The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Walter BatesA Record of the Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel (page 6)

while Jose and I worked daily in the woods, I set them to make a montaria under John Aracu’s directions. The first day a suitable tree was found for the shell of the boat, of the kind called Itauba amarello, the yellow variety of the stonewood. They felled it, and shaped out of the trunk a log nineteen feet in length; this they dragged from the forest, with the help of my host’s men, over a road they had previously made with cylindrical pieces of wood acting as rollers. The distance was about half a mile, and the ropes used for drawing the heavy load were tough lianas cut from the surrounding trees. This part of the work occupied about a week: the log had then to be hollowed out, which was done with strong chisels through a slit made down the whole length. The heavy portion of the task being then completed, nothing remained but to widen the opening, fit two planks for the sides and the same number of semicircular boards for the ends, make the benches, and caulk the seams.

The expanding of the log thus hollowed out is a critical operation, and not always successful, many a good shell being spoiled from splitting or expanding irregularly. It is first reared on tressels, with the slit downwards, over a large fire, which is kept up for seven or eight hours, the process requiringunremitting attention to avoid cracks and make the plank bend with the proper dip at the two ends. Wooden straddlers, made by cleaving pieces of tough elastic wood and fixing them with wedges, are inserted into the opening, their compass being altered gradually as the work goes on, but in different degrees according to the part of the boat operated upon. Our casca turned out a good one– it took a long time to cool, and was kept in shape whilst it did so by means of wooden cross-pieces. When the boat was finished, it was launched with great merriment by the men, who hoisted coloured handkerchiefs for flags, and paddled it up and down the stream to try its capabilities. My people had suffered as much inconvenience from the want of a montaria as myself, so this was a day of rejoicing to all of us.

I was very successful at this place with regard to the objects of my journey. About twenty new species of fishes and a considerable number of small reptiles were added to my collection; but very few birds were met with worth preserving. A great number of the most conspicuous insects of the locality were new to me, and turned out to be species peculiar to this part of the Amazons valley. The most interesting acquisition was a large and handsome monkey, of a species I had not before met with–the, white- whiskered Coaita, or spider-monkey (Ateles marginatus). I saw a pair one day in the forest moving slowly along the branches of a lofty tree, and shot one of them; the next day John Aracu brought down another, possibly the companion. The species is of about the same size as the common black kind, of which I have given an account in a former chapter, and has a similar lean body, with limbs clothed with coarse black hair; but it differs in having the whiskers and a triangular patch on the crown of the head of a white colour. I thought the meat the best flavoured I had ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste. During the time of our stay in this part of the Cupari, we could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this diet disagreed with me, three successive days of it reducing me to a state of great weakness. I was obliged to make the most of our Coaita meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting them, placing them for several hours upon a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, and which they call “muquiar.” Meat putrefies in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices anddried immediately in the sun.

My monkeys lasted me about: a fortnight, the last joint being an arm with the clenched fist, which I used with great economy, hanging it in the intervals, between my frugal meals, on a nail in the cabin. Nothing but the hardest necessity could have driven me so near to cannibalism as this, but we had the greatest difficulty in obtaining here a sufficient supply of animal food. About every three days the work on the montaria had to be suspended, and all hands turned out for the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely scattered to be available. Ricardo, and Alberto occasionally brought in a tortoise or anteater, which served us for one day’s consumption. We made acquaintance here with many strange dishes, amongst them Iguana eggs; these are of oblong form, about an inch in length, and covered with a flexible shell. The lizard lays about two score of them in the hollows of trees. They have an oily taste; the men ate them raw, beaten up with farinha, mixing a pinch of salt in the mess; I could only do with them when mixed with Tucupi sauce, of which we had a large jar full always ready to temper unsavoury morsels.

One day as I was entomologising alone and unarmed, in a dry Ygapo, where the trees were rather wide apart and the ground coated to the depth of eight or ten inches with dead leaves, I was near coming into collision with a boa constrictor. I had just entered a little thicket to capture an insect, and while pinning it was rather startled by a rushing noise in the vicinity. I looked up to the sky, thinking a squall was coming on, but not a breath of wind stirred in the tree-tops. On stepping out of the bushes I met face to face a huge serpent coming down a slope, making the dry twigs crack and fly with his weight as he moved over them. I had very frequently met with a smaller boa, the Cutim-boia, in a similar way, and knew from the habits of the family that there was no danger, so I stood my ground. On seeing me the reptile suddenly turned and glided at an accelerated pace down the path. Wishing to take a note of his probable size and the colours and markings of his skin, I set off after him; but he increased his speed, and I was unable to get near enough for the purpose. There was very little of the serpentine movement in his course. The rapidly moving and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the thick bed of fallen leaves, rather than a serpent with skin of varied colours. He descended towards the lower and moister parts of the Ygapo. The huge trunk of an uprooted tree here lay across the road; this he glided over in his undeviating course and soon after penetrated a dense swampy thicket, where of course I did not choose to follow him.

I suffered terribly from heat and mosquitoes as the river sank with the increasing dryness of the season, although I made an awning of the sails to work under, and slept at night in the open air with my hammock slung between the masts. But there was no rest in any part; the canoe descended deeper and deeper into the gulley through which the river flows between high clayey banks; as the water subsided, and with the glowing sun overhead we felt at midday as if in a furnace. I could bear scarcely any clothes in the daytime between eleven in the morning and five in the afternoon, wearing nothing but loose and thin cotton trousers and a light straw hat, and could not be accommodated in John Aracu’s house, as it was a small one and full of noisy children. One night we had a terrific storm. The heat in the afternoon had been greater than ever, and at sunset the sky had a brassy glare, the black patches of cloud which floated in it being lighted up now and then by flashes of sheet lightning. The mosquitoes at night were more than usually troublesome, and I had just sunk exhausted into a doze towards the early hours of morning when the storm began– a complete deluge of rain, with incessant lightning and rattling explosions of thunder. It lasted for eight hours, the grey dawn opening amidst the crash of the tempest. The rain trickled through the seams of the cabin roof on to my collections, the late hot weather having warped the boards, and it gave me immense trouble to secure them in the midst of the confusion. Altogether I had a bad night of it; but what with storms, heat, mosquitoes, hunger, and, towards the last, ill health, I seldom had a good night’s rest on the Cupari.

A small creek traversed the forest behind John Aracu’s house, and entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place; I used to cross it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting ground. One day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. This phenomenon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the creek became dry with the continued subsidence of the Cupari, the time of rising shifting a little from day to day. I pointed out the circumstance to John Aracu, who had not noticed it before (it was only his second year of residence in the locality), but agreed with me that it must be the “mare”; yes, the tide!– the throb of the great oceanic pulse felt in this remote corner, 530 miles distant from the place where it first strikes the body of fresh water at the mouth of the Amazons. I hesitated at first at this conclusion, but in reflecting that the tide was known to be perceptible at Obydos, more than 400 miles from the sea, that at high water in the dry season a large flood from the Amazons enters the mouth of the Tapajos, and that there is but a very small difference of level between that point and the Cupari, a fact shown by the absence of current in the dry season. I could have no doubt that this conclusion was a correct one.

The fact of the tide being felt 530 miles up the Amazons, passing from the main stream to one of its affluents 380 miles from its mouth, and thence to a branch in the third degree, is a proof of the extreme flatness of the land which forms the lower part of the Amazonian valley. This uniformity of level is shown also in the broad lake-like expanses of water formed near their mouths by the principal affluents which cross the valley to join the main river.

August 21st.–John Aracu consented to accompany me to the falls with one of his men to hunt and fish for me. One of my objects was to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts. We started on the 19th; our direction on that day being generally southwest. On the 20th, our course was southerly and southeasterly. This morning (August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of John Aracu. The river at this place is from sixty to seventy yards wide, and runs in a zigzag course between steep clayey banks, twenty to fifty feet in height. The houses of the Mundurucus, to the number of about thirty, are scattered along the banks for a distance of six or seven miles. The owners appear to have chosen all the most picturesque sites– tracts of level ground at the foot of wooded heights, or little havens with bits of white sandy beach–as if they had an appreciation of natural beauty. Most of the dwellings are conical huts, with walls of framework filled in with mud and thatched with palm leaves, the broad eaves reaching halfway to the ground. Some are quadrangular, and do not differ in structure from those of the semi-civilised settlers in other parts; others are open sheds or ranchos. They seem generally to contain not more than one or two families each.

At the first house, we learned that all the fighting men had this morning returned from a two days’ pursuit of a wandering horde of savages of the Pararauate tribe, who had strayed this way from the interior lands and robbed the plantations. A little further on we came to the house of the Tushaua, or chief, situated on the top of a high bank, which we had to ascend by wooden steps. There were four other houses in the neighbourhood, all filled with people. A fine old fellow, with face, shoulders, and breast tattooed all over in a cross-bar pattern, was the first strange object that caught my eye. Most of the men lay lounging or sleeping in their hammocks. The women were employed in an adjoining shed making farinha, many of them being quite naked, and rushing off to the huts to slip on their petticoats when they caught sight of us. Our entrance aroused the Tushaua from a nap; after rubbing his eyes he came forward and bade us welcome with the most formal politeness, and in very good Portuguese. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, well-made man, apparently about thirty years of age, with handsome regular features, not tattooed, and a quiet good-humoured expression of countenance. He had been several times to Santarem and once to Para, learning the Portuguese language during these journeys. He was dressed in shirt and trousers made of blue-checked cotton cloth, and there was not the slightest trace of the savage in his appearance or demeanour. I was told that he had come into the chieftainship by inheritance, and that the Cupari horde of Mundurucus, over which his fathers had ruled before him, was formerly much more numerous, furnishing 300 bows in time of war. They could now scarcely muster forty; but the horde has no longer a close political connection with the main body of the tribe, which inhabits the banks of the Tapajos, six days’ journey from the Cupari settlement.

I spent the remainder of the day here, sending Aracu and the men to fish, while I amused myself with the Tushaua and his people. A few words served to explain my errand on the river; he comprehended at once why white men should admire and travel to collect the beautiful birds and animals of his country, and neither he nor his people spoke a single word about trading, or gave us any trouble by coveting the things we had brought. He related to me the events of the preceding three days. The Pararauates were a tribe of intractable savages, with whom the Mundurucus have been always at war. They had no fixed abode, and of course made no plantations, but passed their lives like the wild beasts, roaming through the forest, guided by the sun; wherever they found themselves at night-time there they slept, slinging their bast hammocks, which are carried by the women, to the trees. They cross the streams which lie in their course in bark canoes, which they make on reaching the water, and cast away after landing on the opposite side. The tribe is very numerous, but the different hordes obey only their own chieftains. The Mundurucus of the upper Tapajos have an expedition on foot against them at the present time, and the Tushaua supposed that the horde which had just been chased from his maloca were fugitives from that direction. There were about a hundred of them–including men, women, and children. Before they were discovered, the hungry savages had uprooted all the macasheira, sweet potatoes, and sugarcane, which the industrious Mundurucus had planted for the season, on the east side of the river. As soon as they were seen they made off, but the Tushaua quickly got together all the young men of the settlement, about thirty in number, who armed themselves with guns, bows and arrows, and javelins, and started in pursuit. They tracked them, as before related, for two days through the forest, but lost their traces on the further bank of the Cuparitinga, a branch stream flowing from the northeast. The pursuers thought, at one time, they were close upon them, having found the inextinguished fire of their last encampment. The footmarks of the chief could be distinguished from the rest by their great size and the length of the stride. A small necklace made of scarlet beans was the only trophy of the expedition, and this the Tushaua gave to me.

