Bates - The Naturalist On The River

The Naturalist on the River Amazons 1
The Naturalist on the River Amazons

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Scanned by Martin Adamson martin@grassmarket.freeserve.co.uk
by Henry Walter Bates
AN APPRECIATION
BY CHARLES DARWIN Author of "The Origin of Species," etc.
From Natural History Review, vol. iii. 1863.
IN April, 1848, the author of the present volume left England in company
with Mr. A. R. Wallace--"who has since acquired wide fame in connection
with the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection"--on a joint expedition up
the river Amazons, for the purpose of investigating the Natural History of
the vast wood-region traversed by that mighty river and its numerous
tributaries. Mr. Wallace returned to England after four years' stay, and was,
we believe, unlucky enough to lose the greater part of his collections by the
shipwreck of the vessel in which he had transmitted them to London. Mr.
Bates prolonged his residence in the Amazon valley seven years after Mr.
Wallace's departure, and did not revisit his native country again until 1859.
Mr. Bates was also more fortunate than his companion in bringing his
gathered treasures home to England in safety. So great, indeed, was the
mass of specimens accumulated by Mr. Bates during his eleven years'
researches, that upon the working out of his collection, which has been
accomplished (or is now in course of being accomplished) by different
scientific naturalists in this country, it has been ascertained that
representatives of no less than 14,712 species are amongst them, of which
about 8000 were previously unknown to science. It may be remarked that

by far the greater portion of these species, namely, about 14,000, belong to
the class of Insects--to the study of which Mr. Bates principally devoted his
attention--being, as is well known, himself recognised as no mean authority
as regards this class of organic beings. In his present volume, however, Mr.
Bates does not confine himself to his entomological discoveries, nor to any
other branch of Natural History, but supplies a general outline of his
adventures during his journeyings up and down the mighty river, and a
variety of information concerning every object of interest, whether physical
or political, that he met with by the way.
Mr. Bates landed at Para in May, 1848. His first part is entirely taken up
with an account of the Lower Amazons--that is, the river from its sources
up to the city of Manaos or Barra do Rio Negro, where it is joined by the
large northern confluent of that name-- and with a narrative of his residence
at Para and his various excursions in the neighbourhood of that city. The
large collection made by Mr. Bates of the animal productions of Para
enabled him to arrive at the following conclusions regarding the relations of
the Fauna of the south side of the Amazonian delta with those of other
regions.
"It is generally allowed that Guiana and Brazil, to the north and south of the
Para district, form two distinct provinces, as regards their animal and
vegetable inhabitants. By this it means that the two regions have a very
large number of forms peculiar to themselves, and which are supposed not
to have been derived from other quarters during modern geological times.
Each may be considered as a centre of distribution in the latest process of
dissemination of species over the surface of tropical America. Para lies
midway between the two centres, each of which has a nucleus of elevated
table-land, whilst the intermediate river- valley forms a wide extent of
low-lying country. It is, therefore, interesting to ascertain from which the
latter received its population, or whether it contains so large a number of
endemic species as would warrant the conclusion that it is itself an
independent province. To assist in deciding such questions as these, we
must compare closely the species found in the district with those of the
other contiguous regions, and endeavour to ascertain whether they are
identical, or only slightly modified, or whether they are highly peculiar.
"Von Martius when he visited this part of Brazil forty years ago, coming
from the south, was much struck with the dissimilarity of the animal and
vegetable productions to those of other parts of Brazil. In fact the Fauna of
Para, and the lower part of the Amazons has no close relationship with that
of Brazil proper; but it has a very great affinity with that of the coast region
of Guiana, from Cayenne to Demerara. If we may judge from the results
afforded by the study of certain families of insects, no peculiar Brazilian
forms are found in the Para district; whilst more than one-half of the total
number are essentially Guiana species, being found nowhere else but in
Guiana and Amazonia. Many of them, however, are modified from the
Guiana type, and about one-seventh seem to be restricted to Para. These
endemic species are not highly peculiar, and they may yet be found over a
great part of Northern Brazil when the country is better explored. They do
not warrant us in concluding that the district forms an independent
province, although they show that its Fauna is not wholly derivative, and
that the land is probably not entirely a new formation. From all these facts,
I think we must conclude that the Para district belongs to the Guiana
province and that, if it is newer land than Guiana, it must have received the
great bulk of its animal population from that region. I am informed by Dr.
Sclater that similar results are derivable from the comparison of the birds of
these countries."
One of the most interesting excursions made by Mr. Bates from Para was
the ascent of the river Tocantins--the mouth of which lies about 4-5 miles
from the city of Para. This was twice attempted. On the second
occasion--our author being in company with Mr. Wallace--the travellers
penetrated as far as the rapids of Arroyos, about 130 miles from its mouth.
This district is one of the chief collecting-grounds of the well-known
Brazil-nut (Bertholletia excelsa), which is here very plentiful, grove after
grove of these splendid trees being visible, towering above their fellows,
with the "woody fruits, large and round as cannon-balls, dotted over the
branches." The Hyacinthine Macaw (Ara hyacinthina) is another natural
wonder, first met with here. This splendid bird, which is occasionally
brought alive to the Zoological Gardens of Europe, "only occurs in the
interior of Brazil, from 16' S.L. to the southern border of the Amazon
valley." Its enormous beak--which must strike even the most unobservant
with wonder--appears to be adapted to enable it to feed on the nuts of the
Mucuja Palm (Acrocomia lasiospatha). "These nuts, which are so hard as to
be difficult to break with a heavy hammer, are crushed to a pulp by the
powerful beak of this Macaw."
Mr. Bates' later part is mainly devoted to his residence at Santarem, at the
junction of the Rio Tapajos with the main stream, and to his account of
Upper Amazon, or Solimoens--the Fauna of which is, as we shall presently
see, in many respects very different from that of the lower part of the river.
At Santarem--"the most important and most civilised settlement on the
Amazon, between the Atlantic and Para "--Mr. Bates made his headquarters
for three years and a half, during which time several excursions up the
little-known Tapajos were effected. Some 70 miles up the stream, on its
affluent, the Cupari, a new Fauna, for the most part very distinct from that
of the lower part of the same stream, was entered upon. "At the same time a
considerable proportion of the Cupari species were identical with those of
Ega, on the Upper Amazon, a district eight times further removed than the
village just mentioned." Mr. Bates was more successful here than on his
excursion up the Tocantins, and obtained twenty new species of fishes, and
many new and conspicuous insects, apparently peculiar to this part of the
Amazonian valley.
In a later chapter Mr. Bates commences his account of the Solimoens, or

Upper Amazons, on the banks of which he passed four years and a half.
The country is a "magnificent wilderness, where civilised man has, as yet,
scarcely obtained a footing-the cultivated ground, from the Rio Negro to
the Andes, amounting only to a few score acres." During the whole of this
time Mr. Bates' headquarters were at Ega, on the Teffe, a confluent of the
great river from the south, whence excursions were made sometimes for
300 or 400 miles into the interior. In the intervals Mr. Bates followed his
pursuit as a collecting naturalist in the same "peaceful, regular way," as he
might have done in a European village. Our author draws a most striking
picture of the quiet, secluded life he led in this far-distant spot. The
difficulty of getting news and the want of intellectual society were the great
drawbacks--"the latter increasing until it became almost insupportable." "I

was obliged at last," Mr. Bates naively remarks, "to come to the conclusion
that the contemplation of Nature, alone is not sufficient to fill the human
heart and mind." Mr. Bates must indeed have been driven to great straits as
regards his mental food, when, as he tell us, he took to reading the
Athenaeum three times over, "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."
Ega was, indeed, as Mr. Bates remarks, a fine field for a Natural History
collector, the only previous scientific visitants to that region having been
the German Naturalists, Spix and Martius, and the Count de Castelnau
when he descended the Amazons from the Pacific. Mr. Bates' account of
the monkeys of the genera Brachyuyus, Nyctipithecus and Midas met with
in this region, and the whole of the very pregnant remarks which follow on
the American forms of the Quadrumana, will be read with interest by every
one, particularly by those who pay attention to the important subject of
geographical distribution. We need hardly say that Mr. Bates, after the
attention he has bestowed upon this question, is a zealous advocate of the
hypothesis of the origin of species by derivation from a common stock.
After giving an outline of the general distribution of Monkeys, he clearly
argues that unless the "common origin at least of the species of a family be
admitted, the problem of their distribution must remain an inexplicable
mystery." Mr. Bates evidently thoroughly understands the nature of this
interesting problem, and in another passage, in which the very singular
distribution of the Butterflies of the genus Heliconius is enlarged upon,
concludes with the following significant remarks upon this important
subject:
"In the controversy which is being waged amongst Naturalists since the
publication of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species, it has been
rightly said that no proof at present existed of the production of a
physiological species, that is, a form which will not interbreed with the one
from which it was derived, although given ample opportunities of doing so,
and does not exhibit signs of reverting to its parent form when placed under
the same conditions with it. Morphological species, that is, forms which
differ to an amount that would justify their being considered good species,
have been produced in plenty through selection by man out of variations
arising under domestication or cultivation. The facts just given are therefore
of some scientific importance, for they tend to show that a physiological
species can be and is produced in nature out of the varieties of a
pre-existing closely allied one. This is not an isolated case, for I observed in
the course of my travels a number of similar instances. But in very few has
it happened that the species which clearly appears to be the parent,
co-exists with one that has been evidently derived from it. Generally the
supposed parent also seems to have been modified, and then the
demonstration is not so clear, for some of the links in the chain of variation
are wanting. The process of origination of a species in nature as it takes
place successively, must be ever, perhaps, beyond man's power to trace, on
account of the great lapse of time it requires. But we can obtain a fair view
of it by tracing a variable and far-spreading species over the wide area of its
present distribution; and a long observation of such will lead to the
conclusion that new species must in all cases have arisen out of variable
and widely-disseminated forms. It sometimes happens, as in the present
instance, that we find in one locality a species under a certain form which is
constant to all the individuals concerned; in another exhibiting numerous
varieties; and in a third presenting itself as a constant form quite distinct
from the one we set out with. If we meet with any two of these
modifications living side by side, and maintaining their distinctive
characters under such circumstances, the proof of the natural origination of
a species is complete; it could not be much more so were we able to watch
the process step by step. It might be objected that the difference between
our two species is but slight, and that by classing them as varieties nothing
further would be proved by them. But the differences between them are
such as obtain between allied species generally. Large genera are composed
in great part of such species, and it is interesting to show the great and
beautiful diversity within a large genus as brought about by the working of
laws within our comprehension."
But to return to the Zoological wonders of the Upper Amazon, birds,

insects, and butterflies are all spoken of by Mr. Bates in his chapter on the
natural features of the district, and it is evident that none of these classes of
beings escaped the observation of his watchful intelligence. The account of

the foraging ants of the genus Eciton is certainly marvellous, and would,
even of itself, be sufficient to stamp the recorder of their habits as a man of
no ordinary mark.
The last chapter of Mr. Bates' work contains the account of his excursions
beyond Ega. Fonteboa, Tunantins--a small semi-Indian settlement, 240
miles up the stream--and San Paulo de Olivenca, some miles higher up,
were the principal places visited, and new acquisitions were gathered at
each of these localities. In the fourth month of Mr. Bates' residence at the
last-named place, a severe attack of ague led to the abandonment of the
plans he had formed of proceeding to the Peruvian towns of Pebas and
Moyobamba, and "so completing the examination of the Natural History of
the Amazonian plains up to the foot of the Andes." This attack, which
seemed to be the culmination of a gradual deterioration of health, caused by
eleven years' hard work under the tropics, induced him to return to Ega, and
finally to Para, where he embarked, on the 2nd June 1859, for England.
Naturally enough, Mr. Bates tells us he was at first a little dismayed at
leaving the equator, "where the well-balanced forces of Nature maintain a
land-surface and a climate typical of mind, and order and beauty," to sail
towards the "crepuscular skies" of the cold north. But he consoles us by
adding the remark that "three years' renewed experience of England" have
convinced him "how incomparably superior is civilised life to the spiritual
sterility of half-savage existence, even if it were passed in the Garden of
Eden."
The following is the list of H. W. Bates' published works:
Contributions to an insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley, Paper read before

the Linnean Society, June 21, 1861; The Naturalist on the Amazons, a
Record of Adventure, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian
Life . . . during Eleven Years of Travel, 1863; 3rd Edition, 1873, with a
Memoir of the author by E. Clodd to reprint of unabridged edition, 1892.
Bates was for many years the editor of the Transactions of the Royal
Geographical Society; the following works were edited and revised, or
supplemented by him:--Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography, 1870; A.

