Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SURINAM?continued. THE GREAT EQUATORIAL FOREST.?MONKEYS.?PARASOL ANTS.?VEGETABLE THUGS PARASITES.?POISONED ARROWS.?IMPRESSIVE VIEW OF THE SIERRA DIVIDING GUIANA FROM THE BASIN OF THE AMAZON. MY CREW MUTINY AND DISAPPEAR.?DESPERATE STRAITS. ?RETURN OF THE DESERTERS.?AGAIN AT PARAMARIBO. Soon alter we entered the forest one of the sharp- eared dogs that accompanied the Indians gave tongue a few yards to our right, his master pushed his way leisurely through the dense tangled covert, and presently reappeared carrying a tortoise, which we sent back to the boat for future use. Half an hour later we heard a chattering overhead, and my escort stopped. One of them drew forth from a neatly made basket- work quiver a thin splinter of hard wood very sharply pointed; from another little basket he extracted some silky fibre, the produce of the silk cotton tree, and twisted it round the head of his arrow; his final operation was to dip its point into a receptacle like a dice- box made of cane smeared with resin and thus rendered waterproof. He then introduced the fatal shaft, about ten inches long, into his blow-pipe, singled out one of the monkeys whose garrulity had betrayed them, and gave a short sharp puff; the deadly messenger sped true, MY INDIAN ESCORT. SURINAM Chap. iii: ] PARASOL ANTS. 25 the unlucky victim snatched the splinter out of the wound and threw it down in a rage, he and his comrades immediately disappearing into the world of leaves overhead. The Indians waited. I thought we had seen the last of our quarry, but presently he came tumbling down through the foliage and foil amongst the undergrowth, whence he was retrieved by one of the dogs, and added to our game bag. The blow-pipe is about 8 feet long, 2 feet from the end are a couple…