I saw very little of the other male Indians, as they were asleep in their huts all the afternoon. There were two other tattooed men lying under an open shed, besides the old man already mentioned. One of them presented a strange appearance, having a semicircular black patch in the middle of his face, covering the bottom of the nose and mouth, crossed lines on his back and breast, and stripes down his arms and legs. It is singular that the graceful curved patterns used by the South Sea Islanders are quite unknown among the Brazilian red men; they being all tattooed either in simple lines or patches. The nearest approach to elegance of design which I saw was amongst the Tucunas of the Upper Amazons, some of whom have a scroll-like mark on each cheek, proceeding from the corner of the mouth. The taste, as far as form is concerned, of the American Indian, would seem to be far less refined than that of the Tahitian and New Zealander.

To amuse the Tushaua, I fetched from the canoe the two volumes of Knight’s Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature. The engravings quite took his fancy, and he called his wives, of whom, as I afterwards learned from Aracu, he had three or four, to look at them; one of them was a handsome girl, decorated with necklace and bracelets of blue beads. In a short time, others left their work, and I then had a crowd of women and children around me, who all displayed unusual curiosity for Indians. It was no light task to go through the whole of the illustrations, but they would not allow me to miss a page, making me turn back when I tried to skip. The pictures of the elephant, camels, orangutangs, and tigers, seemed most to astonish them; but they were interested in almost everything, down even to the shells and insects. They recognised the portraits of the most striking birds and mammals which are found in their own country– the jaguar, howling monkeys, parrots, trogons, and toucans. The elephant was settled to be a large kind of Tapir; but they made but few remarks, and those in the Mundurucu language, of which I understood only two or three words. Their way of expressing surprise was a clicking sound made with the teeth, similar to the one we ourselves use, or a subdued exclamation, Hm! hm! Before I finished, from fifty to sixty had assembled; there was no pushing or rudeness, the grown-up women letting the young girls and children stand before them, and all behaved in the most quiet and orderly manner possible.

The Mundurucus are perhaps the most numerous and formidable tribe of Indians now surviving in the Amazons region. They inhabit the shores of the Tapajos (chiefly the right bank), from 3 to 7 south latitude, and the interior of the country between that part of the river and the Madeira. On the Tapajos alone they can muster, I was told, 2000 fighting men; the total population of the tribe may be about 20,000. They were not heard of until about ninety years ago, when they made war on the Portuguese settlements, their hosts crossing the interior of the country eastward of the Tapajos, and attacking the establishments of the whites in the province of Maranham. The Portuguese made peace with them in the beginning of the present century, the event being brought about by the common cause of quarrel entertained by the two peoples against the hated Muras. They have ever since been firm friends of the whites. It is remarkable how faithfully this friendly feeling has been handed down amongst the Mundurucus, and spread to the remotest of the scattered hordes. Wherever a white man meets a family, or even an individual of the tribe, he is almost sure to be reminded of this alliance. They are the most warlike of the Brazilian tribes, and are considered also the most settled and industrious; they are not, however, superior in this latter respect to the Juris and Passes on the Upper Amazons, or the Uapes Indians near the headwaters of the Rio Negro. They make very large plantations of mandioca, and sell the surplus produce, which amounts to, on the Tapajos, from 3000 to 5000 baskets (60 lbs. each) annually, to traders who ascend the river from Santarem between the months of August and January. They also gather large quantities of sarsaparilla, India-rubber, and Tonka beans, in the forests. The traders, on their arrival at the Campinas (the scantily wooded region inhabited by the main body of Mundurucus beyond the cataracts) have first to distribute their wares–cheap cotton cloths, iron hatchets, cutlery, small wares, and cashaca–amongst the minor chiefs, and then wait three or four months for repayment in produce.

A rapid change is taking place in the habits of these Indians through frequent intercourse with the whites, and those who dwell on the banks of the Tapajos now seldom tattoo their children. The principal Tushaua of the whole tribe or nation, named Joaquim, was rewarded with a commission in the Brazilian army, in acknowledgment of the assistance he gave to the legal authorities during the rebellion of 1835-6. It would be a misnomer to call the Mundurucus of the Cupari and many parts of the Tapajos savages; their regular mode of life, agricultural habits, loyalty to their chiefs, fidelity to treaties, and gentleness of demeanour, give them a right to a better title. Yet they show no aptitude for the civilised life of towns, and, like the rest of the Brazilian tribes, seem incapable of any further advance in culture.

In their former wars they exterminated two of the neighbouring peoples, the Jumas and the Jacares, and make now an annual expedition against the Pararauates, and one or two other similar wild tribes who inhabit the interior of the land. Additionally they are sometimes driven by hunger towards the banks of the great rivers to rob the plantations of the agricultural Indians. These campaigns begin in July, and last throughout the dry months; the women generally accompanying the warriors to carry their arrows and javelins. They had the diabolical custom, in former days, of cutting off the heads of their slain enemies, and preserving them as trophies around their houses. I believe this, together with other savage practices, has been relinquished in those parts where they have had long intercourse with the Brazilians, for I could neither see nor hear anything of these preserved heads. They used to sever the head with knives made of broad bamboo, and then, after taking out the brain and fleshy parts, soak it in bitter vegetable oil (andiroba), and expose it for several days over the smoke of a fire or in the sun. In the tract of country between the Tapajos and the Madeira, a deadly war has been for many years carried on between the Mundurucus and the Araras. I was told by a Frenchman at Santarem, who had visited that part, that all the settlements there have a military organisation. A separate shed is built outside each village, where the fighting men sleep at night, sentinels being stationed to give the alarm with blasts of the Ture on the approach of the Araras, who choose the night for their onslaughts.

Each horde of Mundurucus has its paje or medicine man, who is the priest and doctor; he fixes upon the time most propitious for attacking the enemy; exorcises evil spirits, and professes to cure the sick. All illness whose origin is not very apparent is supposed to be caused by a worm in the part affected. This the paje pretends to extract; he blows on the seat of pain the smoke from a large cigar, made with an air of great mystery by rolling tobacco in folds of Tauari, and then sucks the place, drawing from his mouth, when he has finished, what he pretends to be the worm. It is a piece of very clumsy conjuring. One of these pajes was sent for by a woman in John Aracu’s family, to operate on a child who suffered much from pains in the head. Senor John contrived to get possession of the supposed worm after the trick was performed in our presence, and it turned out to be a long white airroot of some plant. The paje was with difficulty persuaded to operate while Senor John and I were present. I cannot help thinking that he, as well as all others of the same profession, are conscious impostors, handing down the shallow secret of their divinations and tricks from generation to generation. The institution seems to be common to all tribes of Indians, and to be held to more tenaciously than any other.

I bought of the Tushaua two beautiful feather sceptres, with their bamboo cases. These are of cylindrical shape, about three feet in length and three inches in diameter, and are made by gluing with wax the fine white and yellow feathers from the breast of the toucan on stout rods, the tops being ornamented with long plumes from the tails of parrots, trogons, and other birds. The Mundurucus are considered to be the most expert workers in feathers of all the South American tribes. It is very difficult, however, to get them to part with the articles, as they seem to have a sort of superstitious regard for them. They manufacture headdresses, sashes, and tunics, besides sceptres; the feathers being assorted with a good eye to the proper contrast of colours, and the quills worked into strong cotton webs, woven with knitting sticks in the required shape. The dresses are worn only during their festivals, which are celebrated, not at stated times, but whenever the Tushaua thinks fit. Dancing, singing, sports, and drinking, appear to be the sole objects of these occasional holidays. When a day is fixed upon, the women prepare a great quantity of taroba, and the monotonous jingle is kept up, with little intermission, night and day, until the stimulating beverage is finished.

We left the Tushaua’s house early the next morning. The impression made upon me by the glimpse of Indian life in its natural state obtained here, and at another cluster of houses visited higher up, was a pleasant one, notwithstanding the disagreeable incident of the Pararauate visit. The Indians are here seen to the best advantage; having relinquished many of their most barbarous practices, without being corrupted by too close contact with the inferior whites and half-breeds of the civilised settlements. The manners are simpler, the demeanour more gentle, cheerful, and frank, than amongst the Indians who live near the towns. I could not help contrasting their well-fed condition, and the signs of orderly, industrious habits, with the poverty and laziness of the semi-civilised people of Altar do Chao. I do not think that the introduction of liquors has been the cause of much harm to the Brazilian Indian. He has his drinking bout now and then, like the common working people of other countries. It was his habit in his original state, before Europeans visited his country, but he is always ashamed of it afterwards, and remains sober during the pretty long intervals. The harsh, slave-driving practices of the Portuguese and their descendants have been the greatest curses to the Indians; the Mundurucus of the Cupari, however, have been now for many years protected against ill-treatment. This is one of the good services rendered by the missionaries, who take care that the Brazilian laws in favour of the aborigines shall be respected by the brutal and unprincipled traders who go amongst them. I think no Indians could be in a happier position than these simple, peaceful, and friendly people on the banks of the Cupari. The members of each family live together, and seem to be much attached to each other; and the authority of the chief is exercised in the mildest manner. Perpetual summer reigns around them; the land is of the highest fertility, and a moderate amount of light work produces them all the necessessities of their simple life.

It is difficult to get at their notions on subjects that require a little abstract thought; but, the mind of the Indian is in a very primitive condition. I believe he thinks of nothing except the matters that immediately concern his daily material wants. There is an almost total absence of curiosity in his mental disposition, consequently, he troubles himself very little concerning the causes of the natural phenomena around him. He has no idea of a Supreme Being; but, at the same time, he is free from revolting superstitions–his religious notions going no farther than the belief in an evil spirit, regarded merely as a kind of hobgoblin, who is at the bottom of all his little failures, troubles in fishing, hunting, and so forth. With so little mental activity, and with feelings and passions slow of excitement, the life of these people is naturally monotonous and dull, and their virtues are, properly speaking, only negative; but the picture of harmless, homely contentment they exhibit is very pleasing, compared with the state of savage races in many other parts of the world.

The men awoke me at four o’clock with the sound of their oars on leaving the port of the Tushaua. I was surprised to find a dense fog veiling all surrounding objects, and the air quite cold. The lofty wall of forest, with the beautiful crowns of Assai palms standing out from it on their slender, arching stems, looked dim and strange through the misty curtain. The sudden change a little after sunrise had quite a magical effect, for the mist rose up like the gauze veil before the transformation scene at a pantomime, and showed the glorious foliage in the bright glow of morning, glittering with dew drops. We arrived at the falls about ten o’clock. The river here is not more than forty yards broad, and falls over a low ledge of rock stretching in a nearly straight line across.

