"The morning arrived, and the hunters assembled, to the number of forty or fifty, in an open space by the malocca; and having got their arms and equipments in readiness, all repaired to the _praya_, or narrow beach of sand, which separated the river from the thick underwood of the forest. Here some twenty or thirty _ubas_ (canoes hollowed out of tree-trunks) floated on the water, ready to receive the hunters. They were of different sizes; some capable of containing half a dozen, while others were meant to carry only a single person. "In a few minutes the ubas were freighted with their living cargoes, consisting not only of the hunters, but of most of the women and boys of the malocca, with a score or two of dogs. "These dogs were curious creatures to look at. A stranger, ignorant of the customs of the Jurunas, would have been at some loss to account for the peculiarity of their colour. Such dogs I had never seen before. Some were of a bright scarlet, others were yellow, others blue, and some mottled with a variety of tints! "What could it mean? But I knew well enough. _The dogs were dyed_! "Yes, it is the custom among many tribes of South-American Indians to dye not only their own bodies, but the hairy coat of their dogs, with brilliant colours obtained from vegetable juices, such as the huitoc, the yellow raucau (_annato_), and the blue of the wild indigo. The light grey, often white, hair of these animals favours the staining process; and the effect produced pleases the eye of their savage masters. "On my eye the effect was strange and fantastical. I could not restrain my laughter when I first scanned these curs in their fanciful coats. Picture to yourself a pack of scarlet, and orange, and purple dogs! "Well, we were soon in the ubas, and paddling up-stream. The tuxava and I occupied a canoe to ourselves. His only arms were a light fusil, which I had given him as a present. It was a good piece, and he was proud of it. This was to be its first trial. I had a rifle for my own weapon. The rest were armed variously: some had guns, others the native bow and arrows; some carried the gravatana, with arrows dipped in curari poison; some had nothing but machetes, or cutlasses--for clearing the underwood, in case the game had to be driven from the thickets. "There was a part of the river, some two or three miles above the malocca, where the channel was wider than elsewhere--several miles in breadth at this place. Here it was studded with islands, known to be a favourite resort of the tapirs. This was to be the scene of our hunt.