Humbert, Japan and the Japanese, 1874; C. Koldewey, the German Arctic
Expedition, 1874; P. E. Warburton, Journey across the Western Interior of
Australia, 1875; Cassell's Illustrated Travels, 6 vols., 1869-1875; E.
Whymper, Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator (Introduction to
Appendix volume), 1892, etc.; Central America, the West Indies and South
America; Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, 2nd revised
Ed., 1882; he also added a list of Coleoptera collected by J. S. Jameson on
the Aruwini to the latter's Story of the Rear Column of the Emin Pasha
Relief Expedition, etc., 1890; and an appendix to a catalogue of
Phytophaga by H. Clark, 1866, etc.; and contributed a biographical notice
of Keith Johnson to J. Thomson's Central African Lakes and Back, 1881.
He contributed largely to the Zoologist, Entomological Society's journal,

Annals and Magazine of Natural History, and Entomologist.
LIFE--Memoir by E. Clodd, 1892; short notice in Clodd's Pioneers of

Evolution, 1897.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1864
HAVING been urged to prepare a new edition of this work for a wider
circle than that contemplated in the former one, I have thought it advisable
to condense those portions which, treating of abstruse scientific questions,
presuppose a larger amount of Natural History knowledge than an author
has a right to expect of the general reader. The personal narrative has been
left entire, together with those descriptive details likely to interest all
classes, young and old, relating to the great river itself, and the wonderful
country through which it flows,--the luxuriant primaeval forests that clothe
almost every part of it, the climate, productions, and inhabitants.
Signs are not wanting that this fertile, but scantily peopled region will soon
become, through recent efforts of the Peruvian and Brazilian governments
to make it accessible and colonise it, of far higher importance to the nations
of Northern Europe than it has been hitherto. The full significance of the
title, the "largest river in the world," which we are all taught in our
CHAPTER I 16
schoolboy days to apply to the Amazons, without having a distinct idea of

its magnitude, will then become apparent to the English public. It will be
new to most people, that this noble stream has recently been navigated by
steamers to a distance of 2200 geographical miles from its mouth at Para,
or double the distance which vessels are able to reach on the
Yang-tze-Kiang, the largest river of the old world; the depth of water in the
dry season being about seven fathoms up to this terminus of navigation. It
is not, however, the length of the trunk stream, that has earned for the
Amazons the appellation of the "Mediterranean of South America," given it
by the Brazilians of Para; but the network of by-channels and lakes, which
everywhere accompanies its course at a distance from the banks, and which
adds many thousands of miles of easy inland navigation to the total
presented by the main river and its tributaries. The Peruvians, especially, if
I may judge from letters received within the past few weeks, seem to be
stirring themselves to grasp the advantages which the possession of the
upper course of the river places within their reach. Vessels of heavy
tonnage have arrived in Para, from England, with materials for the
formation of shipbuilding establishments, at a point situated two thousand
miles from the mouth of the river. Peruvian steamers have navigated from
the Andes to the Atlantic, and a quantity of cotton (now exported for the
first time), the product of the rich and healthy country bordering the Upper
Amazons, has been conveyed by this means, and shipped from Para to
Europe. The probability of general curiosity in England being excited
before long with regard to this hitherto neglected country, will be
considered, of itself, a sufficient reason for placing an account of its natural
features and present condition within reach of all readers.
LONDON, January, 1864.
CHAPTER I
PARA
Arrival--Aspect of the Country--The Para River--First Walk in the Suburbs

of Para--Birds, Lizards, and Insects of the Suburbs-- Leaf-carrying
CHAPTER I 17
Ant--Sketch of the Climate, History, and present Condition of Para.
I embarked at Liverpool, with Mr. Wallace, in a small trading vessel, on the

26th of April, 1848; and, after a swift passage from the Irish Channel to the
equator, arrived, on the 26th of May, off Salinas. This is the pilot-station
for vessels bound to Para, the only port of entry to the vast region watered
by the Amazons. It is a small village, formerly a missionary settlement of
the Jesuits, situated a few miles to the eastward of the Para River. Here the
ship anchored in the open sea at a distance of six miles from the shore, the
shallowness of the water far out around the mouth of the great river not
permitting, in safety, a nearer approach; and, the signal was hoisted for a
pilot.
It was with deep interest that my companion and myself, both now about to
see and examine the beauties of a tropical country for the first time, gazed
on the land where I, at least, eventually spent eleven of the best years of my
life. To the eastward the country was not remarkable in appearance, being
slightly undulating, with bare sandhills and scattered trees; but to the
westward, stretching towards the mouth of the river, we could see through
the captain's glass a long line of forest, rising apparently out of the water; a
densely-packed mass of tall trees, broken into groups, and finally into
single trees, as it dwindled away in the distance. This was the frontier, in
this direction, of the great primaeval forest characteristic of this region,
which contains so many wonders in its recesses, and clothes the whole
surface of the country for two thousand miles from this point to the foot of
the Andes.
On the following day and night we sailed, with a light wind, partly aided by
the tide, up the Para river. Towards evening we passed Vigia and Colares,
two fishing villages, and saw many native canoes, which seemed like toys
beneath the lofty walls of dark forest. The air was excessively close, the sky
overcast, and sheet lightning played almost incessantly around the
horizon-- an appropriate greeting on the threshold of a country lying close
under the equator! The evening was calm, this being the season when the
winds are not strong, so we glided along in a noiseless manner, which
contrasted pleasantly with the unceasing turmoil to which we had been
CHAPTER I 18
lately accustomed on the Atlantic. The immensity of the river struck us

greatly, for although sailing sometimes at a distance of eight or nine miles
from the eastern bank, the opposite shore was at no time visible. Indeed, the
Para river is thirty-six miles in breadth at its mouth; and at the city of Para,
nearly seventy miles from the sea, it is twenty miles wide; but at that point,
a series of islands commences which contracts the riverview in front of the
port.
On the morning of the 28th of May, we arrived at our destination. The

appearance of the city at sunrise was pleasing in the highest degree. It is
built on a low tract of land, having only one small rocky elevation at its
southern extremity; it, therefore, affords no amphitheatral view from the
river; but the white buildings roofed with red tiles, the numerous towers
and cupolas of churches and convents, the crowns of palm trees reared
above the buildings, all sharply defined against the clear blue sky, give an
appearance of lightness and cheerfulness which is most exhilarating. The
perpetual forest hems the city in on all sides landwards; and towards the
suburbs, picturesque country houses are seen scattered about, half buried in
luxuriant foliage. The port was full of native canoes and other vessels, large
and small; and the ringing of bells and firing of rockets, announcing the
dawn of some Roman Catholic festival day, showed that the population was
astir at that early hour.
We went ashore in due time, and were kindly received by Mr. Miller, the
consignee of the vessel, who invited us to make his house our home until
we could obtain a suitable residence. On landing, the hot moist mouldy air,
which seemed to strike from the ground and walls, reminded me of the
atmosphere of tropical stoves at Kew. In the course of the afternoon a
heavy shower fell, and in the evening, the atmosphere having been cooled
by the rain, we walked about a mile out of town to the residence of an
American gentleman to whom our host wished to introduce us.
The impressions received during this first walk can never wholly fade from
my mind. After traversing the few streets of tall, gloomy, convent-looking
buildings near the port, inhabited chiefly by merchants and shopkeepers,
along which idle soldiers, dressed in shabby uniforms carrying their
CHAPTER I 19
muskets carelessly over their arms, priests, negresses with red water-jars on
their heads, sad-looking Indian women carrying their naked children astride
on their hips, and other samples of the motley life of the place, we passed
down a long narrow street leading to the suburbs. Beyond this, our road lay
across a grassy common into a picturesque lane leading to the virgin forest.
The long street was inhabited by the poorer class of the population. The
houses were of one story only, and had an irregular and mean appearance.
The windows were without glass, having, instead, projecting lattice
casements. The street was unpaved, and inches deep in loose sand. Groups
of people were cooling themselves outside their doors-- people of all shades
in colour of skin, European, Negro and Indian, but chiefly an uncertain
mixture of the three. Amongst them were several handsome women dressed
in a slovenly manner, barefoot or shod in loose slippers, but wearing richly-
decorated earrings, and around their necks strings of very large gold beads.
They had dark expressive eyes, and remarkably rich heads of hair. It was a
mere fancy, but I thought the mingled squalor, luxuriance and beauty of
these women were pointedly in harmony with the rest of the scene-- so
striking, in the view, was the mixture of natural riches and human poverty.
The houses were mostly in a dilapidated condition, and signs of indolence
and neglect were visible everywhere. The wooden palings which
surrounded the weed-grown gardens were strewn about and broken; hogs,
goats, and ill-fed poultry wandered in and out through the gaps.
But amidst all, and compensating every defect, rose the overpowering
beauty of the vegetation. The massive dark crowns of shady mangos were
seen everywhere amongst the dwellings, amidst fragrant blossoming
orange, lemon, and many other tropical fruit trees, some in flower, others in
fruit, at varying stages of ripeness. Here and there, shooting above the more
dome-like and sombre trees, were the smooth columnar stems of palms,
bearing aloft their magnificent crowns of finely-cut fronds. Amongst the
latter the slim assai-palm was especially noticeable, growing in groups of
four or five; its smooth, gently-curving stem, twenty to thirty feet high,
terminating in a head of feathery foliage, inexpressibly light and elegant in
outline. On the boughs of the taller and more ordinary-looking trees sat
tufts of curiously- leaved parasites. Slender, woody lianas hung in festoons
from the branches, or were suspended in the form of cords and ribbons;
CHAPTER I 20
whilst luxuriant creeping plants overran alike tree-trunks, roofs and walls,
or toppled over palings in a copious profusion of foliage. The superb
banana (Musa paradisiaca), of which I had always read as forming one of
the charms of tropical vegetation, grew here with great luxuriance-- its
glossy velvety-green leaves, twelve feet in length, curving over the roofs of
verandahs in the rear of every house. The shape of the leaves, the varying
shades of green which they present when lightly moved by the wind, and
especially the contrast they afford in colour and form to the more sombre
hues and more rounded outline of the other trees, are quite sufficient to
account for the charm of this glorious tree.
Strange forms of vegetation drew our attention at almost every step.

Amongst them were the different kinds of Bromelia, or pineapple plants,
with their long, rigid, sword-shaped leaves, in some species jagged or
toothed along their edges. Then there was the bread-fruit tree--an
importation, it is true; but remarkable from its large, glossy, dark green,
strongly digitated foliage, and its interesting history. Many other trees and
plants, curious in leaf, stem, or manner of growth, grew on the borders of
the thickets along which lay our road; they were all attractive to
newcomers, whose last country ramble of quite recent date was over the
bleak moors of Derbyshire on a sleety morning in April.
As we continued our walk the brief twilight commenced, and the sounds of
multifarious life came from the vegetation around. The whirring of cicadas;
the shrill stridulation of a vast number and variety of field crickets and
grasshoppers, each species sounding its peculiar note; the plaintive hooting
of tree frogs--all blended together in one continuous ringing sound--the
audible expression of the teeming profusion of Nature. As night came on,
many species of frogs and toads in the marshy places joined in the chorus--
their croaking and drumming, far louder than anything I had before heard in
the same line, being added to the other noises, created an almost deafening
din. This uproar of life, I afterwards found, never wholly ceased, night or
day. In the course of time I became, like other residents, accustomed to it. It
is, however, one of the peculiarities of a tropical--at least, a
Brazilian--climate which is most likely to surprise a stranger. After my
return to England, the deathlike stillness of summer days in the country
CHAPTER I 21
appeared to me as strange as the ringing uproar did on my first arrival at

Para. The object of our visit being accomplished, we returned to the city.
The fire-flies were then out in great numbers, flitting about the sombre
woods, and even the frequented streets. We turned into our hammocks, well
pleased with what we had seen, and full of anticipation with regard to the
wealth of natural objects we had come to explore.
During the first few days, we were employed in landing our baggage and
arranging our extensive apparatus. We then accepted the invitation of Mr.
Miller to make use of his rocinha, or country-house in the suburbs, until we
finally decided on a residence. Upon this, we made our first essay in
housekeeping. We bought cotton hammocks, the universal substitute for
beds in this country, cooking utensils and crockery, and engaged a free
negro, named Isidoro, as cook and servant-of-all-work.
Our first walks were in the immediate suburbs of Para. The city lies on a
corner of land formed by the junction of the river Guama with the Para. As
I have said before, the forest, which covers the whole country, extends
close up to the city streets; indeed, the town is built on a tract of cleared
land, and is kept free from the jungle only by the constant care of the
Government. The surface, though everywhere low, is slightly undulating,
so that areas of dry land alternate throughout with areas of swampy ground,
the vegetation and animal tenants of the two being widely different. Our
residence lay on the side of the city nearest the Guama, on the borders of
one of the low and swampy areas which here extends over a portion of the
suburbs. The tract of land is intersected by well-macadamised suburban
roads, the chief of which, the Estrada das Mongubeiras (the Monguba
road), about a mile long, is a magnificent avenue of silk-cotton trees
(Bombax monguba and B. ceiba), huge trees whose trunks taper rapidly
from the ground upwards, and whose flowers before opening look like red
balls studding the branches. This fine road was constructed under the
governorship of the Count dos Arcos, about the year 1812. At right angles
to it run a number of narrow green lanes, and the whole district is drained
by a system of small canals or trenches through which the tide ebbs and
flows, showing the lowness of the site.
CHAPTER I 22
Before I left the country, other enterprising presidents had formed a number
of avenues lined with cocoanut palms, almond and other trees, in
continuation of the Monguba road, over the more elevated and drier ground
to the north-east of the city. On the high ground the vegetation has an
aspect quite different from that which it presents in the swampy parts.
Indeed, with the exception of the palm trees, the suburbs here have an
aspect like that of a village green at home. The soil is sandy, and the open
commons are covered with a short grassy and shrubby vegetation. Beyond
this, the land again descends to a marshy tract, where, at the bottom of the
moist hollows, the public wells are situated. Here all the linen of the city is
washed by hosts of noisy negresses, and here also the water-carts are
filled--painted hogsheads on wheels, drawn by bullocks. In early morning,
when the sun sometimes shines through a light mist, and everything is
dripping with moisture, this part of the city is full of life; vociferous
negroes and wrangling Gallegos, [Natives of Galicia, in Spain, who follow
this occupation in Lisbon and Oporto, as well as at Para] the proprietors of
the water-carts, are gathered about, jabbering continually, and taking their
morning drams in dirty wineshops at the street corners.
Along these beautiful roads we found much to interest us during the first
few days. Suburbs of towns, and open, sunny cultivated places in Brazil,
are tenanted by species of animals and plants which are mostly different
from those of the dense primaeval forests. I will, therefore, give an account
of what we observed of the animal world during our explorations in the
immediate neighbourhood of Para.
The number and beauty of the birds and insects did not at first equal our
expectations. The majority of the birds we saw were small and obscurely
coloured; they were indeed similar, in general appearance, to such as are
met with in country places in England. Occasionally a flock of small
parroquets, green, with a patch of yellow on the forehead, would come at
early morning to the trees near the Estrada. They would feed quietly,
sometimes chattering in subdued tones, but setting up a harsh scream, and
flying off, on being disturbed. Hummingbirds we did not see at this time,
although I afterwards found them by hundreds when certain trees were in
flower. Vultures we only saw at a distance, sweeping round at a great
CHAPTER I 23
height, over the public slaughter- houses. Several flycatchers, finches,