We had now arrived at the end of the navigation for large vessels–a distance from the mouth of the river, according to our rough calculation, of a little over seventy miles. I found it the better course now to send Jose and one of the men forward in the montaria with John Aracu, and remain myself with the cuberta and our other man to collect in the neighbouring forest. We stayed here four days, one of the boats returning each evening from the upper river with the produce of the day’s chase of my huntsmen. I obtained six good specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, besides a number of smaller birds, a species new to me of Guariba, or howling monkey, and two large lizards. The Guariba was an old male, with the hair much worn from his rump and breast, and his body disfigured with large tumours made by the grubs of a gad-fly (Oestrus). The back and tail were of a ruddy-brown colour, the limbs, and underside of the body, black. The men ascended to the second falls, which form a cataract several feet in height, about fifteen miles beyond our anchorage. The macaws were found feeding in small flocks on the fruit of the Tucuma palm (Astryocaryum Tucuma), the excessively hard nut of which is crushed into pulp by the powerful beak of the bird. I found the craws of all the specimens filled with the sour paste to which the stone-like fruit had been reduced. Each bird took me three hours to skin, and I was occupied with these and my other specimens every evening until midnight, after my own laborious day’s hunt– working on the roof of my cabin by the light of a lamp.

The place where the cuberta was anchored formed a little rocky haven, with a sandy beach sloping to the forest, within which were the ruins of an Indian Maloca, and a large weed-grown plantation. The port swarmed with fishes, whose movements it was amusing to watch in the deep, clear water. The most abundant were the Piranhas. One species, which varied in length, according to age, from two to six inches, but was recognisable by a black spot at the root of the tail, was always the quickest to seize any fragment of meat thrown into the water. When nothing was being given to them, a few only were seen scattered about, their heads all turned one way in an attitude of expectation; but as soon as any offal fell from the canoe, the water was blackened with the shoals that rushed instantaneously to the spot. Those who did not succeed in securing a fragment, fought with those who had been more successful, and many contrived to steal the coveted morsels from their mouths. When a bee or fly passed through the air near the water, they all simultaneously darted towards it as if roused by an electric shock. Sometimes a larger fish approached, and then the host of Piranhas took the alarm and flashed out of sight.

The population of the water varied from day to day. Once a small shoal of a handsome black-banded fish, called by the natives Acara bandeira (Mesonauta insignis, of Gunther), came gliding through at a slow pace, forming a very pretty sight. At another time, little troops of needle-fish, eel-like animals with excessively long and slender toothed jaws, sailed through the field, scattering before them the hosts of smaller fry; and at the rear of the needle-fishes, a strangely-shaped kind called Sarapo came wriggling along, one by one, with a slow movement. We caught with hook and line, baited with pieces of banana, several Curimata (Anodus Amazonum), a most delicious fish, which, next to the Tucunare and the Pescada, is most esteemed by the natives. The Curimata seemed to prefer the middle of the stream, where the waters were agitated beneath the little cascade.

The weather was now settled and dry, and the river sank rapidly– six inches in twenty-four hours. In this remote and solitary spot I can say that I heard for the first and almost the only time the uproar of life at sunset, which Humboldt describes as having witnessed towards the sources of the Orinoco, but which is unknown on the banks of the larger rivers. The noises of animals began just as the sun sank behind the trees after a sweltering afternoon, leaving the sky above of the intensest shade of blue. Two flocks of howling monkeys, one close to our canoe, the other about a furlong distant, filled the echoing forests with their dismal roaring. Troops of parrots, including the hyacinthine macaw we were in search of, began then to pass over; the different styles of cawing and screaming of the various species making a terrible discord. Added to these noises were the songs of strange Cicadas, one large kind perched high on the trees around our little haven setting up a most piercing chirp. it began with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, but this gradually and rapidly became shriller, until it ended in a long and loud note resembling the steam-whistle of a locomotive engine. Half-a-dozen of these wonderful performers made a considerable item in the evening concert. I had heard the same species before at Para, but it was there very uncommon; we obtained one of them here for my collection by a lucky blow with a stone. The uproar of beasts, birds, and insects lasted but a short time: the sky quickly lost its intense hue, and the night set in. Then began the tree-frogs–quack-quack, drum-drum, hoo- hoo; these, accompanied by a melancholy night-jar, kept up their monotonous cries until very late.

My men encountered on the banks of the stream a Jaguar and a black Tiger, and were very much afraid of falling in with the Pararauates, so that I could not, after their return on the fourth day, induce them to undertake another journey. We began our descent of the river in the evening of the 26th of August. At night forest and river were again enveloped in mist, and the air before sunrise was quite cold. There is a considerable current from the falls to the house of John Aracu, and we accomplished the distance, with its aid and by rowing, in seventeen hours.

September 21st.-At five o’clock in the afternoon we emerged from the confined and stifling gully through which the Cupari flows, into the broad Tapajos, and breathed freely again. How I enjoyed the extensive view after being so long pent up: the mountainous coasts, the grey distance, the dark waters tossed by a refreshing breeze! Heat, mosquitoes, insufficient and bad food, hard work and anxiety, had brought me to a very low state of health; and I was now anxious to make all speed back to Santarem.

We touched at Aveyros, to embark some chests I had left there and to settle accounts with Captain Antonio, and found nearly all the people sick with fever and vomit, against which the Padre’s homoeopathic globules were of no avail. The Tapajos had been pretty free from epidemics for some years past, although it was formerly a very unhealthy river. A sickly time appeared to be now returning; in fact, the year following my visit (1853) was the most fatal one ever experienced in this part of the country. A kind of putrid fever broke out, which attacked people of all races alike. The accounts we received at Santarem were most distressing– my Cupari friends especially suffered very severely. John Aracu and his family all fell victims, with the exception of his wife; my kind friend Antonio Malagueita also died, and a great number of people in the Mundurucu village.

The descent of the Tapajos in the height of the dry season, which was now close at hand, is very hazardous on account of the strong winds, absence of current, and shoaly water far away from the coasts. The river towards the end of September is about thirty feet shallower than in June; and in many places, ledges of rock are laid bare, or covered with only a small depth of water. I had been warned of these circumstances by my Cupari friends, but did not form an adequate idea of what we should have to undergo. Canoes, in descending, only travel at night, when the terral, or light land-breeze, blows off the eastern shore. In the daytime a strong wind rages from down river, against which it is impossible to contend as there is no current, and the swell raised by its sweeping over scores of miles of shallow water is dangerous to small vessels. The coast for the greater part of the distance affords no shelter; there are, however, a number of little harbours, called esperas, which the canoemen calculate upon, carefully arranging each night-voyage so as to reach one of them before the wind begins the next morning.

We left Aveyros in the evening of the 21st, and sailed gently down with the soft land-breeze, keeping about a mile from the eastern shore. It was a brilliant moonlit night, and the men worked cheerfully at the oars when the wind was slack, the terral wafting from the forest a pleasant perfume like that of mignonette. At midnight we made a fire and got a cup of coffee, and at three o’clock in the morning reached the sitio of Ricardo’s father, an Indian named Andre, where we anchored and slept.

September 22nd–Old Andre with his squaw came aboard this morning. They brought three Tracajas, a turtle, and a basketful of Tracaja eggs, to exchange with me for cotton cloth and cashaca. Ricardo, who had been for some time very discontented, having now satisfied his longing to see his parents, cheerfully agreed to accompany me to Santarem. The loss of a man at this juncture would have been very annoying, with Captain Antonio ill at Aveyros, and not a hand to be had anywhere in the neighbourhood; but, if we had not called at Andre’s sitio, we should not have been able to have kept Ricardo from running away at the first landing-place. He was a lively, restless lad, and although impudent and troublesome at first, had made a very good servant. His companion, Alberto, was of quite a different disposition, being extremely taciturn, and going through all his duties with the quietest regularity.

We left at 11 a.m., and progressed a little before the wind began to blow from down river, when we were obliged again to cast anchor. The terral began at six o’clock in the evening, and we sailed with it past the long line of rock-bound coast near Itapuama. At ten o’clock a furious blast of wind came from a cleft between the hills, catching us with the sails close-hauled, and throwing the canoe nearly on its beam-ends, when we were about a mile from the shore. Jose had the presence of mind to slacken the sheet of the mainsail, while I leapt forward and lowered the sprit of the foresail, the two Indians standing stupefied in the prow. It was what the canoe-men call a trovoada secca or white squall. The river in a few minutes became a sheet of foam; the wind ceased in about half an hour, but the terral was over for the night, so we pulled towards the shore to find an anchoring place.

We reached Tapaiuna by midnight on the 23rd, and on the morning of the 24th arrived at the Retiro, where we met a shrewd Santarem trader, whom I knew, Senor Chico Honorio, who had a larger and much better provided canoe than our own. The wind was strong from below all day, so we remained at this place in his company. He had his wife with him, and a number of Indians, male and female. We slung our hammocks under the trees, and breakfasted and dined together, our cloth being spread on the sandy beach in the shade after killing a large quantity of fish with timbo, of which we had obtained a supply at Itapuama. At night we were again under way with the land breeze. The water was shoaly to a great distance off the coast, and our canoe having the lighter draught went ahead, our leadsman crying out the soundings to our companion– the depth was only one fathom, half a mile from the coast. We spent the next day (25th) at the mouth of a creek called Pini, which is exactly opposite the village of Boim, and on the following night advanced about twelve miles. Every point of land had a long spit of sand stretching one or two miles towards the middle of the river, which it was necessary to double by a wide circuit. The terral failed us at midnight when we were near an espera, called Marai, the mouth of a shallow creek.

September 26th.–I did not like the prospect of spending the whole dreary day at Marai, where it was impossible to ramble ashore, the forest being utterly impervious, and the land still partly under water. Besides, we had used up our last stick of firewood to boil our coffee at sunrise, and could not get a fresh supply at this place. So there being a dead calm on the river in the morning, I gave orders at ten o’clock to move out of the harbour, and try with the oars to reach Paquiatuba, which was only five miles distant. We had doubled the shoaly point which stretches from the mouth of the creek, and were making way merrily across the bay, at the head of which was the port of the little settlement, when we beheld to our dismay, a few miles down the river, the signs of the violent day breeze coming down upon us–a long, rapidly advancing line of foam with the darkened water behind it. Our men strove in vain to gain the harbour; the wind overtook us, and we cast anchor in three fathoms, with two miles of shoaly water between us and the land on our lee. It came with the force of a squall: the heavy billows washing over the vessel and drenching us with the spray. I did not expect that our anchor would hold; I gave out, however, plenty of cable and watched the result at the prow, Jose placing himself at the helm, and the men standing by the jib and foresail, so as to be ready if we dragged to attempt the passage of the Marai spit, which was now almost dead to leeward. Our little bit of iron, however, held its place; the bottom being fortunately not so sandy as in most other parts of the coast; but our weak cable then began to cause us anxiety.

