138 MARTIN RATTLER.

It is pleasant to be thus situated, especially when
a cool breeze blows the mosquitoes and other insects
off the water, and relieves you for a time from their
incessant attacks, Martin Rattler found it pleasant,
as he thus lay on his back with his diminutive pet
marmoset monkey seated on his breast quietly picking
the kernel out of a nut. And Barney O’Flannagan
found it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of
the canoe with his head leaning over the edge, gazing
abstractedly at his own reflected visage, while his
hands trailed through the cool water, and his young
dog—a shagey, indescribable beast with a bluff nose
and a bushy tail—watched him intently, as a mother
might watch an only child in a dangerous situation.
And the old, sun-dried, and storm-battered, and time-
shrivelled mulatto trader, in whose canoe they were
embarked, and whose servants they had become, found
it pleasant, as he sat there perched in his little
montaria, like an exceedingly ancient and overgrown
monkey, guiding it safely down the waters of the
great river of the Tocantins.

Some months have passed since we last parted from
our daring adventurers, During that period they had
crossed an immense tract of country, and reached the
head-waters of one of the many streams that carry

the surplus moisture of central Brazil into the Amazon.