ant-thrushes, a tribe of plainly-coloured birds, intermediate in structure
between flycatchers and thrushes, some of which startle the new-comer by
their extraordinary notes emitted from their places of concealment in the
dense thickets; and also tanagers, and other small birds, inhabited the
neighbourhood. None of these had a pleasing song, except a little brown
wren (Troglodytes furvus), whose voice and melody resemble those of our
English robin. It is often seen hopping and climbing about the walls and
roofs of houses and on trees in their vicinity. Its song is more frequently
heard in the rainy season, when the Monguba trees shed their leaves. At
those times the Estrada das Mongubeiras has an appearance quite unusual
in a tropical country. The tree is one of the few in the Amazon region
which sheds all its foliage before any of the new leaf-buds expand. The
naked branches, the sodden ground matted with dead leaves, the grey mist
veiling the surrounding vegetation, and the cool atmosphere soon after
sunrise, all combine to remind one of autumnal mornings in England.
Whilst loitering about at such times in a half-oblivious mood, thinking of
home, the song of this bird would create for the moment a perfect illusion.
Numbers of tanagers frequented the fruit and other trees in our garden. The
two principal kinds which attracted our attention were the Rhamphoccelus
Jacapa and the Tanagra Episcopus. The females of both are dull in colour,
but the male of Jacapa has a beautiful velvety purple and black plumage,
the beak being partly white, whilst the same sex in Episcopus is of a pale
blue colour, with white spots on the wings. In their habits they both
resemble the common house- sparrow of Europe, which does not exist in
South America, its place being in some measure filled by these familiar
tanagers. They are just as lively, restless, bold, and wary; their notes are
very similar, chirping and inharmonious, and they seem to be almost as
fond of the neighbourhood of man. They do not, however, build their nests
on houses.
Another interesting and common bird was the Japim, a species of Cassicus
( C. icteronotus). It belongs to the same family of birds as our starling,
magpie, and rook--it has a rich yellow and black plumage, remarkably
compact and velvety in texture. The shape of its head and its physiognomy
are very similar to those of the magpie; it has light grey eyes, which give it
CHAPTER I 24
the same knowing expression. It is social in its habits, and builds its nest,
like the English rook, on trees in the neighbourhood of habitations. But the
nests are quite differently constructed, being shaped like purses, two feet in
length, and suspended from the slender branches all around the tree, some
of them very near the ground. The entrance is on the side near the bottom
of the nest. The bird is a great favourite with the Brazilians of Para-- it is a
noisy, stirring, babbling creature, passing constantly to and fro, chattering
to its comrades, and is very ready at imitating other birds, especially the
domestic poultry of the vicinity. There was at one time a weekly newspaper
published at Para, called "The Japim"; the name being chosen, I suppose,
on account of the babbling propensities of the bird. Its eggs are nearly
round, and of a bluish-white colour, speckled with brown.
Of other vertebrate animals we saw very little, except of the lizards. These
are sure to attract the attention of the newcomer from Northern Europe, by
reason of their strange appearance, great numbers, and variety. The species
which are seen crawling over the walls of buildings in the city are different
from those found in the forest or in the interior of houses. They are
unpleasant-looking animals, with colours assimilated to those of the
dilapidated stone and mud walls on which they are seen. The house lizards
belong to a peculiar family, the Geckos, and are found even in the best-kept
chambers, most frequently on the walls and ceilings, to which they cling
motionless by day, being active only at night. They are of speckled grey or
ashy colours. The structure of their feet is beautifully adapted for clinging
to and running over smooth surfaces; the underside of their toes being
expanded into cushions, beneath which folds of skin form a series of
flexible plates. By means of this apparatus they can walk or run across a
smooth ceiling with their backs downwards; the plated soles, by quick
muscular action, exhausting and admitting air alternately. The Geckos are
very repulsive in appearance. The Brazilians give them the name of Osgas,
and firmly believe them to be poisonous; they are, however, harmless
creatures. Those found in houses are small; but I have seen others of great
size, in crevices of tree trunks in the forest. Sometimes Geckos are found
with forked tails; this results from the budding of a rudimentary tail at the
side, from an injury done to the member. A slight rap will cause their tails
to snap off; the loss being afterwards partially repaired by a new growth.
CHAPTER I 25
The tails of lizards seem to be almost useless appendages to these animals.

I used often to amuse myself in the suburbs, whilst resting in the verandah
of our house during the heat of mid-day, by watching the variegated green,
brown, and yellow ground-lizards. They would come nimbly forward, and
commence grubbing with their forefeet and snouts around the roots of
herbage, searching for insect larvae. On the slightest alarm, they would
scamper off, their tails cocked up in the air as they waddled awkwardly
away, evidently an incumbrance to them in their flight.
Next to the birds and lizards, the insects of the suburbs of Para deserve a
few remarks. The species observed in the weedy and open places, as
already remarked, were generally different from those which dwell in the
shades of the forest. In the gardens, numbers of fine showy butterflies were
seen. There were two swallow- tailed species, similar in colours to the
English Papilio Machaon; a white Pieris (P. Monuste), and two or three
species of brimstone and orange coloured butterflies, which do not belong,
however, to the same genus as our English species. In weedy places a
beautiful butterfly, with eye-like spots on its wings was common, the
Junonia Lavinia, the only Amazonian species which is at all nearly related
to our Vanessas, the Admiral and Peacock Butterflies. One day, we made
our first acquaintance with two of the most beautiful productions of nature
in this department-- namely, the Helicopis Cupido and Endymion. A little
beyond our house, one of the narrow green lanes which I have already
mentioned diverged from the Monguba avenue, and led, between
enclosures overrun with a profusion of creeping plants and glorious
flowers, down to a moist hollow, where there was a public well in a
picturesque nook, buried in a grove of Mucaja palm trees. On the tree
trunks, walls, and palings, grew a great quantity of climbing Pothos plants,
with large glossy heart- shaped leaves. These plants were the resort of these
two exquisite species, and we captured a great number of specimens. They
are of extremely delicate texture. The wings are cream- coloured, the hind
pair have several tail-like appendages, and are spangled beneath as if with
silver. Their flight is very slow and feeble; they seek the protected
under-surface of the leaves, and in repose close their wings over the back,
so as to expose the brilliantly spotted under-surface.
CHAPTER I 26
I will pass over the many other orders and families of insects, and proceed
at once to the ants. These were in great numbers everywhere, but I will
mention here only two kinds. We were amazed at seeing ants an inch and a
quarter in length, and stout in proportion, marching in single file through
the thickets. These belonged to the species called Dinoponera grandis. Its
colonies consist of a small number of individuals, and are established about
the roots of slender trees. It is a stinging species, but the sting is not so
severe as in many of the smaller kinds. There was nothing peculiar or
attractive in the habits of this giant among the ants. Another far more
interesting species was the Sauba (Oecodoma cephalotes). This ant is seen
everywhere about the suburbs, marching to and fro in broad columns. From
its habit of despoiling the most valuable cultivated trees of their foliage, it
is a great scourge to the Brazilians. In some districts it is so abundant that
agriculture is almost impossible, and everywhere complaints are heard of
the terrible pest.
The workers of this species are of three orders, and vary in size from two to
seven lines; some idea of them may be obtained from the accompanying
woodcut. The true working-class of a colony is formed by the small-sized
order of workers, the worker-minors as they are called (Fig. I). The two
other kinds, whose functions, as we shall see, are not yet properly
understood, have enormously swollen and massive heads; in one (Fig. 2),
the head is highly polished; in the other (Fig. 3), it is opaque and hairy. The
worker-minors vary greatly in size, some being double the bulk of others.
The entire body is of very solid consistency, and of a pale reddish-brown
colour. The thorax or middle segment is armed with three pairs of sharp
spines; the head, also, has a pair of similar spines proceeding from the
cheeks behind.
In our first walks we were puzzled to account for large mounds of earth, of
a different colour from the surrounding soil, which were thrown up in the
plantations and woods. Some of them were very extensive, being forty
yards in circumference, but not more than two feet in height. We soon
ascertained that these were the work of the Saubas, being the outworks, or
domes, which overlie and protect the entrances to their vast subterranean
galleries. On close examination, I found the earth of which they are
CHAPTER I 27
composed to consist of very minute granules, agglomerated without

cement, and forming many rows of little ridges and turrets. The difference
in colour from the superficial soil of the vicinity is owing to their being
formed of the undersoil, brought up from a considerable depth. It is very
rarely that the ants are seen at work on these mounds; the entrances seem to
be generally closed; only now and then, when some particular work is
going on, are the galleries opened. The entrances are small and numerous;
in the larger hillocks it would require a great amount of excavation to get at
the main galleries; but, I succeeded in removing portions of the dome in
smaller hillocks, and then I found that the minor entrances converged, at
the depth of about two feet, into one broad, elaborately-worked gallery or
mine, which was four or five inches in diameter.
This habit of the Sauba ant, of clipping and carrying away immense
quantities of leaves, has long been recorded in books on natural history.
When employed on this work, their processions look like a multitude of
animated leaves on the march. In some places I found an accumulation of
such leaves, all circular pieces, about the size of a sixpence, lying on the
pathway, unattended by ants, and at some distance from any colony. Such
heaps are always found to be removed when the place is revisited the next
day. In course of time I had plenty of opportunities of seeing them at work.
They mount the tree in multitudes, the individuals being all worker-minors.
Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts, with its sharp
scissor-like jaws, a nearly semicircular incision on the upper side; it then
takes the edge between its jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the piece.
Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a little heap
accumulates, until carried off by another relay of workers; but, generally,
each marches off with the piece it has operated upon, and as all take the
same road to their colony, the path they follow becomes in a short time
smooth and bare, looking like the impression of a cartwheel through the
herbage.
It is a most interesting sight to see the vast host of busy diminutive

labourers occupied on this work. Unfortunately, they choose cultivated
trees for their purpose. This ant is quite peculiar to Tropical America, as is
the entire genus to which it belongs; it sometimes despoils the young trees
CHAPTER I 28
of species growing wild in its native forests, but seems to prefer, when
within reach, plants imported from other countries, such as the coffee and
orange trees. It has not hitherto been shown satisfactorily to what use it
applies the leaves. I discovered this only after much time spent in
investigation. The leaves are used to thatch the domes which cover the
entrances to their subterranean dwellings, thereby protecting from the
deluging rains the young broods in the nests beneath. The larger mounds,
already described, are so extensive that few persons would attempt to
remove them for the purpose of examining their interior; but smaller
hillocks, covering other entrances to the same system of tunnels and
chambers, may be found in sheltered places, and these are always thatched
with leaves, mingled with granules of earth. The heavily-laden workers,
each carrying its segment of leaf vertically, the lower edge secured in its
mandibles, troop up and cast their burdens on the hillock; another relay of
labourers place the leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy
granules, which are brought one by one from the soil beneath.
The underground abodes of this wonderful ant are known to be very

extensive. The Rev. Hamlet Clark has related that the Sauba of Rio de
Janeiro, a species closely allied to ours, has excavated a tunnel under the
bed of the river Parahyba, at a place where it is broad as the Thames at
London Bridge. At the Magoary Rice Mills, near Para, these ants once
pierced the embankment of a large reservoir; the great body of water which
it contained escaped before the damage could be repaired. In the Botanic
Gardens, at Para, an enterprising French gardener tried all he could think of
to extirpate the Sauba. With this object, he made fires over some of the
main entrances to their colonies, and blew the fumes of sulphur down the
galleries by means of bellows. I saw the smoke issue from a great number
of outlets, one of which was seventy yards distant from the place where the
bellows were used. This shows how extensively the underground galleries
are ramified.
Besides injuring and destroying young trees by despoiling them of their

foliage, the Sauba ant is troublesome to the inhabitants from its habit of
plundering the stores of provisions in houses at night, for it is even more
active by night than in the daytime. At first I was inclined to discredit the
CHAPTER I 29
stories of their entering habitations and carrying off grain by grain the
farinha or mandioca meal, the bread of the poorer classes of Brazil. At
length, whilst residing at an Indian village on the Tapajos, I had ample
proof of the fact. One night my servant woke me three or four hours before
sunrise, by calling out that the rats were robbing the farinha baskets--the
article at that time being scarce and dear. I got up, listened, and found the
noise was very unlike that made by rats. So, I took the light and went into
the storeroom, which was close to my sleeping-place. I there found a broad
column of Sauba ants, consisting of thousands of individuals, as busy as
possible, passing to and fro between the door and my precious baskets.
Most of those passing outwards were laden each with a grain of farinha,
which was, in some cases, larger and many times heavier than the bodies of
the carriers. Farinha consists of grains of similar size and appearance to the
tapioca of our shops; both are products of the same root, tapioca being the
pure starch, and farinha the starch mixed with woody fibre, the latter
ingredient giving it a yellowish colour. It was amusing to see some of the
dwarfs, the smallest members of their family, staggering along, completely
hidden under their load. The baskets, which were on a high table, were
entirely covered with ants, many hundreds of whom were employed in
snipping the dry leaves which served as lining. This produced the rustling
sound which had at first disturbed us. My servant told me that they would
carry off the whole contents of the two baskets (about two bushels) in the
course of the night, if they were not driven off; so we tried to exterminate
them by killing them with our wooden clogs. It was impossible, however,
to prevent fresh hosts coming in as fast as we killed their companions. They
returned the next night; and I was then obliged to lay trains of gunpowder
along their line, and blow them up. This, repeated many times, at last
seemed to intimidate them, for we were free from their visits during the
remainder of my residence at the place. What they did with the hard dry
grains of mandioca I was never able to ascertain, and cannot even
conjecture. The meal contains no gluten, and therefore would be useless as
cement. It contains only a smallrelative portion of starch, and, when mixed
with water, it separates and falls away like so much earthy matter. It may
serve as food for the subterranean workers. But the young or larvae of ants
are usually fed by juices secreted by the worker nurses.
CHAPTER I 30
Ants, it is scarcely necessary to observe, consist, in each species, of three