We remained in this position all day without food, for everything was tossing about in the hold; provision-chests, baskets, kettles, and crockery. The breeze increased in strength towards the evening, when the sun set fiery red behind the misty hills on the western shore, and the gloom of the scene was heightened by the strange contrasts of colour; the inky water and the lurid gleam of the sky. Heavy seas beat now and then against the prow of our vessel with a force that made her shiver. If we had gone ashore in this place, all my precious collections would have been inevitably lost; but we ourselves could have scrambled easily to land, and re-embarked with Senor Honorio, who had remained behind in the Pini, and would pass in the course of two or three days. When night came I lay down exhausted with watching and fatigue, and fell asleep, as my men had done sometime before. About nine o’clock, I was awakened by the montaria bumping against the sides of the vessel, which had veered suddenly round, and the full moon, previously astern, then shone full in the cabin. The wind had abruptly ceased, giving place to light puffs from the eastern shore, and leaving a long swell rolling into the shoaly bay.

After this, I resolved not to move a step beyond Paquiatuba without an additional man, and one who understood the navigation of the river at this season. We reached the landing-place at ten o’clock, and anchored within the mouth of the creek. In the morning I walked through the beautiful shady alleys of the forest, which were waterpaths in June when we touched here in ascending the river to the house of Inspector Cypriano. After an infinite deal of trouble, I succeeded in persuading him to furnish me with another Indian. There are about thirty families established in this place, but the able-bodied men had been nearly all drafted off within the last few weeks by the Government, to accompany a military expedition against runaway negroes, settled in villages in the interior. Senor Cypriano was a pleasant-looking and extremely civil young Mameluco. He accompanied us, on the night of the 28th, five miles down the river to Point Jaguarari, where the man lived whom he intended to send with me. I was glad to find my new hand a steady, middle- aged and married Indian; his name was of very good promise, Angelo Custodio (Guardian Angel).

Point Jaguarari forms at this season of the year a high sandbank, which is prolonged as a narrow spit, stretching about three miles towards the middle of the river. We rounded this with great difficulty on the night of the 29th, reaching before daylight a good shelter behind a similar sandbank at Point Acaratingari, a headland situated not more than five miles in a straight line from our last anchoring place. We remained here all day; the men beating timbo in a quiet pool between the sandbank and the mainland, and obtaining a great quantity of fish, from which I selected six species new to my collection. We made rather better progress the two following nights, but the terral now always blew strongly from the north-northeast after midnight, and thus limited the hours during which we could navigate, forcing us to seek the nearest shelter to avoid being driven back faster than we came.

On the 2nd of October, we reached Point Cajetuba and had a pleasant day ashore. The river scenery in this neighbourhood is of the greatest beauty. A few houses of settlers are seen at the bottom of the broad bay of Aramhna-i at the foot of a range of richly-timbered hills, the high beach of snow-white sand stretching in a bold curve from point to point. The opposite shores of the river are ten or eleven miles distant, but towards the north is a clear horizon of water and sky. The country near Point Cajetuba is similar to the neighbourhood of Santarem– namely, campos with scattered trees. We gathered a large quantity of wild fruit: Caju, Umiri, and Aapiranga. The Umiri berry (Humirium floribundum) is a black drupe similar in appearance to the Damascene plum, and not greatly unlike it in taste. The Aapiranga is a bright vermilion-coloured berry, with a hard skin and a sweet viscid pulp enclosing the seeds.

Between the point and Altar do Chao was a long stretch of sandy beach with moderately deep water; our men, therefore, took a rope ashore and towed the cuberta at merry speed until we reached the village. A long, deeply laden canoe with miners from the interior provinces passed us here. It was manned by ten Indians, who propelled the boat by poles; the men, five on each side, trotting one after the other along a plank arranged for the purpose from stem to stern. It took us two nights to double Point Cururu, where, as already mentioned, the river bends from its northerly course beyond Altar do Chao. A confused pile of rocks, on which many a vessel heavily laden with farinha has been wrecked, extends at the season of low water from the foot of a high bluff far into the stream. We were driven back on the first night (October 3rd) by a squall. The light terral was carrying us pleasantly round the spit, when a small black cloud which lay near the rising moon suddenly spread over the sky to the northward; the land breeze then ceased, and furious blasts began to blow across the river. We regained, with great difficulty, the shelter of the point. It blew almost a hurricane for two hours, during the whole of which time the sky over our heads was beautifully clear and starlit. Our shelter at first was not very secure, for the wind blew away the lashings of our sails, and caused our anchor to drag. Angelo Custodio, however, seized a rope which was attached to the foremast, and leapt ashore; had he not done so, we should probably have been driven many miles backwards up the storm-tossed river. After the cloud had passed, the regular east wind began to blow, and our further progress was effectually stopped for the night. The next day we all went ashore, after securing well the canoe, and slept from eleven o’clock till five under the shade of trees.

The distance between Point Cururu and Santarem was accomplished in three days, against the same difficulties of contrary and furious winds, shoaly water, and rocky coasts. I was thankful at length to be safely housed, with the whole of my collections, made under so many privations and perils, landed without the loss or damage of a specimen. The men, after unloading the canoe and delivering it to its owner, came to receive their payment. They took part in goods and part in money, and after a good supper, on the night of the 7th October, shouldered their bundles and set off to walk by land some eighty miles to their homes. I was rather surprised at the good feeling exhibited by these poor Indians at parting. Angelo Custodio said that whenever I should wish to make another voyage up the Tapajos, he would be always ready to serve me as pilot. Alberto was undemonstrative as usual; but Ricardo, with whom I had had many sharp quarrels, actually shed tears when he shook hands and bid me the final “adios.”

CHAPTER X

THE UPPER AMAZONS–VOYAGE TO EGA

Departure from Barra–First Day and Night on the Upper Amazons– Desolate Appearance of River in the Flood Season–Cucama Indians- -Mental Condition of Indians–Squalls–Manatee–Forest–Floating Pumice Stones from the Andes–Falling Banks–Ega and its Inhabitants–Daily Life of a Naturalist at Ega–The Four Seasons of the Upper Amazons

I must now take the reader from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters, to the boundless wooded plains, and yellow turbid current of the Upper Amazons or Solimoens. I will resume the narrative of my first voyage up the river, which was interrupted at the Barra of the Rio Negro in the seventh chapter, to make way for the description of Santarem and its neighbourhood.

I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent, with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars. The owner, an old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra attending the assizes as juryman, a public duty performed without remuneration, which took him six weeks away from his business. He was about to leave Barra himself, in a small boat, and recommended me to send forward my heavy baggage in the cuberta and make the journey with him. He would reach Ega, 370 miles distant from Barra, in twelve or fourteen days; while the large vessel would be thirty or forty days on the road. I preferred, however, to go in company with my luggage, looking forward to the many opportunities I should have of landing and making collections on the banks of the river.

I shipped the collections made between Para and the Rio Negro in a large cutter which was about descending to the capital, and after a heavy day’s work got all my chests aboard the Ega canoe by eight o’clock at night. The Indians were then all embarked, one of them being brought dead drunk by his companions, and laid to sober himself all night on the wet boards of the tombadilha. The cabo, a spirited young white, named Estulano Alves Carneiro, who has since risen to be a distinguished citizen of the new province of the Upper Amazons, soon after gave orders to get up the anchor. The men took to the oars, and in a few hours we crossed the broad mouth of the Rio Negro; the night being clear, calm, and starlit, and the surface of the inky waters smooth as a lake.

When I awoke the next morning, we were progressing by espia along the left bank of the Solimoens. The rainy season had now set in over the region through which the great river flows; the sand- banks and all the lower lands were already under water, and the tearing current, two or three miles in breadth, bore along a continuous line of uprooted trees and islets of floating plants. The prospect was most melancholy; no sound was heard but the dull murmur of the waters — the coast along which we travelled all day was encumbered every step of the way with fallen trees, some of which quivered in the currents which set around projecting points of land. Our old pest, the Motuca, began to torment us as soon as the sun gained power in the morning. White egrets were plentiful at the edge of the water, and hummingbirds, in some places, were whirring about the flowers overhead. The desolate appearance of the landscape increased after sunset, when the moon rose in mist.

This upper river, the Alto-Amazonas, or Solimoens, is always spoken of by the Brazilians as a distinct stream. This is partly owing, as before remarked, to the direction it seems to take at the fork of the Rio Negro; the inhabitants of the country, from their partial knowledge, not being able to comprehend the whole river system in one view. It has, however, many peculiarities to distinguish it from the lower course of the river. The trade- wind, or sea-breeze, which reaches, in the height of the dry season, as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro, 900 or 1000 miles from the Atlantic, never blows on the upper river. The atmosphere is therefore more stagnant and sultry, and the winds that do prevail are of irregular direction and short duration. A great part of the land on the borders of the Lower Amazons is hilly; there are extensive campos, or open plains, and long stretches of sandy soil clothed with thinner forests. The climate, in consequence, is comparatively dry many months in succession during the fine season passing without rain. All this is changed on the Solimoens. A fortnight of clear sunny weather is a rarity: the whole region through which the river and its affluents flow, after leaving the easternmost ridges of the Andes, which Poppig describes as rising like a wall from the level country, 240 miles from the Pacific, is a vast plain, about 1000 miles in length, and 500 or 600 in breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest. The soil is nowhere sandy, but always either a stiff clay, alluvium, or vegetable mold, which thelatter, in many places, is seen in water-worn sections of the river banks to be twenty or thirty feet in depth. With such a soil and climate, the luxuriance of vegetation, and the abundance and beauty of animal forms which are already so great in the region nearer the Atlantic, increase on the upper river. The fruits, both wild and cultivated, common to the two sections of the country, reach a progressively larger size in advancing westward, and some trees, which blossom only once a year at Para and Santarem, yield flower and fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region while we are yet on its threshold. I resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the Andes amounting only to a few score acres. Man, indeed, in any condition, from his small numbers, makes but an insignificant figure in these vast solitudes. It may be mentioned that the Solimoens is 2130 miles in length, if we reckon from the source of what is usually considered the main stream (Lake Lauricocha, near Lima); but 2500 miles by the route of the Ucayali, the most considerable and practicable fork of the upper part of the river. It is navigable at all seasons by large steamers for upwards of 1400 miles from the mouth of the Rio Negro.

