  In these latitudes the Southern Cross is the most conspicuous object in the heavens.  It consists of four stars of much brilliancy, arranged in two diagonal rows.  Late in the month the voyagers sighted the sterile shores and barren mountains of Patagonia, and next the volcanic rocks, wave-worn and wind-worn, of Tierra del Fuego.  Through the Strait of Le Maire, which separates the latter from Staten Island, they sailed onward to the extreme southern point of the American continent, the famous promontory of Cape Horn.  It is the termination of the mighty mountain-chain of the Andes, and is formed of a mass of colossal basaltic rocks, thrown together in wild disorder, as by a Titan’s hand.