sets of individuals, Or, as some express it, of three sexes--namely, males,
females, and workers; the last- mentioned being undeveloped females. The
perfect sexes are winged on their first attaining the adult state; they alone
propagate their kind, flying away, previous to the act of reproduction, from
the nest in which they have been reared. This winged state of the perfect
males and females, and the habit of flying abroad before pairing, are very
important points in the economy of ants; for they are thus enabled to
intercross with members of distant colonies which swarm at the same time,
and thereby increase the vigour of the race, a proceeding essential to the
prosperity of any species. In many ants, especially those of tropical
climates, the workers, again, are of two classes, whose structure and
functions are widely different. In some species they are wonderfully unlike
each other, and constitute two well-defined forms of workers. In others,
there is a gradation of individuals between the two extremes. The curious
differences in structure and habits between these two classes form an
interesting, but very difficult, study. It is one of the great peculiarities of the
Sauba ant to possess three classes of workers. My investigations regarding
them were far from complete; I will relate, however, what I have observed
on the subject.
When engaged in leaf-cutting, plundering farinha, and other operations,

two classes of workers are always seen (Figs. 1 and 2, page 10). They are
not, it is true, very sharply defined in structure, for individuals of
intermediate grades occur. All the work, however, is done by the
individuals which have small heads (Fig. 1), while those which have
enormously large heads, the worker-majors (Fig. 2), are observed to be
simply walking about. I could never satisfy myself as to the function of
these worker- majors. They are not the soldiers or defenders of the working
portion of the community, like the armed class in the termites, or white
ants, for they never fight. The species has no sting, and does not display
active resistance when interfered with. I once imagined they exercised a
sort of superintendence over the others; but this function is entirely
unnecessary in a community where all work with a precision and regularity
resembling the subordinate parts of a piece of machinery. I came to the
conclusion, at last, that they have no very precisely defined function. They
CHAPTER I 31
cannot, however, be entirely useless to the community, for the sustenance

of an idle class of such bulky individuals would be too heavy a charge for
the species to sustain. I think they serve, in some sort, as passive
instruments of protection to the real workers. Their enormously large, hard,
and indestructible heads may be of use in protecting them against the
attacks of insectivorous animals. They would be, on this view, a kind of
"pieces de resistance," serving as a foil against onslaughts made on the
main body of workers.
The third order of workers is the most curious of all. If the top of a small,
fresh hillock, one in which the thatching process is going on, is taken off, a
broad cylindrical shaft is disclosed at a depth of about two feet from the
surface. If this is probed with a stick, which may be done to the extent of
three or four feet without touching bottom, a small number of colossal
fellows (Fig. 3) will slowly begin to make their way up the smooth sides of
the mine. Their heads are of the same size as those of the class Fig. 2, but
the front is clothed with hairs, instead of being polished, and they have in
the middle of the forehead a twin, ocellus, or simple eye, of quite different
structure from the ordinary compound eyes, on the sides of the head. This
frontal eye is totally wanting in the other workers, and is not known in any
other kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from the
cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when I first observed them, of
the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very pugnacious, as I feared
they would be, and I had no difficulty in securing a few with my fingers. I
never saw them under any other circumstances than those here related, and
what their special functions may be I cannot divine.
The whole arrangement of a Formicarium, or ant-colony, and all the varied

activity of ant-life, are directed to one main purpose--the perpetuation and
dissemination of the species. Most of the labour which we see performed
by the workers has for its end the sustenance and welfare of the young
brood, which are helpless grubs. The true females are incapable of
attending to the wants of their offspring; and it is on the poor sterile
workers, who are denied all the other pleasures of maternity, that the entire
care devolves. The workers are also the chief agents in carrying out the
different migrations of the colonies, which are of vast importance to the
CHAPTER I 32
dispersal and consequent prosperity of the species. The successful debut of

the winged males and females depends likewise on the workers. It is
amusing to see the activity and excitement which reigns in an ant's nest
when the exodus of the winged individuals is taking place. The workers
clear the roads of exit, and show the most lively interest in their departure,
although it is highly improbable that any of them will return to the same
colony. The swarming or exodus of the winged males and females of the
Sauba ant takes place in January and February, that is, at the
commencement of the rainy season. They come out in the evening in vast
numbers, causing quite a commotion in the streets and lanes. They are of
very large size, the female measuring no less than two-and-a- quarter inches
in expanse of wing; the male is not much more than half this size. They are
so eagerly preyed upon by insectivorous animals that on the morning after
their flight not an individual is to be seen, a few impregnated females alone
escaping the slaughter to found new colonies.
At the time of our arrival, Para had not quite recovered from the effects of a
series of revolutions, brought about by the hatred which existed between
the native Brazilians and the Portuguese; the former, in the end, calling to
their aid the Indian and mixed coloured population. The number of
inhabitants of the city had decreased, in consequence of these disorders,
from 24,500 in 1819, to 15,000 in 1848. Although the public peace had not
been broken for twelve years before the date of our visit, confidence was
not yet completely restored, and the Portuguese merchants and tradesmen
would not trust themselves to live at their beautiful country houses or
rocinhas, which lie embosomed in the luxuriant shady gardens around the
city. No progress had been made in clearing the second-growth forest
which had grown over the once cultivated grounds, and now reached the
end of all the suburban streets. The place had the aspect of one which had
seen better days; the public buildings, including the palaces of the President
and Bishop, the cathedral, the principal churches and convents, all seemed
constructed on a scale of grandeur far beyond the present requirements of
the city. Streets full of extensive private residences, built in the Italian style
of architecture, were in a neglected condition, weeds and flourishing young
trees growing from large cracks in the masonry. The large public squares
were overgrown with weeds and impassable, on account of the swampy
CHAPTER I 33
places which occupied portions of their areas. Commerce, however, was

now beginning to revive, and before I left the country I saw great
improvements, as I shall have to relate towards the conclusion of this
narrative.
The province of which Para is the capital, was at the time I allude to, the
most extensive in the Brazilian empire, being about 1560 miles in length
from east to west, and about 600 in breadth. Since that date--namely in
1853--it has been divided into two by the separation of the Upper Amazons
as a distinct province. It formerly constituted a section, capitania, or
governorship of the Portuguese colony. Originally it was well peopled by
Indians, varying much in social condition according to their tribe, but all
exhibiting the same general physical characters, which are those of the
American red man, somewhat modified by long residence in an equatorial
forest country.
Most of the tribes are now extinct or forgotten, at least those which
originally peopled the banks of the main river, their descendants having
amalgamated with the white and negro immigrants. [The mixed breeds
which now form, probably, the greater part of the population, each have a
distinguishing name. Mameluco denotes the offspring of White with
Indian; Mulatto, that of White with Negro; Cafuzo, the mixture of the
Indian and Negro; Curiboco, the cross between the Cafuzo and the Indian;
Xibaro, that between the Cafuzo and Negro. These are seldom, however,
well-demarcated, and all shades of colour exist; the names are generally
applied only approximatively. The term Creole is confined to negroes born
in the country. The civilised Indian is called Tapuyo or Caboclo.] Many
still exist, however, in their original state on the Upper Amazons and most
of the branch rivers. On this account, Indians in this province are far more
numerous than elsewhere in Brazil, and the Indian element may be said to
prevail in the mongrel population-- the negro proportion being much
smaller than in South Brazil.
The city is built on the best available site for a port of entry to the Amazons
region, and must in time become a vast emporium; the northern shore of the
main river, where alone a rival capital could be founded, is much more
CHAPTER I 34
difficult of access to vessels, and is besides extremely unhealthy. Although

lying so near the equator (1 28' S. lat.) the climate is not excessively hot.
The temperature during three years only once reached 95 degrees
Fahrenheit. The greatest heat of the day, about 2 p.m., ranges generally
between 89 and 94; but on the other hand, the air is never cooler than 73, so
that a uniformly high temperature exists, and the mean of the year is 81.
North American residents say that the heat is not so oppressive as it is in
summer in New York and Philadelphia. The humidity is, of course,
excessive, but the rains are not so heavy and continuous in the wet season
as in many other tropical climates. The country had for a long time a
reputation for extreme salubrity. Since the small-pox in 1819, which
attacked chiefly the Indians, no serious epidemic had visited the province.
We were agreeably surprised to find no danger from exposure to the night
air or residence in the low swampy lands. A few English residents, who had
been established here for twenty or thirty years, looked almost as fresh in
colour as if they had never left their native country. The native women, too,
seemed to preserve their good looks and plump condition until late in life. I
nowhere observed that early decay of appearance in Brazilian ladies, which
is said to be so general in the women of North America.
Up to 1848 the salubrity of Para was quite remarkable for a city lying in the
delta of a great river, in the middle of the tropics and half surrounded by
swamps. It did not much longer enjoy its immunity from epidemics. In
1850 the yellow fever visited the province for the first time, and carried off
in a few weeks more than four percent of the population. One disease after
another succeeded, until in 1855 cholera swept through the country and
caused fearful havoc. Since then, the healthfulness of the climate has been
gradually restored, and it is now fast recovering its former good reputation.
Para is free from serious endemic disorders, and was once a resort of
invalids from New York and Massachusetts. The equable temperature, the
perpetual verdure, the coolness of the dry season when the sun's heat is
tempered by the strong sea-breezes and the moderation of the periodical
rains, make the climate one of the most enjoyable on the face of the earth.
The province is governed, like all others in the empire, by a President, as

chief civil authority. At the time of our arrival he also held, exceptionally,
CHAPTER I 35
the chief military command. This functionary, together with the head of the
police administration and the judges, is nominated by the central
Government at Rio Janeiro. The municipal and internal affairs are managed
by a provincial assembly elected by the people. Every villa or borough
throughout the province also possesses its municipal council, and in
thinly-populated districts the inhabitants choose every four years a justice
of the peace, who adjudicates in small disputes between neighbours. A
system of popular education exists, and every village has its school of first
letters, the master being paid by the government, the salary amounting to
about 70, or the same sum as the priests receive. Besides common schools,
a well- endowed classical seminary is maintained at Para, to which the sons
of most of the planters and traders in the interior are sent to complete their
education. The province returns its quota of members every four years to
the lower and upper houses of the imperial parliament. Every householder
has a vote. Trial by jury has been established, the jurymen being selected
from householders, no matter what their race or colour; and I have seen the
white merchant, the negro husbandman, the mameluco, the mulatto, and the
Indian, all sitting side by side on the same bench. Altogether the
constitution of government in Brazil seems to combine happily the
principles of local self-government and centralisation, and only requires a
proper degree of virtue and intelligence in the people to lead the nation to
great prosperity.
The province of Para, or, as we may now say, the two provinces of Para and
the Amazons, contain an area of 800,000 square miles, the population of
which is only about 230,000, or in the ratio of one person to four square
miles! The country is covered with forests, and the soil is fertile in the
extreme, even for a tropical country. It is intersected throughout by broad
and deep navigable rivers. It is the pride of the Paraenses to call the
Amazons the Mediterranean of South America. The colossal stream
perhaps deserves the name, for not only have the main river and its
principal tributaries an immense expanse of water bathing the shores of
extensive and varied regions, but there is also throughout a system of back
channels, connected with the main rivers by narrow outlets and linking
together a series of lakes, some of which are fifteen, twenty, and thirty
miles in length. The whole Amazons valley is thus covered by a network of
CHAPTER I 36
navigable waters, forming a vast inland freshwater sea with endless

ramifications-- rather than a river.
The city of Para was founded in 1615, and was a place of considerable
importance towards the latter half of the eighteenth century, under the
government of the brother of Pombal, the famous Portuguese statesman.
The province was the last in Brazil to declare its independence of the
mother-country and acknowledge the authority of the first emperor, Don
Pedro. This was owing to the great numbers and influence of the
Portuguese, and the rage of the native party was so great in consequence,
that immediately after independence was proclaimed in 1823, a counter
revolution broke out, during which many hundred lives were lost and much
hatred engendered. The antagonism continued for many years, partial
insurrections taking place when the populace thought that the immigrants
from Portugal were favoured by the governors sent from the capital of the
empire. At length, in 1835, a serious revolt took place which in a short time
involved the entire province. It began by the assassination of the President
and the leading members of the government; the struggle was severe, and
the native party in an evil hour called to their aid the ignorant and fanatic
part of the mongrel and Indian population. The cry of death to the
Portuguese was soon changed to death to the freemasons, then a powerfully
organised society embracing the greater part of the male white inhabitants.
The victorious native party endeavoured to establish a government of their
own.
After this state of things had endured six months, they accepted a new
President sent from Rio Janeiro, who, however, again irritated them by
imprisoning their favourite leader, Vinagre. The revenge which followed
was frightful. A vast host of half- savage coloured people assembled in the
retired creeks behind Para, and on a day fixed, after Vinagre's brother had
sent a message three times to the President demanding, in vain, the release
of their leader, the whole body poured into the city through the gloomy
pathways of the forest which encircles it. A cruel battle, lasting nine days,
was fought in the streets; an English, French, and Portuguese man-of-war,
from the side of the river, assisting the legal authorities. All the latter,
however, together with every friend of peace and order, were finally
CHAPTER I 37
obliged to retire to an island a few miles distant. The city and province
were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory,
proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and
American residents. The mistaken principals who had first aroused all this
hatred of races were obliged now to make their escape. In the interior, the
supporters of lawful authority including, it must be stated, whole tribes of
friendly Indians and numbers of the better disposed negroes and mulattos,
concentrated themselves in certain strong positions and defended
themselves, until the reconquest of the capital and large towns of the
interior in 1836 by a force sent from Rio Janeiro-- after ten months of
anarchy.
Years of conciliatory government, the lesson learned by the native party