On the 28th we passed the mouth of Arlauu, a narrow inlet which communicates with the Rio Negro, emerging in front of Barra. Our vessel was nearly drawn into this by the violent current which set from the Solimoens. The towing-cable was lashed to a strong tree about thirty yards ahead, and it took the whole strength of crew and passengers to pull across. We passed the Guariba, a second channel connecting the two rivers, on the 30th, and on the 31st sailed past a straggling settlement called Manacapuru, situated on a high, rocky bank. Many citizens of Barra have sitios, or country-houses, in this place, although it is eighty miles distant from the town by the nearest road. Beyond Manacapuru all traces of high land cease; both shores of the river, henceforward for many hundred miles, are flat, except in places where the Tabatinga formation appears in clayey elevations of from twenty to forty feet above the line of highest water. The country is so completely destitute of rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is seen during many weeks’ journey. Our voyage was now very monotonous. After leaving the last house at Manacapuru, we travelled nineteen days without seeing a human habitation, the few settlers being located on the banks of inlets or lakes some distance from the shores of the main river. We met only one vessel during the whole of the time, and this did not come within hail, as it was drifting down in the middle of the current in a broad part of the river, two miles from the bank along which we were laboriously warping our course upwards.

After the first two or three days we fell into a regular way of life on board. Our crew was composed of ten Indians of the Cucama nation, whose native country is a portion of the borders of the upper river in the neighbourhood of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucamas speak the Tupi language, using, however, a harsher accent than is common amongst the semi-civilised Indians from Ega downwards. They are a shrewd, hard-working people, and are the only Indians who willingly, and in a body, engage themselves to navigate the canoes of traders. The pilot, a steady and faithful fellow named Vicente, told me that he and his companions had now been fifteen months absent from their wives and families, and that on arriving at Ega they intended to take the first chance of a passage to Nauta. There was nothing in the appearance of these men to distinguish them from canoemen in general. Some were tall and well built, others had squat figures with broad shoulders and excessively thick arms and legs. No two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head: Vicente had an oval visage, with fine regular features, while a little dumpy fellow, the wag of the party, was quite a Mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of eyes; but these two formed the extremes as to face and figure. None of them were tattooed or disfigured in any way and they were all quite destitute of beard.

The Cucamas are notorious on the river for their provident habits. The desire of acquiring property is so rare a trait in Indians, that the habits of these people are remarked on with surprise by the Brazilians. The first possession which they strive to acquire on descending the river into Brazil, which all the Peruvian Indians look upon as a richer country than their own, is a wooden trunk with lock and key; in this they stow away carefully all their earnings converted into clothing, hatchets, knives, harpoon heads, needles and thread, and so forth. Their wages are only fourpence or sixpence a day, which is often paid in goods charged one hundred per cent above Para prices, so that it takes them a long time to fill their chest.

It would be difficult to find a better-behaved set of men in a voyage than these poor Indians. During our thirty-five days’ journey they lived and worked together in the most perfect good fellowship. I never heard an angry word pass amongst them. Senor Estulano let them navigate the vessel in their own way, exerting his authority only now and then when they were inclined to be lazy. Vicente regulated the working hours. These depended on the darkness of the nights. In the first and second quarters of the moon they kept it up with espia, or oars, until almost midnight; in the third and fourth quarters they were allowed to go to sleep soon after sunset, and were aroused at three or four o’clock in the morning to resume their work. On cool, rainy days we all bore a hand at the espia, trotting with bare feet on the sloppy deck in Indian file to the tune of some wild boatman’s chorus. We had a favorable wind for only two days out of the thirty-five, by which we made about forty miles, the rest of our long journey was accomplished literally by pulling our way from tree to tree. When we encountered a remanso near the shore, we got along very pleasantly for a few miles by rowing– but this was a rare occurrence. During leisure hours the Indians employed themselves in sewing. Vicente was a good hand at cutting out shirts and trousers, and acted as master tailor to the whole party, each of whom had a thick steel thimble and a stock of needles and thread of his own. Vicente made for me a set of blue-check cotton shirts during the passage.

The goodness of these Indians, like that of most others amongst whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad qualities, than in the possession of good ones; in other words, it was negative rather than positive. Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament, coldness of desire and deadness of feeling, want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull, gloomy, quality and they seemed never to be stirred by the emotions–love, pity, admiration, fear, wonder, joy, orenthusiasm. These are characteristics of the whole race. The good fellowship of our Cucamas seemed to arise not from warm sympathy, but simply from the absence of eager selfishness in small matters. On the morning when the favourable wind sprung up, one of the crew, a lad of about seventeen years of age, was absent ashore at the time of starting, having gone alone in one of the montarias to gather wild fruit. The sails were spread and we travelled for several hours at great speed, leaving the poor fellow to paddle after us against the strong current. Vicente, who might have waited a few minutes at starting, and the others, only laughed when the hardship of their companion was alluded to. He overtook us at night, having worked his way with frightful labor the whole day without a morsel of food. He grinned when he came on board, and not a dozen words were said on either side.

Their want of curiosity is extreme. One day we had an unusually sharp thunder shower. The crew were lying about the deck, and after each explosion all set up a loud laugh; the wag of the party exclaiming: “There’s my old uncle hunting again!”– an expression showing the utter emptiness of mind of the spokesman. I asked Vicente what he thought was the cause of lightning and thunder… He said, “Timaa ichoqua,”–I don’t know. He had never given the subject a moment’s thought! It was the same with other things. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees… He didn’t know, and had never heard the subject mentioned amongst his tribe. The Tupi language, at least as taught by the old Jesuits, has a word–Tupana–signifying God. Vicente sometimes used this word, but he showed by his expressions that he did not attach the idea of a Creator to it. He seemed to think it meant some deity or visible image which the whites worshipped in the churches he had seen in the villages. None of the Indian tribes on the Upper Amazons have an idea of a Supreme Being, and consequently have no word to express it in their own language. Vicente thought the river on which we were travelling encircled the whole earth, and that the land was an island like those seen in the stream, but larger. Here a gleam of curiosity and imagination in the Indian mind is revealed: the necessity of a theory of the earth and water has been felt, and a theory has been suggested. In all other matters not concerning the common wants of life, the mind of Vicente was a blank and such I always found to be the case with the Indian in his natural state. Would a community of any race of men be otherwise, were they isolated for centuries in a wilderness like the Amazonian Indians, associated in small numbers wholly occupied in procuring a mere subsistence, and without a written language, or a leisured class to hand down acquired knowledge from generation to generation?One day a smart squall gave us a good lift onward; it came with a cold, fine, driving rain, which enveloped the desolate landscape as with a mist; the forest swayed and roared with the force of the gale, and flocks of birds were driven about in alarm over the tree tops. On another occasion a similar squall came from an unfavourable quarter; it fell upon us quite unawares, when we had all our sails out to dry, and blew us broadside foremost on the shore. The vessel was fairly lifted on to the tall bushes which lined the banks, but we sustained no injury beyond the entanglement of our rigging in the branches. The days and nights usually passed in a dead calm, or with light intermittent winds from up river, and consequently full against us. We landed twice a day to give ourselves and the Indians a little rest and change, and to cook our two meals–breakfast and dinner. There was another passenger besides myself–a cautious, middle-aged Portuguese, who was going to settle at Ega, where he had a brother long since established. He was accommodated in the fore- cabin, or arched covering over the hold. I shared the cabin- proper with Senores Estulano and Manoel, the latter a young half- caste, son-in-law to the owner of the vessel, under whose tuition I made good progress in learning the Tupi language during the voyage.

Our men took it in turns, two at a time, to go out fishing– for which purpose we carried a spare montaria. The master had brought from Barra as provision, nothing but stale, salt pirarucu–half rotten fish, in large, thin, rusty slabs–farinha, coffee, and treacle. In these voyages, passengers are expected to provide for themselves, as no charge is made except for freight of the heavy luggage or cargo they take with them. The Portuguese and myself had brought a few luxuries, such as beans, sugar, biscuits, tea, and so forth; but we found ourselves almost obliged to share them with our two companions and the pilot, so that before the voyage was one-third finished, the small stock of most of these articles was exhausted. In return, we shared in whatever the men brought. Sometimes they were quite unsuccessful, for fish is extremely difficult to procure in the season of high water, on account of the lower lands lying between the inlets and infinite chain of pools and lakes being flooded from the main river, thus increasing tenfold the area over which the finny population has to range. On most days, however, they brought two or three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or Vacca marina. On this last-mentioned occasion we made quite a holiday; the canoe was stopped for six or seven hours, and all turned out into the forest to help skin and cook the animal. The meat was cut into cubical slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these on a long stick. Fires were made, and the spits stuck in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast. A drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails and slime which were scattered about. The meat has somewhat the taste of very coarse pork; but the fat, which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour. The animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in length, and nine in girth at the broadest part. The manatee is one of the few objects which excite the dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstanding its commonness. The fact of its suckling its young at the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, seems to strike them as something very strange. The animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, lead-coloured skin reminded me of those Egyptian tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped to the human figure.

Notwithstanding the hard fare, the confinement of the canoe, the trying weather–frequent and drenching rains, with gleams of fiery sunshine–and the woeful desolation of the river scenery, I enjoyed the voyage on the whole. We were not much troubled by mosquitoes, and therefore passed the nights very pleasantly, sleeping on deck wrapped in blankets or old sails. When the rains drove us below we were less comfortable, as there was only just room in the small cabin for three of us to lie close together, and the confined air was stifling. I became inured to the Piums in the course of the first week; all the exposed parts of my body, by that time, being so closely covered with black punctures that the little bloodsuckers could not very easily find an unoccupied place to operate upon. Poor Miguel, the Portuguese, suffered horribly from these pests, his ankles and wrists being so much inflamed that he was confined to his hammock, slung in the hold, for weeks. At every landing place I had a ramble in the forest, while the redskins made the fire and cooked the meal. The result was a large daily addition to my collection of insects, reptiles, and shells.

Sometimes the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and spacious forest, pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest degree by groves of the Urucuri palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by the thousands under the crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees; their smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places where we encamped. It is similar in size and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly- flavoured juicy pulp. The Indians would not eat it; I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable. Vicente shook his head when he saw me one day eating a quantity of the Urucuri plums. I am not sure they were not the cause of a severe indigestion under which I suffered for many days afterwards.

In passing slowly along the interminable wooded banks week after week, I observed that there were three tolerably distinct kinds of coast and corresponding forest constantly recurring on this upper river. First, there were the low and most recent alluvial deposits–a mixture of sand and mud, covered with tall, broad- leaved grasses, or with the arrow-grass before described, whose feathery-topped flower-stem rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The only large trees which grow in these places are the Cecropiae. Many of the smaller and newer islands were of this description. Secondly, there were the moderately high banks, which are only partially overflowed when the flood season is at its height; these are wooded with a magnificent, varied forest, in which a great variety of palms and broad-leaved Marantaceae form a very large proportion of the vegetation. The general foliage is of a vivid light-green hue; the water frontage is sometimes covered with a diversified mass of greenery; but where the current sets strongly against the friable, earthy banks, which at low water are twenty-five to thirty feet high, these are cut away, and expose a section of forest where the trunks of trees loaded with epiphytes appear in massy colonnades. One might safely say that three-fourths of the land bordering the Upper Amazons, for a thousand miles, belong to this second class. The third description of coast is the higher, undulating, clayey land, which appears only at long intervals, but extends sometimes for many miles along the borders of the river. The coast at these places is sloping, and composed of red or variegated clay. The forest is of a different character from that of the lower tracts: it is rounder in outline, more uniform in its general aspect– palms are much less numerous and of peculiar species–the strange bulging-stemmed species, Iriartea ventricosa, and the slender, glossy-leaved Bacaba-i (Oenocarpus minor), being especially characteristic; and, in short, animal life, which imparts some cheerfulness to the other parts of the river, is seldom apparent. This “terra firme,” as it is called, and a large portion of the fertile lower land, seemed well adapted for settlement; some parts were originally peopled by the aborigines, but these have long since become extinct or amalgamated with the white immigrants. I afterwards learned that there were not more than eighteen or twenty families settled throughout the whole country from Manacapuru to Quary, a distance of 240 miles; and these, as before observed, do not live on the banks of the main stream, but on the shores of inlets and lakes.

