A redskin had brought a great pot full of water from the river, and this he wedged nicely on the fire where the ashes were the most solid. Mansfield sighed; were they going to make chocolate, a drink which he loathed? By the time the beef was eaten, together with the French bread which the explorer had brought as a special luxury for his guides, the water boiled; and it transpired that they were not going to drink chocolate, for one of the men produced from a bag a great handful of dry, curled leaves, whipped the pot off the fire and dropped the leaves into it, stirring the whole vigorously with a stick. The leaves were the _yerba maté_--generally abbreviated to _maté_--or Paraguay ilex; a sort of holly which occupies exactly the same position among the South Americans as tea does with the Chinese. Another Indian cut five hollow stalks of a plant that looked to the scientist suspiciously like hemlock; but he supposed the man knew what he was doing, and accepted the one that was offered to him. As soon as the decoction was sufficiently stirred, the redskins thrust their stalks into the almost boiling liquid and began to suck greedily at it. Mansfield took his place in the circle round the pot when its contents had cooled somewhat, and found it exceedingly refreshing, though rank and bitter to anyone not used to it. But as he drank more freely, he became aware that, like many other good things, it may become a curse instead of a blessing to a man; for he soon found himself growing drowsy under its influence; but the Indians, more accustomed to it, were equal to his share as well as their own, and emptied the pot unmovedly. On later occasions he saw natives quite stupid or unconscious through over-indulgence in the beverage. He rolled himself in his blankets and was soon asleep; but he was awakened at daybreak by the ceaseless chatter of the monkeys in the trees overhead. The Indians were already astir, packing up their weapons and cooking-utensils, and showing generally that this was the most energetic period of the day with them. The most noticeable feature of their behaviour now was that they had become as careless and bold as, over night, they had been vigilant and calculating; and this point perhaps marks more strongly than any other the difference between the Indians north and south of the Mexican frontier. The attacks in the dark, the night marches so common among the northern redskins, are almost unknown in the south and centre; and in all likelihood this has arisen from the comparative scarcity of nocturnal animals in the north. For one square mile of the Amazon contains more animals of the cat tribe than a hundred miles of the Mississippi, and the only beasts likely to be abroad after dark, apart from a few pumas, are the wolves, of which the North American Indian has no fear.