and the moderation of the Portuguese, aided by the indolence and passive
goodness of the Paraenses of all classes and colours, were only beginning
to produce their good effects about the time I am speaking of. Life,
however, was now and had been for some time quite safe throughout the
country. Some few of the worst characters had been transported or
imprisoned, and the remainder, after being pardoned, were converted once
more into quiet and peaceable citizens.
I resided at Para nearly a year and a half altogether, returning thither and
making a stay of a few months after each of my shorter excursions into the
interior, until the 6th of November, 1851, when I started on my long
voyage to the Tapajos and the Upper Amazons, which occupied me seven
years and a half. I became during this time tolerably familiar with the
capital of the Amazons region, and its inhabitants. Compared with other
Brazilian seaport towns, I was always told, Para shone to great advantage.
It was cleaner, the suburbs were fresher, more rural and much pleasanter on
account of their verdure, shade, and magnificent vegetation. The people
were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and
dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a
reputation, were almost unknown. At the same time the Para people were
much inferior to Southern Brazilians in energy and industry. Provisions and
house rents being cheap and the wants of the people few--for they were
content with food and lodging of a quality which would be spurned by
CHAPTER I 38
paupers in England--they spent the greater part of their time in sensual

indulgences and in amusements which the government and wealthier
citizens provided for them gratis.
The trade, wholesale and retail, was in the hands of the Portuguese, of
whom there were about 2500 in the place. Many handicrafts were exercised
by coloured people, mulattos, mamelucos, free negroes, and Indians. The
better sort of Brazilians dislike the petty details of shop-keeping, and if they
cannot be wholesale merchants, prefer the life of planters in the country,
however small may be the estate and the gains. The negroes constituted the
class of field-labourers and porters; Indians were universally the watermen,
and formed the crews of the numberless canoes of all sizes and shapes
which traded between Para and the interior. The educated Brazilians, not
many of whom are of pure Caucasian descent--for the immigration of
Portuguese, for many years, has been almost exclusively of the male
sex--are courteous, lively, and intelligent people. They were gradually
weaning themselves of the ignorant, bigoted notions which they inherited
from their Portuguese ancestors, especially those entertained with regard to
the treatment of women. Formerly, the Portuguese would not allow their
wives to go into society, or their daughters to learn reading and writing. In
1848, Brazilian ladies were only just beginning to emerge from this inferior
position, and Brazilian fathers were opening their eyes to the advantages of
education for their daughters. Reforms of this kind are slow. It is, perhaps,
in part owing to the degrading position always held by women, that the
relations between the sexes were, and are still, on so unsatisfactory a
footing, and private morality at so low an ebb, in Brazil. In Para, I believe
that an improvement is now taking place, but formerly promiscuous
intercourse seemed to be the general rule among all classes, and intrigues
and love-making the serious business of the greater part of the population.
That this state of things is a necessity depending on the climate and
institutions I do not believe, as I have resided at small towns in the interior,
where the habits, and the general standard of morality of the inhabitants,
were as pure as they are in similar places in England.
CHAPTER II 39
CHAPTER II
PARA
The Swampy Forests of Para--A Portuguese Landed Proprietor-- Country

House at Nazareth--Life of a Naturalist under the Equator--The drier Virgin
Forests--Magoary--Retired Creeks-- Aborigines
After having resided about a fortnight at Mr. Miller's rocinha, we heard of

another similar country-house to be let, much better situated for our
purpose, in the village of Nazareth, a mile and a half from the city and close
to the forest. The owner was an old Portuguese gentleman named Danin,
who lived at his tile manufactory at the mouth of the Una, a small river
lying two miles below Para. We resolved to walk to his place through the
forest, a distance of three miles, although the road was said to be scarcely
passable at this season of the year, and the Una much more easily
accessible by boat. We were glad, however, of this early opportunity of
traversing the rich swampy forest which we had admired so much from the
deck of the ship; so, about eleven o'clock one sunny morning, after
procuring the necessary information about the road, we set off in that
direction. This part of the forest afterwards became one of my best hunting-
grounds. I will narrate the incidents of the walk, giving my first
impressions and some remarks on the wonderful vegetation. The forest is
very similar on most of the low lands, and therefore, one description will do
for all.
On leaving the town we walked along a straight, suburban road constructed

above the level of the surrounding land. It had low swampy ground on each
side, built upon, however, and containing several spacious rocinhas which
were embowered in magnificent foliage. Leaving the last of these, we
arrived at a part where the lofty forest towered up like a wall five or six
yards from the edge of the path to the height of, probably, a hundred feet.
The tree trunks were only seen partially here and there, nearly the whole
frontage from ground to summit being covered with a diversified drapery of
creeping plants, all of the most vivid shades of green; scarcely a flower to
be seen, except in some places a solitary scarlet passion-flower set in the
CHAPTER II 40
green mantle like a star. The low ground on the borders between the forest
wall and the road was encumbered with a tangled mass of bushy and
shrubby vegetation, amongst which prickly mimosas were very numerous,
covering the other bushes in the same way as brambles do in England.
Other dwarf mimosas trailed along the ground close to the edge of the road,
shrinking at the slightest touch of the feet as we passed by. Cassia trees,
with their elegant pinnate foliage and conspicuous yellow flowers, formed a
great proportion of the lower trees, and arborescent arums grew in groups
around the swampy hollows. Over the whole fluttered a larger number of
brilliantly-coloured butterflies than we had yet seen; some wholly orange or
yellow (Callidryas), others with excessively elongated wings, sailing
horizontally through the air, coloured black, and varied with blue, red, and
yellow (Heliconii). One magnificent grassy-green species (Colaenis Dido)
especially attracted our attention. Near the ground hovered many other
smaller species very similar in appearance to those found at home, attracted
by the flowers of numerous leguminous and other shrubs. Besides
butterflies, there were few other insects except dragonflies, which were in
great numbers, similar in shape to English species, but some of them
looking conspicuously different on account of their fiery red colours.
After stopping repeatedly to examine and admire, we at length walked

onward. The road then ascended slightly, and the soil and vegetation
became suddenly altered in character. The shrubs here were grasses, low
sedges and other plants, smaller in foliage than those growing in moist
grounds. The forest was second growth, low, consisting of trees which had
the general aspect of laurels and other evergreens in our gardens at home--
the leaves glossy and dark green. Some of them were elegantly veined and
hairy (Melastomae), while many, scattered amongst the rest, had smaller
foliage (Myrtles), but these were not sufficient to subtract much from the
general character of the whole.
The sun, now, for we had loitered long on the road, was exceedingly
powerful. The day was most brilliant; the sky without a cloud. In fact, it
was one of those glorious days which announce the commencement of the
dry season. The radiation of heat from the sandy ground was visible by the
quivering motion of the air above it. We saw or heard no mammals or
CHAPTER II 41
birds; a few cattle belonging to an estate down a shady lane were

congregated, panting, under a cluster of wide spreading trees. The very soil
was hot to our feet, and we hastened onward to the shade of the forest
which we could see not far ahead. At length, on entering it, what a relief!
We found ourselves in a moderately broad pathway or alley, where the
branches of the trees crossed overhead and produced a delightful shade.
The woods were at first of recent growth, dense, and utterly impenetrable;
the ground, instead of being clothed with grass and shrubs as in the woods
of Europe, was everywhere carpeted with Lycopodiums (fern-shaped
mosses). Gradually the scene became changed. We descended slightly from
an elevated, dry, and sandy area to a low and swampy one; a cool air
breathed on our faces, and a mouldy smell of rotting vegetation greeted us.
The trees were now taller, the underwood less dense, and we could obtain
glimpses into the wilderness on all sides. The leafy crowns of the trees,
scarcely two of which could be seen together of the same kind, were now
far away above us, in another world as it were. We could only see at times,
where there was a break above, the tracery of the foliage against the clear
blue sky. Sometimes the leaves were palmate, or of the shape of large
outstretched hands; at others, finely cut or feathery, like the leaves of
Mimosae. Below, the tree trunks were everywhere linked together by sipos;
the woody, flexible stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is
far away above, mingled with that of the taller independent trees. Some
were twisted in strands like cables, others had thick stems contorted in
every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree trunks, or
forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again,
were of zigzag shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping
from the ground to a giddy height.
It interested me much afterwards to find that these climbing trees do not

form any particular family. There is no distinct group of plants whose
special habit is to climb, but species of many and the most diverse families,
the bulk of whose members are not climbers, seem to have been driven by
circumstances to adopt this habit. There is even a climbing genus of palms
(Desmoncus), the species of which are called, in the Tupi language,
Jacitara. These have slender, thickly-spined, and flexuous stems, which
twine about the taller trees from one to the other, and grow to an incredible
CHAPTER II 42
length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate shape characteristic of
the family, are emitted from the stems at long intervals, instead of being
collected into a dense crown, and have at their tips a number of long
recurved spines. These structures are excellent contrivances to enable the
trees to secure themselves by in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to
the traveller, for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch the hat or
clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he passes. The number
and variety of climbing trees in the Amazons forests are interesting, taken
in connection with the fact of the very general tendency of the animals,
also, to become climbers.
All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American, monkeys are climbers.
There is no group answering to the baboons of the Old World, which live
on the ground. The Gallinaceous birds of the country, the representatives of
the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa, are all adapted by the position
of the toes to perch on trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that
they are to be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to the bears
(Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely arboreal,
and has a long flexible tail like that of certain monkeys. Many other similar
instances could be enumerated, but I will mention only the Geodephaga, or
carnivorous ground beetles, a great proportion of whose genera and species
in these forest regions are, by the structure of their feet, fitted to live
exclusively on the branches and leaves of trees.
Many of the woody lianas suspended from trees are not climbers, but the
air-roots of epiphytous plants (Aroideae), which sit on the stronger boughs
of the trees above and hang down straight as plumb-lines. Some are
suspended singly, others in clusters; some reach halfway to the ground and
others touch it, striking their rootlets into the earth. The underwood in this
part of the forest was composed partly of younger trees of the same species
as their taller neighbours, and partly of palms of many species, some of
them twenty to thirty feet in height, others small and delicate, with stems no
thicker than a finger. These latter (different kinds of Bactris) bore small
bunches of fruit, red or black, often containing a sweet, grape-like juice.
CHAPTER II 43
Further on, the ground became more swampy and we had some difficulty in
picking our way. The wild banana (Urania Amazonica) here began to
appear, and, as it grew in masses, imparted a new aspect to the scene. The
leaves of this beautiful plant are like broad-sword blades, eight feet in
length and a foot broad; they rise straight upwards, alternately, from the top
of a stem five or six feet high. Numerous kinds of plants with leaves similar
in shape to these but smaller clothed the ground. Amongst them were
species of Marantaceae, some of which had broad glossy leaves, with long
leaf-stalks radiating from joints in a reed-like stem. The trunks of the trees
were clothed with climbing ferns, and Pothos plants with large, fleshy,
heart-shaped leaves. Bamboos and other tall grass and reed-like plants
arched over the pathway. The appearance of this part of the forest was
strange in the extreme; description can convey no adequate idea of it. The
reader who has visited Kew may form some notion by conceiving a
vegetation like that in the great palm-house, spread over a large tract of
swampy ground, but he must fancy it mingled with large exogenous trees
similar to our oaks and elms covered with creepers and parasites, and figure
to himself the ground encumbered with fallen and rotting trunks, branches,
and leaves; the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking
with moisture.
At length we emerged from the forest, on the banks of the Una, near its
mouth. It was here about one hundred yards wide. The residence of Senor
Danin stood on the opposite shore; a large building, whitewashed and
red-tiled as usual, raised on wooden piles above the humid ground. The
second story was the part occupied by the family, and along it was an open
verandah, where people, both male and female, were at work. Below were
several negroes employed carrying clay on their heads. We called out for a
boat, and one of them crossed over to fetch us. Senor Danin received us
with the usual formal politeness of the Portuguese, he spoke English very
well, and after we had arranged our business, we remained conversing with
him on various subjects connected with the country. Like all employers in
this province, he was full of one topic--the scarcity of hands. It appeared
that he had made great exertions to introduce white labour, but had failed,
after having brought numbers of men from Portugal and other countries
under engagement to work for him. They all left him one by one soon after
CHAPTER II 44
their arrival. The abundance of unoccupied land, the liberty that exists, a
state of things produced by the half-wild canoe-life of the people, and the
case with which a mere subsistence can be obtained with moderate work,
tempt even the best-disposed to quit regular labour as soon as they can. He
complained also of the dearness of slaves, owing to the prohibition of the
African traffic, telling us that formerly a slave could be bought for 120
dollars, whereas they are now difficult to procure at 400 dollars.
Mr. Danin told us that he had travelled in England and the United States,
and that he had now two sons completing their education in those countries.
I afterwards met with many enterprising persons of Mr. Danin's order, both
Brazilians and Portuguese; their great ambition is to make a voyage to
Europe or North America, and to send their sons to be educated there. The
land on which his establishment is built, he told us, was an artificial
embankment on the swamp; the end of the house was built on a projecting
point overlooking the river, so that a good view was obtained, from the
sitting-rooms, of the city and the shipping. We learned there was formerly a
large and flourishing cattle estate on this spot, with an open grassy space
like a park. On Sundays, gay parties of forty or fifty persons used to come
by land and water, in carriages and gay galliotas, to spend the day with the
hospitable owner. Since the political disorders which I have already
mentioned, decay had come upon this as on most other large establishments
in the country. The cultivated grounds, and the roads leading to them, were
now entirely overgrown with dense forest. When we were ready to depart,
Senor Danin lent a canoe and two negroes to take us to the city, where we
arrived in the evening after a day rich in new experiences.
Shortly afterwards, we took possession of our new residence. The house