The fishermen twice brought me small rounded pieces of very porous pumice-stone, which they had picked up floating on the surface of the main current of the river. They were to me objects of great curiosity as being messengers from the distant volcanoes of the Andes– Cotopaxi, Llanganete, or Sangay– which rear their peaks amongst the rivulets that feed some of the early tributaries of the Amazons, such as the Macas, the Pastaza, and the Napo. The stones must have already travelled a distance of 1200 miles. I afterwards found them rather common; the Brazilians use them for cleaning rust from their guns, and firmly believe them to be solidified river foam. A friend once brought me, when I lived at Santarem, a large piece which had been found in the middle of the stream below Monte Alegre, about 900 miles further down the river; having reached this distance, pumice-stones would be pretty sure of being carried out to sea, and floated thence with the northwesterly Atlantic current to shores many thousand miles distant from the volcanoes which ejected them. They are sometimes stranded on the banks in different parts of the river. Reflecting on this circumstance since I arrived in England, the probability of these porous fragments serving as vehicles for the transportation of seeds of plants, eggs of insects, spawn of fresh-water fish, and so forth, has suggested itself to me. Their rounded, water-worn appearance showed that they must have been rolled about for a long time in the shallow streams near the sources of the rivers at the feet of the volcanoes, before they leapt the waterfalls and embarked on the currents which lead direct for the Amazons. They may have been originally cast on the land and afterwards carried to the rivers by freshets; in which case the eggs and seeds of land insects and plants might be accidentally introduced and safely enclosed with particles of earth in their cavities. As the speed of the current in the rainy season has been observed to be from three to five miles an hour, they might travel an immense distance before the eggs or seeds were destroyed. I am ashamed to say that I neglected the opportunity, while on the spot, of ascertaining whether this was actually the case. The attention of Naturalists has only lately been turned to the important subject of occasional means of wide dissemination of species of animals and plants. Unless such be shown to exist, it is impossible to solve some of the most difficult problems connected with the distribution of plants and animals. Some species, with most limited powers of locomotion, are found in opposite parts of the earth, without existing in the intermediate regions; unless it can be shown that these may have migrated or been accidentally transported from one point to the other, we shall have to come to the strange conclusion that the same species had been created in two separate districts.

Canoemen on the Upper Amazons live in constant dread of the “terras cahidas,” or landslips, which occasionally take place along the steep earthy banks, especially when the waters are rising. Large vessels are sometimes overwhelmed by these avalanches of earth and trees. I should have thought the accounts of them exaggerated if I had not had an opportunity during this voyage of seeing one on a large scale. One morning I was awakened before sunrise by an unusual sound resembling the roar of artillery. I was lying alone on the top of the cabin; it was very dark, and all my companions were asleep, so I lay listening. The sounds came from a considerable distance, and the crash which had aroused me was succeeded by others much less formidable. The first explanation which occurred to me was that it was an earthquake; for, although the night was breathlessly calm, the broad river was much agitated and the vessel rolled heavily. Soon after, another loud explosion took place, apparently much nearer than the former one; then followed others. The thundering peal rolled backwards and forwards, now seeming close at hand, now far off–the sudden crashes being often succeeded by a pause or a long,continued dull rumbling. At the second explosion, Vicente, who lay snoring by the helm, awoke and told me it was a “terra cahida”; but I could scarcely believe him. The day dawned after the uproar had lasted about an hour, and we then saw the work of destruction going forward on the other side of the river, about three miles off. Large masses of forest, including trees of colossal size, probably 200 feet in height, were rocking to and fro, and falling headlong one after the other into the water. After each avalanche the wave which it caused returned on the crumbly bank with tremendous force, and caused the fall of other masses by undermining them. The line of coast over which the landslip extended, was a mile or two in length; the end of it, however, was hidden from our view by an intervening island. It was a grand sight; each downfall created a cloud of spray; the concussion in one place causing other masses to give way a long distance from it, and thus the crashes continued, swaying to and fro, with little prospect of a termination. When we glided out of sight, two hours after sunrise, the destruction was still going on.

On the 22nd we threaded the Parana-mirim of Arauana-i, one of the numerous narrow bywaters which lie conveniently for canoes away from the main river, and often save a considerable circuit around a promontory or island. We rowed for half a mile through a magnificent bed of Victoria waterlilies, the flower-buds of which were just beginning to expand. Beyond the mouth of the Catua, a channel leading to one of the great lakes so numerous in the plains of the Amazons, which we passed on the 25th, the river appeared greatly increased in breadth. We travelled for three days along a broad reach which both up and down river presented a blank horizon of water and sky– this clear view was owing to the absence of islands, but it renewed one’s impressions of the magnitude of the stream, which here, 1200 miles from its mouth, showed so little diminution of width. Further westward, a series of large islands commences, which divides the river into two and sometimes three channels, each about a mile in breadth. We kept to the southernmost of these, travelling all day on the 30th of April along a high and rather sloping bank.

In the evening we arrived at a narrow opening, which would be taken by a stranger navigating the main channel for the cutlet of some insignificant stream– it was the mouth of the Teffe, on whose banks Ega is situated, the termination of our voyage. After having struggled for thirty-five days with the muddy currents and insect pests of the Solimoens, it was unspeakably refreshing to find oneself again in a dark-water river, smooth as a lake, and free from Pium and Motuca. The rounded outline, small foliage, and sombre-green of the woods, which seemed to rest on the glassy waters, made a pleasant contrast to the tumultuous piles of rank, glaring, light-green vegetation, and torn, timber-strewn banks to which we had been so long accustomed on the main river. The men rowed lazily until nightfall, when, having done a laborious day’s work, they discontinued and went to sleep, intending to make for Ega in the morning. It was not thought worthwhile to secure the vessel to the trees or cast anchor, as there was no current. I sat up for two or three hours after my companions had gone to rest, enjoying the solemn calm of the night. Not a breath of air stirred; the sky was of a deep blue, and the stars seemed to stand forth in sharp relief; there was no sound of life in the woods, except the occasional melancholy note of some nocturnal bird. I reflected on my own wandering life; I had now reached the end of the third stage of my journey, and was now more than half way across the continent. It was necessary for me, on many accounts, to find a rich locality for Natural History explorations, and settle myself in it for some months or years. Would the neighbourhood of Ega turn out to be suitable, and should I, a solitary stranger on a strange errand, find a welcome amongst its people?

Our Indians resumed their oars at sunrise the next morning (May 1st), and after an hour’s rowing along the narrow channel, which varies in breadth from 100 to 500 yards, we doubled a low wooded point, and emerged suddenly on the so-called Lake of Ega– a magnificent sheet of water, five miles broad, the expanded portion of the Teffe. It is quite clear of islands, and curves away to the west and south, so that its full extent is not visible from this side. To the left, on a gentle grassy slope at the point of junction of a broad tributary with the Teffe, lay the little settlement– a cluster of a hundred or so of palm- thatched cottages and white-washed red-tiled houses, each with its neatly-enclosed orchard of orange, lemon, banana, and guava trees. Groups of palms, with their tall slender shafts and feathery crowns, overtopped the buildings and lower trees. A broad grass-carpeted street led from the narrow strip of white sandy beach to the rudely-built barn-like church, with its wooden crucifix on the green before it, in the centre of the town. Cattle were grazing before the houses, and a number of dark- skinned natives were taking their morning bath amongst the canoes of various sizes, which were anchored or moored to stakes in the port. We let off rockets and fired salutes, according to custom, in token of our safe arrival, and shortly afterwards went ashore.

A few days’ experience of the people and the forests of the vicinity showed me that I might lay myself out for a long, pleasant, and busy residence at this place. An idea of the kind of people I had fallen amongst may be conveyed by an account of my earliest acquaintances in the place. On landing, the owner of the canoe killed an ox in honour of our arrival, and the next day took me round the town to introduce me to the principal residents. We first went to the Delegado of police, Senor Antonio Cardozo, of whom I shall have to make frequent mention by-and-by. He was a stout, broad-featured man, ranking as a white, but having a tinge of negro blood, his complexion, however, was ruddy, and scarcely betrayed the mixture. He received us in a very cordial, winning manner; I had afterwards occasion to be astonished at the boundless good nature of this excellent fellow, whose greatest pleasure seemed to be to make sacrifices for his friends. He was a Paraense, and came to Ega originally as a trader; but, not succeeding in this, he turned planter on a small scale and collector of the natural commodities of the country, employing half-a-dozen Indians in the business.

We then visited the military commandant, an officer in the Brazilian army, named Praia. He was breakfasting with the Vicar, and we found the two in dishabille (morning-gown, loose round the neck, and slippers), seated at a rude wooden table in an open mud-floored verandah, at the back of the house. Commander Praia was a little curly-headed man (also somewhat of a mulatto), always merry and fond of practical jokes. His wife, Donna Anna, a dressy dame from Santarem, was the leader of fashion in the settlement. The Vicar, Father Luiz Gonsalvo Gomez, was a nearly pureblood Indian, a native of one of the neighbouring villages, but educated at Maranham, a city on the Atlantic seaboard. I afterwards saw a good deal of him, as he was an agreeable, sociable fellow, fond of reading and hearing about foreign countries, and quite free from the prejudices which might be expected in a man of his profession. I found him, moreover, a thoroughly upright, sincere, and virtuous man. He supported his aged mother and unmarried sisters in a very creditable way out of his small salary and emoluments. It is a pleasure to be able to speak in these terms of a Brazilian priest, for the opportunity occurs rarely enough.

Leaving these agreeable new acquaintances to finish their breakfast, we next called on the Director of the Indians of the Japura, Senor Jose Chrysostomo Monteiro, a thin wiry Mameluco, the most enterprising person in the settlement. Each of the neighbouring rivers with its numerous wild tribes is under the control of a Director, who is nominated by the Imperial Government. There are now no missions in the regions of the Upper Amazons; the “gentios” (heathens, or unbaptised Indians) being considered under the management and protection of these despots, who, like the captains of Trabalhadores, before mentioned, use the natives for their own private ends. Senor Chrysostomo had, at this time, 200 of the Japura Indians in his employ. He was half Indian himself, but was a far worse master to the redskins than the whites usually are.

