"I sure am lookin' forward to this pleasure-trip of ours," confided Jud to Will.
During the first day along the trail, Will, who was next to Pinto, tried to pass away the time by learning a few words of Mundurucu. His first lessons in that language, however, were somewhat discouraging, since the dialects of the South American Indians contain perhaps more syllables to a word than any other language on earth.
"Pinto," he began, "I'll point to things, and you tell me what they are in Indian, and keep on saying it over and over until I learn it."
"Professor Pinto," went on Will solemnly, pointing to his hand, "what's that?"
"In-tee-ti-pix-tee-e-toke-kee-kee-tay-gaw," clattered Pinto, in a breath.
"Hey, hold up there," said Will. "Try it in low."
Half an hour later found him still working on that single word.
"Whew!" he remarked when he finally had it memorized, "I've heard it takes eight years to learn Eskimo. It's liable to take me eighty before I can talk Mundurucu. What about this one?" he went on, undiscouraged, pointing to a curious tree with a mahogany-red bark--which, if he had but known it, was a stranger whose seeds had in some way drifted down from much farther north.
"E-lit-ta-pix-tee-e-fa-cho-to-kee-not-e," said Pinto, slowly and distinctly.
For fifteen minutes Will wrestled with this new word.
"Do you know what he said?" at last interrupted Professor Ditson, who had been listening to the lesson.
"He gave me the name for that tree, didn't he?" returned Will, a little peevishly.
"Not at all," said the scientist. "He simply said, 'I don't know.'"
"Not so blame simply, either," murmured Jud, who had also been following the lesson.
"Our own language is full of similar mistakes imported from native dialects," lectured Professor Ditson. "'Kangaroo' simply means 'I don't know' in Bushman; so do 'mosquito' and 'quinine' and 'cockatoo' in different Indian languages."
"Well," said Will, "I'm going to pass up Mundurucu. Here I've spent the better part of an hour in learning two words--and one of them isn't right."
"It's a gift, my boy," said Jud, patronizingly. "As for myself, I once learned three Indian languages, Apache, Comanche, an' Sioux, in less than a month."
"Indeed!" broke in Professor Ditson, cuttingly. "You surprise me. Won't you favor me with a few sentences in Apache?"