was a square building, consisting of four equal-sized rooms; the tiled roof
projected all round, so as to form a broad verandah, cool and pleasant to sit
and work in. The cultivated ground, which appeared as if newly cleared
from the forest, was planted with fruit trees and small plots of coffee and
mandioca. The entrance to the grounds was by an iron-grille gateway from
a grassy square, around which were built the few houses and palm-
thatched huts which then constituted the village. The most important
building was the chapel of our Lady of Nazareth, which stood opposite our
CHAPTER II 45
place. The saint here enshrined was a great favourite with all orthodox
Paraenses, who attributed to her the performance of many miracles. The
image was to be seen on the altar, a handsome doll about four feet high,
wearing a silver crown and a garment of blue silk, studded with golden
stars. In and about the chapel were the offerings that had been made to her,
proofs of the miracles which she had performed. There were models of
legs, arms, breasts, and so forth, which she had cured. But most curious of
all was a ship's boat, deposited here by the crew of a Portuguese vessel
which had foundered, a year or two before our arrival, in a squall off
Cayenne; part of them having been saved in the boat, after invoking the
protection of the saint here enshrined. The annual festival in honour of our
Lady of Nazareth is the greatest of the Para holidays; many persons come
to it from the neighbouring city of Maranham, 300 miles distant. Once the
President ordered the mail steamer to be delayed two days at Para for the
convenience of these visitors. The popularity of the festival is partly owing
to the beautiful weather that prevails when it takes place, namely, in the
middle of the fine season, on the ten days preceding the full moon in
October or November. Para is then seen at its best. The weather is not too
dry, for three weeks never follow in succession without a shower; so that
all the glory of verdure and flowers can be enjoyed with clear skies. The
moonlit nights are then especially beautiful, the atmosphere is transparently
clear, and the light sea-breeze produces an agreeable coolness.
We now settled ourselves for a few months' regular work. We had the
forest on three sides of us; it was the end of the wet season; most species of
birds had finished moulting, and every day the insects increased in number
and variety. Behind the rocinha, after several days' exploration, I found a
series of pathways through the woods, which led to the Una road; about
half way was the house in which the celebrated travellers Spix and Martius
resided during their stay at Para, in 1819. It was now in a neglected
condition, and the plantations were overgrown with bushes. The paths
hereabout were very productive of insects, and being entirely under shade,
were very pleasant for strolling. Close to our doors began the main forest
road. It was broad enough for two horsemen abreast, and branched off in
three directions; the main line going to the village of Ourem, a distance of
fifty miles. This road formerly extended to Maranham, but it had been long
CHAPTER II 46
in disuse and was now grown up, being scarcely passable between Para and
Ourem.
Our researches were made in various directions along these paths, and
every day produced us a number of new and interesting species. Collecting,
preparing our specimens, and making notes, kept us well occupied. One
day was so much like another, that a general description of the diurnal
round of incidents, including the sequence of natural phenomena, will be
sufficient to give an idea of how days pass to naturalists under the equator.
We used to rise soon after dawn, when Isidoro would go down to the city,
after supplying us with a cup of coffee, to purchase the fresh provisions for
the day. The two hours before breakfast were devoted to ornithology. At
that early period of the day the sky was invariably cloudless (the
thermometer marking 72 or 73 Fahr.); the heavy dew or the previous night's
rain, which lay on the moist foliage, becoming quickly dissipated by the
glowing sun, which rising straight out of the east, mounted rapidly towards
the zenith. All nature was fresh, new leaf and flower- buds expanding
rapidly. Some mornings a single tree would appear in flower amidst what
was the preceding evening a uniform green mass of forest--a dome of
blossom suddenly created as if by magic. The birds were all active; from
the wild-fruit trees, not far off, we often heard the shrill yelping of the
Toucans (Ramphastos vitellinus). Small flocks of parrots flew over on most
mornings, at a great height, appearing in distinct relief against the blue sky,
always two-by-two chattering to each other, the pairs being separated by
regular intervals; their bright colours, however, were not apparent at that
height. After breakfast we devoted the hours from 10 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. to
entomology; the best time for insects in the forest being a little before the
greatest heat of the day.
The heat increased rapidly towards two o'clock (92 and 93 Fahr.), by which
time every voice of bird or mammal was hushed; only in the trees was
heard at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, which were so
moist and fresh in early morning, now become lax and drooping; the
flowers shed their petals. Our neighbours, the Indian and Mulatto
inhabitants of the open palm- thatched huts, as we returned home fatigued
CHAPTER II 47
with our ramble, were either asleep in their hammocks or seated on mats in
the shade, too languid even to talk. On most days in June and July a heavy
shower would fall some time in the afternoon, producing a most welcome
coolness. The approach of the rain-clouds was after a uniform fashion very
interesting to observe. First, the cool sea- breeze, which commenced to
blow about ten o'clock, and which had increased in force with the
increasing power of the sun, would flag and finally die away. The heat and
electric tension of the atmosphere would then become almost
insupportable. Languor and uneasiness would seize on every one, even the
denizens of the forest, betraying it by their motions. White clouds would
appear in the cast and gather into cumuli, with an increasing blackness
along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon would become
almost suddenly black, and this would spread upwards, the sun at length
becoming obscured. Then the rush of a mighty wind is heard through the
forest, swaying the tree-tops; a vivid flash of lightning bursts forth, then a
crash of thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. Such storms soon
cease, leaving bluish-black, motionless clouds in the sky until night.
Meantime all nature is refreshed; but heaps of flower-petals and fallen
leaves are seen under the trees. Towards evening life revives again, and the
ringing uproar is resumed from bush and tree. The following morning the
sun again rises in a cloudless sky, and so the cycle is completed; spring,
summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical day.
The days are more or less like this throughout the year in this country. A
little difference exists between the dry and wet seasons; but generally, the
dry season, which lasts from July to December, is varied with showers, and
the wet, from January to June, with sunny days. It results from this, that the
periodical phenomena of plants and animals do not take place at about the
same time in all species, or in the individuals of any given species, as they
do in temperate countries. Of course there is no hybernation; nor, as the dry
season is not excessive, is there any summer torpidity as in some tropical
countries. Plants do not flower or shed their leaves, nor do birds moult,
pair, or breed simultaneously. In Europe, a woodland scene has its spring,
its summer, its autumn, and its winter aspects. In the equatorial forests the
aspect is the same or nearly so every day in the year: budding, flowering,
fruiting, and leaf shedding are always going on in one species or other. The
CHAPTER II 48
activity of birds and insects proceeds without interruption, each species

having its own separate times; the colonies of wasps, for instance, do not
die off annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold climates; but the
succession of generations and colonies goes on incessantly. It is never
either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of all
three. With the day and night always of equal length, the atmospheric
disturbances of each day neutralising themselves before each succeeding
morn; with the sun in its course proceeding midway across the sky, and the
daily temperature the same within two or three degrees throughout the
year--how grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of
Nature under the equator!
Our evenings were generally fully employed preserving our collections,

and making notes. We dined at four, and took tea about seven o'clock.
Sometimes we walked to the city to see Brazilian life or enjoy the pleasures
of European and American society. And so the time passed away from June
15th to August 26th. During this period we made two excursions of greater
length to the rice and saw-mills of Magoary, an establishment owned by an
American gentleman, Mr. Upton, situated on the banks of a creek in the
heart of the forest, about twelve miles from Para. I will narrate some of the
incidents of these excursions, and give an account of the more interesting
observations made on the Natural History and inhabitants of these interior
creeks and forests.
Our first trip to the mills was by land. The creek on whose banks they
stand, the Iritiri, communicates with the river Pars, through another larger
creek, the Magoary; so that there is a passage by water; but this is about
twenty miles round. We started at sunrise, taking Isidoro with us. The road
plunged at once into the forest after leaving Nazareth, so that in a few
minutes we were enveloped in shade. For some distance the woods were of
second growth, the original forest near the town having been formerly
cleared or thinned. They were dense and impenetrable on account of the
close growth of the young trees and the mass of thorny shrubs and creepers.
These thickets swarmed with ants and ant-thrushes; they were also
frequented by a species of puff-throated manikin, a little bird which flies
occasionally across the road, emitting a strange noise, made, I believe, with
CHAPTER II 49
its wings, and resembling the clatter of a small wooden rattle.
A mile or a mile and a half further on, the character of the woods began to
change, and we then found ourselves in the primaeval forest. The
appearance was greatly different from that of the swampy tract I have
already described. The land was rather more elevated and undulating; the
many swamp plants with their long and broad leaves were wanting, and
there was less underwood, although the trees were wider apart. Through
this wilderness the road continued for seven or eight miles. The same
unbroken forest extends all the way to Maranham and in other directions, as
we were told, a distance of about 300 miles southward and eastward of
Para. In almost every hollow part the road was crossed by a brook, whose
cold, dark, leaf-stained waters were bridged over by tree trunks. The ground
was carpeted, as usual, by Lycopodiums, but it was also encumbered with
masses of vegetable debris and a thick coating of dead leaves. Fruits of
many kinds were scattered about, amongst which were many sorts of beans,
some of the pods a foot long, flat and leathery in texture, others hard as
stone. In one place there was a quantity of large empty wooden vessels,
which Isidoro told us fell from the Sapucaya tree. They are called Monkey's
drinking-cups (Cuyas de Macaco), and are the capsules which contain the
nuts sold under the name just mentioned, in Covent Garden Market. At the
top of the vessel is a circular hole, in which a natural lid fits neatly. When
the nuts are ripe this lid becomes loosened and the heavy cup falls with a
crash, scattering the nuts over the ground. The tree which yields the nut
(Lecythis ollaria), is of immense height. It is closely allied to the Brazil-nut
tree (Bertholletia excelsa), whose seeds are also enclosed in large woody
vessels; but these have no lid, and fall to the ground intact. This is the
reason why the one kind of nut is so much dearer than the other. The
Sapucaya is not less abundant, probably, than the Bertholletia, but its nuts
in falling are scattered about and eaten by wild animals; whilst the full,
whole capsules of Brazil-nuts are collected by the natives.
What attracted us chiefly were the colossal trees. The general run of trees
had not remarkably thick stems; the great and uniform height to which they
grow without emitting a branch, was a much more noticeable feature than
their thickness; but at intervals of a furlong or so a veritable giant towered
CHAPTER II 50
up. Only one of these monstrous trees can grow within a given space; it
monopolises the domain, and none but individuals of much inferior size can
find a footing near it. The cylindrical trunks of these larger trees were
generally about twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference. Von Martius
mentions having measured trees in the Para district belonging to various
species (Symphonia coccinea, Lecythis sp. and Crataeva Tapia), which
were fifty to sixty feet in girth at the point where they become cylindrical.
The height of the vast column-like stems could not be less than 100 feet
from the ground to their lowest branch. Mr. Leavens, at the sawmills, told
me they frequently squared logs for sawing a hundred feet long, of the Pao
d'Arco and the Massaranduba. The total height of these trees, stem and
crown together, may be estimated at from 180 to 200 feet; where one of
them stands, the vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees as a
domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city.
A very remarkable feature in these trees is the growth of buttress-shaped

projections around the lower part of their stems. The spaces between these
buttresses, which are generally thin walls of wood, form spacious
chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a stable; some of them are
large enough to hold a half- dozen persons. The purpose of these structures
is as obvious, at the first glance, as that of the similar props of brickwork
which support a high wall. They are not peculiar to one species, but are
common to most of the larger forest trees. Their nature and manner of
growth are explained when a series of young trees of different ages is
examined. It is then seen that they are the roots which have raised
themselves ridge-like out of the earth; growing gradually upwards as the
increasing height of the tree required augmented support. Thus, they are
plainly intended to sustain the massive crown and trunk in these crowded
forests, where lateral growth of the roots in the earth is rendered difficult by
the multitude of competitors.
The other grand forest trees whose native names we learned, were the
Moiratinga (the White or King tree), probably the same as, or allied to, the
Mora Excelsa, which Sir Robert Schomburgh discovered in British Guiana;
the Samauma (Eriodendron Samauma) and the Massaranduba, or Cow tree.
The last-mentioned is the most remarkable. We had already heard a good
CHAPTER II 51
deal about this tree, and about its producing from its bark a copious supply
of milk as pleasant to drink as that of the cow. We had also eaten its fruit in
Para, where it is sold in the streets by negro market women; and had heard
a good deal of the durableness in water of its timber. We were glad,
therefore, to see this wonderful tree growing in its native wilds. It is one of
the largest of the forest monarchs, and is peculiar in appearance on account
of its deeply-scored reddish and ragged bark. A decoction of the bark, I was
told, is used as a red dye for cloth. A few days afterwards we tasted its
milk, which was drawn from dry logs that had been standing many days in
the hot sun, at the saw-mills. It was pleasant with coffee, but had a slight
rankness when drunk pure; it soon thickens to a glue, which is excessively
tenacious, and is often used to cement broken crockery. I was told that it
was not safe to drink much of it, for a slave had recently nearly lost his life
through taking it too freely.
In some parts of the road ferns were conspicuous objects. But I afterwards
found them much more numerous on the Maranham road, especially in one
place where the whole forest glade formed a vast fernery; the ground was
covered with terrestrial species, and the tree trunks clothed with climbing
and epiphytous kinds. I saw no tree ferns in the Para district; they belong to
hilly regions; some occur, however, on the Upper Amazons.
Such were the principal features in the vegetation of the wilderness; but
where were the flowers? To our great disappointment we saw none, or only
such as were insignificant in appearance. Orchids are very rare in the dense
forests of the low lands. I believe it is now tolerably well ascertained that
the majority of forest trees in equatorial Brazil have small and
inconspicuous flowers. Flower-frequenting insects are also rare in the
forest. Of course they would not be found where their favourite food was
wanting, but I always noticed that even where flowers occurred in the
forest, few or no insects were seen upon them. In the open country or
campos of Santarem on the Lower Amazons, flowering trees and bushes are
more abundant, and there a large number of floral insects are attracted. The
forest bees of South America belonging to the genera Melipona and
Euglossa are more frequently seen feeding on the sweet sap which exudes
from the trees or on the excrement of birds on leaves, rather than on
CHAPTER II 52
flowers.
We were disappointed also in not meeting with any of the larger animals in
the forest. There was no tumultuous movement, or sound of life. We did
not see or hear monkeys, and no tapir or jaguar crossed our path. Birds,
also, appeared to be exceedingly scarce. We heard, however, occasionally,
the long-drawn, wailing note of the Inambu, a kind of partridge (Crypturus
cincreus?); and, also, in the hollows on the banks, of the rivulets, the noisy
notes of another bird, which seemed to go in pairs, amongst the tree-tops,
calling to each other as they went. These notes resounded through the
wilderness. Another solitary bird had a most sweet and melancholy song; it
consisted simply of a few notes, uttered in a plaintive key, commencing
high, and descending by harmonic intervals. It was probably a species of
warbler of the genus Trichas. All these notes of birds are very striking and
characteristic of the forest.
I afterwards saw reason to modify my opinion, founded on these first