We finished our rounds by paying our respects to a venerable native merchant, Senor Romao de Oliveira, a tall, corpulent, fine-looking old man, who received us with a naive courtesy quite original in its way. He had been an industrious, enterprising man in his younger days, and had built a substantial range of houses and warehouses. The shrewd and able old gentleman knew nothing of the world beyond the wilderness of the Solimoens and its few thousands of isolated inhabitants, yet he could converse well and sensibly, making observations on men and things as sagaciously as though he had drawn them from long experience of life in a European capital. The semi-civilised Indians respected old Romao, and he had, consequently, a great number in his employ in different parts of the river– his vessels were always filled quicker with produce than those of his neighbours. On our leaving, he placed his house and store at my disposal. This was not a piece of empty politeness, for some time afterwards, when I wished to settle for the goods I had had of him, he refused to take any payment.

I made Ega my headquarters during the whole of the time I remained on the Upper Amazons (four years and a half). My excursions into the neighbouring region extended sometimes as far as 300 and 400 miles from the place. An account of these excursions will be given in subsequent chapters; in the intervals between them I led a quiet, uneventful life in the settlement, following my pursuit in the same peaceful, regular way as a Naturalist might do in a European village. For many weeks in succession my journal records little more than the notes made on my daily captures. I had a dry and specious cottage, the principal room of which was made a workshop and study; here a large table was placed, and my little library of reference arranged on shelves in rough wooden boxes. Cages for drying specimens were suspended from the rafters by cords well anointed, to prevent ants from descending, with a bitter vegetable oil; rats and mice were kept from them by inverted cuyas, placed half way down the cords. I always kept on hand a large portion of my private collection, which contained a pair of each species and variety, for the sake of comparing the old with the new acquisitions. My cottage was whitewashed inside and out about once a year by the proprietor, a native trader; the floor was of earth; the ventilation was perfect, for the outside air, and sometimes the rain as well, entered freely through gaps at the top of the walls under the eaves and through wide crevices in the doorways. Rude as the dwelling was, I look back with pleasure on the many happy months I spent in it. I rose generally with the sun, when the grassy streets were wet with dew, and walked down to the river to bathe; five or six hours of every morning were spent in collecting in the forest, whose borders lay only five minutes’ walk from my house; the hot hours of the afternoon, between three and six o’clock, and the rainy days, were occupied in preparing and ticketing the specimens, making notes, dissecting, and drawing. I frequently had short rambles by water in a small montaria, with an Indian lad to paddle. The neighbourhood yielded me, up to the last day of my residence, an uninterrupted succession of new and curious forms in the different classes of the animal kingdom, and especially insects.

I lived, as may already have been seen, on the best of terms with the inhabitants of Ega. Refined society, of course, there was none; but the score or so of decent quiet families which constituted the upper class of the place were very sociable; their manners offered a curious mixture of naive rusticity and formal politeness; the great desire to be thought civilised leads the most ignorant of these people (and they are all very ignorant, although of quick intelligence) to be civil and kind to strangers from Europe. I was never troubled with that impertinent curiosity on the part of the people in these interior places which some travellers complain of in other countries. The Indians and lower half-castes–at least such of them who gave any thought to the subject–seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country. The butterflies they universally concluded to be wanted as patterns for bright-coloured calico-prints. As to the better sort of people, I had no difficulty in making them understand that each European capital had a public museum, in which were sought to be stored specimens of all natural productions in the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. They could not comprehend how a man could study science for its own sake; but I told them I was collecting for the “Museo de Londres,” and was paid for it; that was very intelligible. One day, soon after my arrival, when I was explaining these things to a listening circle seated on benches in the grassy street, one of the audience, a considerable tradesman, a Mameluco native of Ega, got suddenly quite enthusiastic, and exclaimed, “How rich are these great nations of Europe! We half-civilised creatures know nothing. Let us treat this stranger well, that he may stay amongst us and teach our children.” We very frequently had social parties, with dancing and so forth; of these relaxations I shall have more to say presently. The manners of the Indian population also gave me some amusement for a long time. During the latter part of my residence, three wandering Frenchmen, and two Italians, some of them men of good education, on their road one after the other from the Andes down the Amazons, became enamoured of this delightfully situated and tranquil spot, and made up their minds to settle here for the remainder of their lives. Three of them ended by marrying native women. I found the society of these friends a very agreeable change.

There were, of course, many drawbacks to the amenities of the place as a residence for a European; but these were not of a nature that my readers would perhaps imagine. There was scarcely any danger from wild animals– it seems almost ridiculous to refute the idea of danger from the natives in a country where even incivility to an unoffending stranger is a rarity. A jaguar, however, paid us a visit one night. It was considered an extraordinary event, and so much uproar was made by the men who turned out with guns and bows and arrows, that the animal scampered off and was heard of no more. Alligators were rather troublesome in the dry season. During these months there was almost always one or two lying in wait near the bathing place for anything that might turn up at the edge of the water– dog, sheep, pig, child, or drunken Indian. When this visitor was about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile’s tail, bathers were obliged to beat a quick retreat. I was never threatened myself, but I often saw the crowds of women and children scared while bathing by the beast making a movement towards them — a general scamper to the shore and peals of laughter were always the result in these cases. The men can always destroy these alligators when they like to take the trouble to set out with montarias and harpoons for the purpose; but they never do it unless one of the monsters, bolder than usual, puts some one’s life in danger. This arouses them, and they then track the enemy with the greatest pertinacity; when half-killed, they drag it ashore and dispatch it amid loud execrations. Another, however, is sure to appear some days or weeks afterwards and take the vacant place on the station. Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no fatal accident happened during the whole time of my residence.

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened by time, increased until it became almost insupportable. I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind. I got on pretty well when I received a parcel from England by the steamer, once in two or four months. I used to be very economical with my stock of reading lest it should be finished before the next arrival, and leave me utterly destitute. I went over the periodicals, the Athenaeum, for instance, with great deliberation, going through every number three times; the first time devouring the more interesting articles; the second, the whole of the remainder; and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. If four months (two steamers) passed without a fresh parcel, I felt discouraged in the extreme. I was worst off in the first year, 1850, when twelve months elapsed without letters or remittances. Towards the end of this time my clothes had worn to rags; I was barefoot, a great inconvenience in tropical forests, notwithstanding statements to the contrary that have been published by travellers; my servant ran away, and I was robbed of nearly all my copper money. I was obliged then to descend to Para, but returned, after finishing the examination of the middle part of the Lower Amazons and the Tapajos, in 1855, with my Santarem assistant and better provided for making collections on the upper river. This second visit was in pursuit of the plan before mentioned, of exploring in detail the whole valley of the Amazons, which I formed in Para in the year 1851.

During so long a residence I witnessed, of course, many changes in the place. Some of the good friends who made me welcome on my first arrival, died, and I followed their remains to their last resting-place in the little rustic cemetery on the borders of the surrounding forest. I lived there long enough, from first to last, to see the young people grow up, attended their weddings, and the christenings of their children, and, before I left, saw them old married folks with numerous families. In 1850 Ega was only a village, dependent on Para 1400 miles distant, as the capital of the then undivided province. In 1852, with the creation of the new province of the Amazons, it became a city; returned its members to the provincial parliament at Barra; had it assizes, its resident judges, and rose to be the chief town of the comarca or county. A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the Solimoens; and from 1855, one ran regularly every two months between the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and accomplishing the distance in ascending, about 1200 miles, in eighteen days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these changes. The people became more “civilised,” that is, they began to dress according to the latest Parisian fashions, instead of going about in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt sleeves, acquired a taste for money-getting and office-holding; became divided into parties, and lost part of their former simplicity of manners. But the place remained, when I left it in 1859, pretty nearly what it was when I first arrived in 1850–a semi-Indian village, with much in the ways and notions of its people more like those of a small country town in Northern Europe than a South American settlement. The place is healthy, and almost free from insect pests– perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle, a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!

After speaking of Ega as a city, it will have a ludicrous effect to mention that the total number of its inhabitants is only about 1200. It contains just 107 houses, about half of which are miserably built mud-walled cottages, thatched with palm leaves. A fourth of the population are almost always absent, trading or collecting produce on the rivers. The neighbourhood within a radius of thirty miles, and including two other small villages, contains probably 2000 more people. The settlement is one of the oldest in the country, having beenfounded in 1688 by Father Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian Jesuit, who induced several of the docile tribes of Indians, then scattered over the neighbouring region, to settle on the site. From 100 to 200 acres of sloping ground around the place were afterwards cleared of timber; but such is the encroaching vigour of vegetation in this country that the site would quickly relapse into jungle if the inhabitants neglected to pull up the young shoots as they arose. There is a stringent municipal law which compels each resident to weed a given space around his dwelling. Every month, whilst I resided here, an inspector came round with his wand of authority, and fined every one who had not complied with the regulation. The Indians of the surrounding country have never been hostile to the European settlers. The rebels of Para and the Lower Amazons, in 1835-6, did not succeed in rousing the natives of the Solimoens against the whites. A party of forty of them ascended the river for that purpose, but on arriving at Ega, instead of meeting with sympathisers as in other places, they were surrounded by a small body of armed residents, and shot down without mercy. The military commandant at the time, who was the prime mover in this orderly resistance to anarchy, was a courageous and loyal negro, named Jose Patricio, an officer known throughout the Upper Amazons for his unflinching honesty and love of order, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at St. Paulo in 1858. Ega was the headquarters of the great scientific commission, which met in the years from 1781 to 1791 to settle the boundaries between the Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America. The chief commissioner for Spain, Don Francisco Requena, lived some time in the village with his family. I found only one person at Ega, my old friend Romao de Oliveira, who recollected, or had any knowledge of this important time, when a numerous staff of astronomers, surveyors, and draughtsmen, explored much of the surrounding country with large bodies of soldiers and natives.

More than half the inhabitants of Ega are Mamelucos; there are not more than forty or fifty pure whites; the number of negroes and mulattos is probably a little less, and the rest of the population consists of pure blood Indians. Every householder, including Indians and free negroes, is entitled to a vote in the elections, municipal, provincial, and imperial, and is liable to be called on juries, and to serve in the national guard. These privileges and duties of citizenship do not seem at present to be appreciated by the more ignorant coloured people. There is, however, a gradual improvement taking place in this respect. Before I left there was a rather sharp contest for the Presidency of the Municipal Chamber, and most of the voters took a lively interest in it. There was also an election of members to represent the province in the Imperial Parliament at Rio Janeiro, in which each party strove hard to return its candidate. On this occasion, an unscrupulous lawyer was sent by the government party from the capital to overawe the opposition to its nominee; many of the half-castes, headed by my old friend John da Cunha, who was then settled at Ega, fought hard, but with perfect legality and good humour, against this powerful interest. They did not succeed — and although the government agent committed many tyrannical and illegal acts, the losing party submitted quietly to their defeat. In a larger town, I believe, the government would not have dared to attempt thus to control the elections. I think I saw enough to warrant the conclusion that the machinery of constitutional government would, with a little longer trial, work well amongst the mixed Indian, white, and negro population, even in this remote part of the Brazilian empire. I attended also, before I left, several assize meetings at Ega, and witnessed the novel sight of negro, white, half-caste, and Indian, sitting gravely side by side on the jury bench.