impressions, with regard to the amount and variety of animal life in this and
other parts of the Amazonian forests. There is, in fact, a great variety of
mammals, birds, and reptiles, but they are widely scattered, and all
excessively shy of man. The region is so extensive, and uniform in the
forest clothing of its surface, that it is only at long intervals that animals are
seen in abundance when some particular spot is found which is more
attractive than others. Brazil, moreover, is poor throughout in terrestrial
mammals, and the species are of small size; they do not, therefore, form a
conspicuous feature in its forests. The huntsman would be disappointed
who expected to find here flocks of animals similar to the buffalo herds of
North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of ponderous
pachyderms of Southern Africa. The largest and most interesting portion of
the Brazilian mammal fauna is arboreal in its habits; this feature of the
animal denizens of these forests I have already alluded to. The most
intensely arboreal animals in the world are the South American monkeys of
the family Cebidae, many of which have a fifth hand for climbing in their
prehensile tails, adapted for this function by their strong muscular
development, and the naked palms under their tips. This seems to teach us
that the South American fauna has been slowly adapted to a forest life, and,
CHAPTER II 53
therefore, that extensive forests must have always existed since the region
was first peopled by mammalia. But to this subject, and to the natural
history of the monkeys, of which thirty-eight species inhabit the Amazon
region, I shall have to return.
We often read, in books of travels, of the silence and gloom of the Brazilian
forests. They are realities, and the impression deepens on a longer
acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that pensive or mysterious
character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a
sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a
sudden yell or scream will startle one; this comes from some defenseless
fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy
boa-constrictor. Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most
fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's
buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness, which the forest is
calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. Often,
even in the still hours of midday, a sudden crash will be heard resounding
afar through the wilderness, as some great bough or entire tree falls to the
ground. There are, besides, many sounds which it is impossible to account
for. I found the natives generally as much at a loss in this respect as myself.
Sometimes a sound is heard like the clang of an iron bar against a hard,
hollow tree, or a piercing cry rends the air; these are not repeated, and the
succeeding silence tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they
make on the mind. With the native it is always the Curupira, the wild man
or spirit of the forest, which produces all noises they are unable to explain.
For myths are the rude theories which mankind, in the infancy of
knowledge, invent to explain natural phenomena. The Curupira is a
mysterious being, whose attributes are uncertain, for they vary according to
locality. Sometimes he is described as a kind of orangutang, being covered
with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees. At others, he is said to have
cloven feet and a bright red face. He has a wife and children, and
sometimes comes down to the rocas to steal the mandioca. At one time I
had a Mameluco youth in my service, whose head was full of the legends
and superstitions of the country. He always went with me into the forest; in
fact, I could not get him to go alone, and whenever we heard any of the
strange noises mentioned above. he used to tremble with fear. He would
CHAPTER II 54
crouch down behind me, and beg of me to turn back; his alarm ceasing only
after he had made a charm to protect us from the Curupira. For this
purpose, he took a young palm leaf, plaited it, and formed it into a ring,
which he hung to a branch on our track.
At length, after a six hour walk, we arrived at our destination, the last mile
or two having been again through second-growth forest. The mills formed a
large pile of buildings, pleasantly situated in a cleared tract of land, many
acres in extent, and everywhere surrounded by the perpetual forest. We
were received in the kindest manner by the overseer, Mr. Leavens, who
showed us all that was interesting about the place, and took us to the best
spots in the neighbourhood for birds and insects. The mills were built a
long time ago by a wealthy Brazilian. They had belonged to Mr. Upton for
many years. I was told that when the dark-skinned revolutionists were
preparing for their attack on Para, they occupied the place, but not the
slightest injury was done to the machinery or building, for the leaders said
it was against the Portuguese and their party that they were at war, not
against the other foreigners.
The Iritiri Creek at the mills is only a few yards wide; it winds about
between two lofty walls of forest for some distance, then becomes much
broader, and finally joins the Magoary. There are many other ramifications,
creeks or channels, which lead to retired hamlets and scattered houses,
inhabited by people of mixed white, Indian, and negro descent. Many of
them did business with Mr. Leavens, bringing for sale their little harvests of
rice, or a few logs of timber. It was interesting to see them in their little,
heavily-laden montarias. Sometimes the boats were managed by handsome,
healthy young lads, loosely clad in a straw hat, white shirt, and dark blue
trousers, turned up to the knee. They steered, paddled, and managed the
varejao (the boating pole), with much grace and dexterity.
We made many excursions down the Iritiri, and saw much of these creeks;
besides, our second visit to the mills was by water. The Magoary is a
magnificent channel; the different branches form quite a labyrinth, and the
land is everywhere of little elevation. All these smaller rivers, throughout
the Para Estuary, are of the nature of creeks. The land is so level, that the
CHAPTER II 55
short local rivers have no sources and downward currents like rivers as we
generally understand them. They serve the purpose of draining the land, but
instead of having a constant current one way, they have a regular ebb and
flow with the tide. The natives call them, in the Tupi language, Igarapes, or
canoe-paths. The igarapes and furos or channels, which are infinite in
number in this great river delta, are characteristic of the country. The land
is everywhere covered with impenetrable forests; the houses and villages
are all on the waterside, and nearly all communication is by water. This
semi-aquatic life of the people is one of the most interesting features of the
country. For short excursions, and for fishing in still waters, a small boat,
called montaria, is universally used. It is made of five planks; a broad one
for the bottom, bent into the proper shape by the action of heat, two narrow
ones for the sides, and two small triangular pieces for stem and stern. It has
no rudder; the paddle serves for both steering and propelling. The montaria
takes here the place of the horse, mule, or camel of other regions. Besides
one or more montarias, almost every family has a larger canoe, called
igarite. This is fitted with two masts, a rudder, and keel, and has an arched
awning or cabin near the stern, made of a framework of tough lianas
thatched with palm leaves. In the igarite they will cross stormy rivers
fifteen or twenty miles broad. The natives are all boat-builders. It is often
remarked, by white residents, that an Indian is a carpenter and shipwright
by intuition. It is astonishing to see in what crazy vessels these people will
risk themselves. I have seen Indians cross rivers in a leaky montaria, when
it required the nicest equilibrium to keep the leak just above water; a
movement of a hair's breadth would send all to the bottom, but they
managed to cross in safety. They are especially careful when they have
strangers under their charge, and it is the custom of Brazilian and
Portuguese travellers to leave the whole management to them. When they
are alone they are more reckless, and often have to swim for their lives. If a
squall overtakes them as they are crossing in a heavily-laden canoe, they all
jump overboard and swim about until the heavy sea subsides, then they
re-embark.
A few words on the aboriginal population of the Para estuary will not be
out of place here. The banks of the Para were originally inhabited by a
number of distinct tribes, who, in their habits, resembled very much the
CHAPTER II 56
natives of the sea-coast from Maranham to Bahia. It is related that one large
tribe, the Tupinambas, migrated from Pernambuco to the Amazons. One
fact seems to be well-established, namely, that all the coast tribes were far
more advanced in civilisation, and milder in their manners, than the savages
who inhabited the interior lands of Brazil. They were settled in villages,
and addicted to agriculture. They navigated the rivers in large canoes,
called ubas, made of immense hollowed-out tree trunks; in these they used
to go on war expeditions, carrying in the prows their trophies and calabash
rattles, whose clatter was meant to intimidate their enemies. They were
gentle in disposition, and received the early Portuguese settlers with great
friendliness. The inland savages, on the other hand, led a wandering life, as
they do at the present time, only coming down occasionally to rob the
plantations of the coast tribes, who always entertained the greatest enmity
towards them.
The original Indian tribes of the district are now either civilised, or have
amalgamated with the white and negro immigrants. Their distinguishing
tribal names have long been forgotten, and the race bears now the general
appellation of Tapuyo, which seems to have been one of the names of the
ancient Tupinambas. The Indians of the interior, still remaining in the
savage state, are called by the Brazilians Indios, or Gentios (Heathens). All
the semi-civilised Tapuyos of the villages, and in fact the inhabitants of
retired places generally, speak the Lingoa geral, a language adapted by the
Jesuit missionaries from the original idiom of the Tupinambas. The
language of the Guaranis, a nation living on the banks of the Paraguay, is a
dialect of it, and hence it is called by philologists the Tupi- Guarani
language; printed grammars of it are always on sale at the shops of the Para
booksellers. The fact of one language having been spoken over so wide an
extent of country as that from the Amazons to Paraguay, is quite an isolated
one in this country, and points to considerable migrations of the Indian
tribes in former times. At present the languages spoken by neighbouring
tribes on the banks of the interior rivers are totally distinct; on the Jurua,
even scattered hordes belonging to the same tribe are not able to understand
each other.
CHAPTER II 57
The civilised Tapuyo of Para differs in no essential point, in physical or

moral qualities, from the Indian of the interior. He is more stoutly built,
being better fed than some of them; but in this respect there are great
differences amongst the tribes themselves. He presents all the chief
characteristics of the American red man. The skin of a coppery brown
colour, the features of the face broad, and the hair black, thick, and straight.
He is generally about the middle height, thick-set, has a broad muscular
chest, well-shaped but somewhat thick legs and arms, and small hands and
feet. The cheek bones are not generally prominent; the eyes are black, and
seldom oblique like those of the Tartar races of Eastern Asia, which are
supposed to have sprung from the same original stock as the American red
man. The features exhibit scarcely any mobility of expression; this is
connected with the excessively apathetic and undemonstrative character of
the race. They never betray, in fact they do not feel keenly, the emotions of
joy, grief, wonder, fear, and so forth. They can never be excited to
enthusiasm; but they have strong affections, especially those connected
with family. It is commonly stated by the whites and negroes that the
Tapuyo is ungrateful. Brazilian mistresses of households, who have much
experience of Indians, have always a long list of instances to relate to the
stranger, showing their base ingratitude. They certainly do not appear to
remember or think of repaying benefits, but this is probably because they
did not require, and do not value such benefits as their would-be masters
confer upon them. I have known instances of attachment and fidelity on the
part of Indians towards their masters, but these are exceptional cases. All
the actions of the Indian show that his ruling desire is to be let alone; he is
attached to his home, his quiet monotonous forest and river life; he likes to
go to towns occasionally, to see the wonders introduced by the white man,
but he has a great repugnance to living in the midst of the crowd; he prefers
handicraft to field labour, and especially dislikes binding himself to regular
labour for hire. He is shy and uneasy before strangers, but if they visit his
abode, he treats them well, for he has a rooted appreciation of the duty of
hospitality; there is a pride about him, and being naturally formal and
polite, he acts the host with great dignity. He withdraws from towns as soon
as the stir of civilisation begins to make itself felt. When we first arrived at
Para many Indian families resided there, for the mode of living at that time
was more like that of a large village than a city; but as soon as river
CHAPTER II 58
steamers and more business activity were introduced, they all gradually
took themselves away.
These characteristics of the Para Indians are applicable, of course, to some

extent, to the Mamelucos, who now constitute a great proportion of the
population. The inflexibility of character of the Indian, and his total
inability to accommodate himself to new arrangements, will infallibly lead
to his extinction, as immigrants, endowed with more supple organisations,
increase, and civilisation advances in the Amazon region. But, as the
different races amalgamate readily, and the offspring of white and Indian
often become distinguished Brazilian citizens, there is little reason to regret
the fate of the race. Formerly the Indian was harshly treated, and even now
he is so, in many parts of the interior. But, according to the laws of Brazil,
he is a free citizen, having equal privileges with the whites; and there are
very strong enactments providing against the enslaving and ill-treatment of
the Indians. The residents of the interior, who have no higher principles to
counteract instinctive selfishness or antipathy of race, cannot comprehend
why they are not allowed to compel Indians to work for them, seeing that
they will not do it of their own accord. The inevitable result of the conflict
of interests between a European and a weaker indigenous race, when the
two come in contact, is the sacrifice of the latter. In the Para district, the
Indians are no longer enslaved, but they are deprived of their lands, and this
they feel bitterly, as one of them, an industrious and worthy man, related to
me. Is not a similar state of things now exhibited in New Zealand, between
the Maoris and the English colonists?
It is very interesting to read of the bitter contests that were carried on from
the year 1570 to 1759, between the Portuguese immigrants in Brazil, and
the Jesuit and other missionaries. They were similar to those which have
recently taken place in South Africa, between the Beers and the English
missionaries, but they were on a much larger scale. The Jesuits, as far as I
could glean from tradition and history, were actuated by the same motives
as our missionaries; and they seemed like them to have been, in great
measure, successful, in teaching the pure and elevated Christian morality to
the simple natives. But the attempt was vain to protect the weaker race
from the inevitable ruin which awaited it in the natural struggle with the
CHAPTER II 59
stronger one; in 1759, the white colonists finally prevailed, the Jesuits were
forced to leave the country, and the fifty-one happy mission villages went
to ruin. Since then, the aboriginal race has gone on decreasing in numbers
under the treatment which it has received; it is now, as I have already
stated, protected by the laws of the central government.
On our second visit to the mills, we stayed ten days. There is a large
reservoir and also a natural lake near the place, both containing aquatic
plants, whose leaves rest on the surface like our water lilies, but they are
not so elegant as our nymphaea, either in leaf or flower. On the banks of
these pools grow quantities of a species of fan-leaved palm tree, the Carana,
whose stems are surrounded by whorls of strong spines. I sometimes took a
montaria, and paddled myself alone down the creek. One day I got upset,
and had to land on a grassy slope leading to an old plantation, where I ran
about naked while my clothes were being dried on a bush. The Iritiri Creek
is not so picturesque as many others which I subsequently explored.
Towards the Magoary, the banks at the edge of the water are clothed with
mangrove bushes, and beneath them the muddy banks into which the long
roots that hang down from the fruit before it leaves the branches strike their
fibres, swarm with crabs. On the lower branches the beautiful bird, Ardea
helias, is found. This is a small heron of exquisitely graceful shape and
mien; its plumage is minutely variegated with bars and spots of many
colours, like the wings of certain kinds of moths. It is difficult to see the
bird in the woods, on account of its sombre colours, and the shadiness of its
dwelling-places; but its note, a soft long-drawn whistle, often betrays its
hiding place. I was told by the Indians that it builds in trees, and that the
nest, which is made of clay, is beautifully constructed. It is a favourite
pet-bird of the Brazilians, who call it Pavao (pronounced Pavaong), or
peacock. I often had opportunities to observe its habits. It soon becomes
tame, and walks about the floors of houses picking up scraps of food or
catching insects, which it secures by walking gently to the place where they
settle, and spearing them with its long, slender beak. It allows itself to be
handled by children, and will answer to its name "Pavao! Pavao!" walking
up with a dainty, circumspect gait, and taking a fly or beetle from the hand.
CHAPTER III 60
During these rambles by land and water we increased our collections