The way in which the coloured races act under the conditions of free citizenship is a very interesting subject. Brazilian statesmen seem to have abandoned the idea, if they ever entertained it, of making this tropical empire a nation of whites with a slave labouring class. The greatest difficulty on the Amazons is with the Indians. The general inflexibility of character of the race, and their abhorrence of the restraints of civilised life, make them very intractable subjects. Some of them, however, who have learned to read and write, and whose dislike to live in towns has been overcome by some cause acting early in life, make very good citizens. I have already mentioned the priest, who is a good example of what early training can do. There can be no doubt that if the docile Amazonian Indians were kindly treated by their white fellow-citizens, and educated, they would not be so quick as they have hitherto shown themselves to be to leave the towns and return into their half wild condition on the advancing civilisation of the places. The inflexibility of character, although probably organic, is seen to be sometimes overcome.

The principal blacksmith of Ega, Senor Macedo, was also an Indian, and a very sensible fellow. He sometimes filled minor offices in the government of the place. He used to come very frequently to my house to chat, and was always striving to acquire solid information about things. When Donati’s comet appeared, he took a great interest in it. We saw it at its best from the 3rd to the 10th of October (1858), between which dates it was visible near the western horizon just after sunset, the tail extending in a broad curve towards the north, and forming a sublime object. Macedo consulted all the old almanacs in the place to ascertain whether it was the same comet as that of 1811, which he said he well remembered.

Before the Indians can be reclaimed in large numbers, it is most likely they will become extinct as a race; but there is less difficulty with regard to the Mamelucos, who, even when the proportion of white blood is small, sometimes become enterprising and versatile people.Many of the Ega Indians, including all the domestic servants, are savages who have been brought from the neighbouring rivers– the Japura, the Issa, and the Solimoens. I saw here individuals of at least sixteen different tribes, most of whom had been bought, when children, of the native chiefs. This species of slave-dealing, although forbidden by the laws of Brazil, is winked at by the authorities, because without it, there would be no means of obtaining servants. They all become their own masters when they grow up, and never show the slightest inclination to return to utter savage life. But the boys generally run away and embark on the canoes of traders; and the girls are often badly treated by their mistresses– the jealous, passionate, and ill-educated Brazilian women. Nearly all the enmities which arise amongst residents at Ega and other place, are caused by disputes about Indian servants. No one who has lived only in old settled countries, where service can be readily bought, can imagine the difficulties and annoyances of a land where the servant class are ignorant of the value of money, and hands cannot be obtained except by coaxing them from the employ of other masters.

Great mortality takes place amongst the poor captive children on their arrival at Ega. It is a singular circumstance that the Indians residing on the Japura and other tributaries always fall ill on descending to the Solimoens, while the reverse takes place with the inhabitants of the banks of the main river, who never fail of taking intermittent fever when they first ascend these branch rivers, and of getting well when they return. The finest tribes of savages who inhabit the country near Ega are the Juris and Passes– these are now, however, nearly extinct, a few families only remaining on the banks of the retired creeks connected with the Teffe, and on other branch rivers between the Teffe and the Jutahi. They are a peaceable, gentle, and industrious people, devoted to agriculture and fishing, and have always been friendly to the whites. I shall have occasion to speak again of the Passes, who are a slenderly-built and superior race of Indians, distinguished by a large, square tattooed patch in the middle of their faces. The principal cause of their decay in numbers seems to be a disease which always appears amongst them when a village is visited by people from the civilised settlements–a slow fever, accompanied by the symptoms of a common cold, “defluxo,” as the Brazilians term it, ending probably in consumption. The disorder has been known to break out when the visitors were entirely free from it– the simple contact of civilised men, in some mysterious way, being sufficient to create it. It is generally fatal to the Juris and Passes; the first question the poor, patient Indians now put to an advancing canoe is, “Do you bring defluxo?”

My assistant, Jose, in the last year of our residence at Ega, “resgatou” (ransomed, the euphemism in use for purchased) two Indian children, a boy and a girl, through a Japura trader. The boy was about twelve years of age, and of an unusually dark colour of skin– he had, in fact, the tint of a Cafuzo, the offspring of Indian and negro. It was thought he had belonged to some perfectly wild and houseless tribe, similar to the Pararauates of the Tapajos, of which there are several in different parts of the interior of South America. His face was of regular, oval shape, but his glistening black eyes had a wary, distrustful expression, like that of a wild animal; his hands and feet were small and delicately formed. Soon after his arrival, finding that none of the Indian boys and girls in the houses of our neighbours understood his language, he became sulky and reserved; not a word could be got from him until many weeks afterwards, when he suddenly broke out with complete phrases of Portuguese. He was ill of swollen liver and spleen, the result of intermittent fever, for a long time after coming into our hands. We found it difficult to cure him, owing to his almost invincible habit of eating earth, baked clay, pitch, wax, and other similar substances. Very many children on the upper parts of the Amazons have this strange habit; not only Indians, but negroes and whites. It is not, therefore, peculiar to the famous Otomacs of the Orinoco, described by Humboldt,or to Indians at all, and seems to originate in a morbid craving, the result of a meagre diet of fish, wild-fruits, and mandioca-meal. We gave our little savage the name of Sebastian.

The use of these Indian children is to fill water-jars from the river, gather firewood in the forest, cook, assist in paddling the montaria in excursions, and so forth. Sebastian was often my companion in the woods, where he was very useful in finding the small birds I shot, which sometimes fell in the thickets amongst confused masses of fallen branches and dead leaves. He was wonderfully expert at catching lizards with his hands, and at climbing. The smoothest stems of palm trees offered little difficulty to him; he would gather a few lengths of tough, flexible lianas, tie them in a short, endless band to support his feet with, in embracing the slippery shaft, and then mount upwards by a succession of slight jerks. It was very amusing, during the first few weeks, to witness the glee and pride with which he would bring to me the bunches of fruit he had gathered from almost inaccessible trees. He avoided the company of boys of his own race, and was evidently proud of being the servant of a real white man. We brought him down with us to Para, but he showed no emotion at any of the strange sights of the capital– the steam-vessels, large ships and houses, horses and carriages, the pomp of church ceremonies, and so forth. In this he exhibited the usual dullness of feeling and poverty of thought of the Indian; he had, nevertheless, very keen perceptions, and was quick at learning any mechanical art. Jose, who had resumed, some time before I left the country, his old trade of goldsmith, made him his apprentice, and he made very rapid progress; for after about three months’ teaching he came to me one day with radiant countenance and showed me a gold ring of his own making.

The fate of the little girl, who came with a second batch of children all ill of intermittent fever, a month or two after Sebastian, was very different. She was brought to our house, after landing, one night in the wet season, when the rain was pouring in torrents, thin and haggard, drenched with wet and shivering with ague. An old Indian who brought her to the door said briefly, “ecui encommenda” (here’s your little parcel, or order), and went away. There was very little of the savage in her appearance, and she was of a much lighter colour than the boy. We found she was of the Miranha tribe, all of whom are distinguished by a slit, cut in the middle of each wing of the nose, in which they wear on holiday occasions a large button made of pearly river-shell. We took the greatest care of our little patient; had the best nurses in the town, fomented her daily, gave her quinine and the most nourishing food; but it was all of no avail, she sank rapidly; her liver was enormously swollen, and almost as hard to the touch as stone. There was something uncommonly pleasing in her ways, and quite unlike anything I had yet seen in Indians. Instead of being dull and taciturn, she was always smiling and full of talk. We had an old woman of the same tribe to attend her, who explained what she said to us. She often begged to be taken to the river to bathe; asked for fruit, or coveted articles she saw in the room for playthings. Her native name was Oria. The last week or two she could not rise from the bed we had made for her in a dry corner of the room; when she wanted lifting, which, was very often, she would allow no one to help her but me, calling me by the name of “Cariwa ” (white man), the only word of Tupi she seemed to know. It was inexpressibly touching to hear her, as she lay, repeating by the hour the verses which she had been taught to recite with her companions in her native village: a few sentences repeated over and over again with a rhythmic accent, and relating to objects and incidents connected with the wild life of her tribe. We had her baptised before she died, and when this latter event happened, in opposition to the wishes of the big people of Ega, I insisted on burying her with the same honours as a child of the whites; that is, as an “anjinho” (little angel), according to the pretty Roman Catholic custom of the country. We had the corpse clothed in a robe of fine calico, crossed her hands on her breast over a “palma” of flowers, and made also a crown of flowers for her head. Scores of helpless children like our poor Oria die at Ega, or on the road; but generally not the slightest care is taken of them during their illness. They are the captives made during the merciless raids of one section of the Miranha tribe on the territories of another, and sold to the Ega traders. The villages of the attacked hordes are surprised, and the men and women killed or driven into the thickets without having time to save their children. There appears to be no doubt that the Miranhas are cannibals, and, therefore, the purchase of these captives probably saves them from a worse fate. The demand for them at Ega operates, however, as a direct cause of the supply, stimulating the unscrupulous chiefs, who receive all the profits, to undertake these murderous expeditions.

It is remarkable how quickly the savages of the various nations, which each have their own, to all appearance, widely different language, learn Tupi on their arrival at Ega, where it is the common idiom. This perhaps may be attributed chiefly to the grammatical forms of all the Indian tongues being the same, although the words are different. As far as I could learn, the feature is common to all, of placing the preposition after the noun, making it, in fact, a post-position, thus: “He is come the village from;” “Go him with, the plantation to,” and so forth. The ideas to be expressed in their limited sphere of life and thought are few; consequently the stock of words is extremely small; besides, all Indians have the same way of thinking, and the same objects to talk about; these circumstances also contribute to the case with which they learn each other’s language. Hordes of the same tribe living on the same branch rivers, speak mutually unintelligible languages; this happens with the Miranhas on the Japura, and with the Collinas on the Jurua; whilst Tupi is spoken with little corruption along the banks of the main Amazons for a distance Of 2500 miles. The purity of Tupi is kept up by frequent communication amongst the natives, from one end to the other of the main river; how complete and long-continued must be the isolation in which the small groups of savages have lived in other parts, to have caused so complete a segregation of dialects! It is probable that the strange inflexibility of the Indian organisation, both bodily and mental, is owing to the isolation in which each small tribe has lived, and to the narrow round of life and thought, and close intermarriages for countless generations which are the necessary results. Their fecundity is of a low degree, for it is very rare to find an Indian family having so many as four children, and we have seen how great is their liability to sickness and death on removal from place to place.

I have already remarked on the different way in which the climate of this equatorial region affects Indians and negroes. No one could live long amongst the Indians of the Upper Amazons without being struck with their constitutional dislike to the heat. Europeans certainly withstand the high temperature better than the original inhabitants of the country; I always found I could