considerably. Before we left the mills, we arranged a joint excursion to the
Tocantins. Mr. Leavens wished to ascend that river to ascertain if the
reports were true, that cedar grew abundantly between the lowermost
cataract and the mouth of the Araguava, and we agreed to accompany him.
While we were at the mills, a Portuguese trader arrived with a quantity of

worm-eaten logs of this cedar, which he had gathered from the floating
timber in the current of the main Amazons. The tree producing this wood,
which is named cedar on account of the similarity of its aroma to that of the
true cedars, is not, of course, a coniferous tree, as no member of that class
is found in equatorial America, at least in the Amazons region. It is,
according to Von Martius, the Cedrela Odorata, an exogen belonging to the
same order as the mahogany tree. The wood is light, and the tree is
therefore, on falling into the water, floated down with the river currents. It
must grow in great quantities somewhere in the interior, to judge from the
number of uprooted trees annually carried to the sea, and as the wood is
much esteemed for cabinet work and canoe building, it is of some
importance to learn where a regular supply can be obtained. We were glad
of course to arrange with Mr. Leavens, who was familiar with the language,
and an adept in river navigation--so we returned to Para to ship our
collections for England, and prepare for the journey to a new region.
CHAPTER III
PARA
Religious Holidays--Marmoset Monkeys--Serpents--Insects
Before leaving the subject of Para, where I resided, as already stated, in all
eighteen months, it will be necessary to give a more detailed account of
several matters connected with the customs of the people and the Natural
History of the neighbourhood, which have hitherto been only briefly
mentioned. I reserve an account of the trade and improved condition of
Para in 1859 for the end of this narrative.
CHAPTER III 61
During the first few weeks of our stay, many of those religious festivals
took place, which occupied so large a share of the time and thoughts of the
people. These were splendid affairs, wherein artistically-arranged
processions through the streets, accompanied by thousands of people,
military displays, the clatter of fireworks, and the clang of military music,
were superadded to pompous religious services in the churches. To those
who had witnessed similar ceremonies in the Southern countries of Europe,
there would be nothing remarkable perhaps in these doings, except their
taking place amidst the splendours of tropical nature; but to me they were
full of novelty, and were besides interesting as exhibiting much that was
peculiar in the manners of the people.
The festivals celebrate either the anniversaries of events concerning saints,

or those of the more important transactions in the life of Christ. To them
have been added, since the Independence, many gala days connected with
the events in the Brazilian national history; but these have all a
semi-religious character. The holidays had become so numerous, and
interfered so much with trade and industry towards the year 1852, that the
Brazilian Government was obliged to reduce them; obtaining the necessary
permission from Rome to abolish several which were of minor importance.
Many of those which have been retained are declining in importance since
the introduction of railways and steamboats, and the increased devotion of
the people to commerce; at the time of our arrival, however, they were in
full glory. The way they were managed was in this fashion. A general
manager or "Juiz" for each festival was elected by lot every year in the
vestry of the church, and to him were handed over all the paraphernalia
pertaining to the particular festival which he was chosen to manage; the
image of the saint, the banners, silver crowns and so forth. He then
employed a number of people to go the round of the parish, and collect
alms towards defraying the expenses. It was considered that the greater the
amount of money spent in wax candles, fireworks, music and feasting, the
greater the honour done to the saint. If the Juiz was a rich man, he seldom
sent out alms-gatherers, but celebrated the whole affair at his own expense,
which was sometimes to the extent of several hundred pounds. Each
festival lasted nine days (a novena), and in many cases refreshments for the
public were provided every evening. In the smaller towns a ball took place
CHAPTER III 62
two or three evenings during the novena, and on the last day there was a
grand dinner. The priest, of course, had to be paid very liberally, especially
for the sermon delivered on the Saint's Day or termination of the festival,
sermons being extra duty in Brazil.
There was much difference as to the accessories of these festivals between

the interior towns and villages and the capital; but little or no work was
done anywhere whilst they lasted, and they tended much to demoralise the
people. It was soon perceived that religion is rather the amusement of the
Paraenses, than their serious exercise. The ideas of the majority evidently
do not reach beyond the belief that all the proceedings are, in each case, in
honour of the particular wooden image enshrined at the church. The
uneducated Portuguese immigrants seemed to me to have very degrading
notions of religion.
I have often travelled in the company of these shining examples of

European enlightenment. They generally carry with them, wherever they
go, a small image of some favourite saint in their trunks, and when a squall
or any other danger arises, their first impulse is to rush to the cabin, take
out the image and clasp it to their lips, whilst uttering a prayer for
protection. The negroes and mulattos are similar in this respect to the low
Portuguese, but I think they show a purer devotional feeling; and in
conversation, I have always found them to be more rational in religious
views than the lower orders of Portuguese. As to the Indians; with the
exception of the more civilised families residing near the large towns, they
exhibit no religious sentiment at all. They have their own patron saint, St.
Thome, and celebrate his anniversary in the orthodox way, for they are fond
of observing all the formalities; but they think the feasting to be of equal
importance with the church ceremonies. At some of the festivals,
masquerading forms a large part of the proceedings, and then the Indians
really shine. They get up capital imitations of wild animals, dress
themselves to represent the Caypor and other fabulous creatures of the
forest, and act their parts throughout with great cleverness. When St.
Thome's festival takes place, every employer of Indians knows that all his
men will get drunk. The Indian, generally too shy to ask directly for
cashaca (rum), is then very bold; he asks for a frasco at once
CHAPTER III 63
(two-and-a-half bottles), and says, if interrogated, that he is going to fuddle

in honour of St. Thome.
In the city of Para, the provincial government assists to augment the

splendour of the religious holidays. The processions which traverse the
principal streets consist, in the first place, of the image of the saint, and
those of several other subordinate ones belonging to the same church; these
are borne on the shoulders of respectable householders, who volunteer for
the purpose--sometimes you will see your neighbour the grocer or the
carpenter groaning under the load. The priest and his crowd of attendants
precede the images, arrayed in embroidered robes, and protected by
magnificent sunshades--no useless ornament here, for the heat is very great
when the sun is not obscured. On each side of the long line the citizens
walk, clad in crimson silk cloaks and holding each a large lighted wax
candle. Behind follows a regiment or two of foot soldiers with their bands
of music, and last of all the crowd--the coloured people being cleanly
dressed and preserving a grave demeanour. The women are always in great
force, their luxuriant black hair decorated with jasmines, white orchids and
other tropical flowers. They are dressed in their usual holiday attire, gauze
chemises and black silk petticoats; their necks are adorned with links of
gold beads, which when they are slaves are generally the property of their
mistresses, who love thus to display their wealth.
At night, when festivals are going on in the grassy squares around the
suburban churches, there is really much to admire. A great deal that is
peculiar in the land and the life of its inhabitants can be seen best at those
times. The cheerful white church is brilliantly lighted up, and the music, not
of a very solemn description, peals forth from the open windows and doors.
Numbers of young gaudily-dressed negresses line the path to the church
doors with stands of liqueurs, sweetmeats, and cigarettes, which they sell to
the outsiders. A short distance off is heard the rattle of dice-boxes and
roulette at the open-air gambling- stalls. When the festival happens on
moonlit nights, the whole scene is very striking to a newcomer. Around the
square are groups of tall palm trees, and beyond it, over the illuminated
houses, appear the thick groves of mangoes near the suburban avenues,
from which comes the perpetual ringing din of insect life. The soft tropical
CHAPTER III 64
moonlight lends a wonderful charm to the whole.
The inhabitants are all out, dressed in their best. The upper classes, who
come to enjoy the fine evening and the general cheerfulness, are seated on
chairs around the doors of friendly houses. There is no boisterous
conviviality, but a quiet enjoyment seems to be felt everywhere, and a
gentle courtesy rules among all classes and colours. I have seen a
splendidly- dressed colonel, from the President's palace, walk up to a
mulatto, and politely ask his permission to take a light from his cigar. When
the service is over, the church bells are set ringing, a shower of rockets
mounts upwards, the bands strike up, and parties of coloured people in the
booths begin their dances. About ten o'clock the Brazilian national air is
played, and all disperse quietly and soberly to their homes.
At the festival of Corpus Christi, there was a very pretty arrangement. The
large green square of the Trinidade was lighted up all round with bonfires.
On one side a fine pavilion was erected, the upright posts consisting of real
fan-leaved palm trees--the Mauritia flexuosa, which had been brought from
the forest, stems and heads entire, and fixed in the ground. The booth was
illuminated with coloured lamps, and lined with red and white cloth. In it
were seated the ladies, not all of pure Caucasian blood, but presenting a
fine sample of Para beauty and fashion.
The grandest of all these festivals is that held in honour of Our Lady of
Nazareth: it is, I believe, peculiar to Para. As I have said before, it falls in
the second quarter of the moon, about the middle of the dry season--that is,
in October or November-- and lasts, like the others, nine days. On the first
day, a very extensive procession takes place, starting from the Cathedral,
whither the image of the saint had been conveyed some days previous, and
terminating at the chapel or hermitage, as it is called, of the saint at
Nazareth--a distance of more than two miles. The whole population turns
out on this occasion. All the soldiers, both of the line and the National
Guard, take part in it, each battalion accompanied by its band of music. The
civil authorities, also, with the President at their head, and the principal
citizens, including many of the foreign residents, join in the line. The boat
of the shipwrecked Portuguese vessel is carried after the saint on the
CHAPTER III 65
shoulders of officers or men of the Brazilian navy, and along with it are
borne the other symbols of the miracles which Our Lady is supposed to
have performed. The procession starts soon after the sun's heat begins to
moderate-- that is, about half-past four o'clock in the afternoon. When the
image is deposited in the chapel the festival is considered to be inaugurated,
and the village every evening becomes the resort of the pleasure-loving
population, the holiday portion of the programme being preceded, of
course, by a religious service in the chapel. The aspect of the place is then
that of a fair, without the humour and fun, but, at the same time, without the
noise and coarseness of similar holidays in England. Large rooms are set
apart for panoramic and other exhibitions, to which the public is admitted
gratis. In the course of each evening, large displays of fireworks take place,
all arranged according to a published programme of the festival.
The various ceremonies which take place during Lent seemed to me the
most impressive, and some of them were exceedingly well- arranged. The
people, both performers and spectators, conduct themselves with more
gravity on these occasions, and there is no holiday-making. Performances,
representing the last events in the life of Christ, are enacted in the churches
or streets in such a way as to remind one of the old miracle plays or
mysteries. A few days before Good Friday, a torchlight procession takes
place by night from one church to another, in which is carried a large
wooden image of Christ bent under the weight of the cross. The chief
members of the government assist, and the whole slowly moves to the
sound of muffled drums. A double procession is managed a few days
afterwards. The image of St. Mary is carried in one direction, and that of
the Saviour in another. The two images meet in the middle of one of the
most beautiful of the churches, which is previously filled to excess with the
multitudes anxious to witness the affecting meeting of mother and son a
few days before the crucifixion. The images are brought face to face in the
middle of the church, the crowd falls prostrate, and a lachrymose sermon is
delivered from the pulpit.
The whole thing, as well as many other spectacles arranged during the few
succeeding days, is highly theatrical and well calculated to excite the
religious emotions of the people-- although, perhaps, only temporarily. On
CHAPTER III 66
Good Friday the bells do not ring, all musical sounds are interdicted, and
the hours, night and day, are announced by the dismal noise of wooden
clappers, wielded by negroes stationed near the different churches. A
sermon is delivered in each church. In the middle of it, a scroll is suddenly
unfolded from the pulpit, upon which is an exaggerated picture of the
bleeding Christ. This act is accompanied by loud groans, which come from
stout-lunged individuals concealed in the vestry and engaged for the
purpose. The priest becomes greatly excited, and actually sheds tears. On
one of these occasions I squeezed myself into the crowd, and watched the
effect of the spectacle on the audience. Old Portuguese men and Brazilian
women seemed very much affected-- sobbing, beating their breasts, and
telling their beads. The negroes themselves behaved with great propriety,
but seemed moved more particularly by the pomp, the gilding, the dresses,
and the general display. Young Brazilians laughed. Several aborigines were
there, coolly looking on. One old Indian, who was standing near me, said,
in a derisive manner, when the sermon was over: "It's all very good; better
it could not be" (Esta todo bom; melhor nao pude ser).
The negroes of Para are very devout. They have built, by slow degrees, as I
was told, a fine church by their own unaided exertions. It is called Nossa
Senhora do Rosario, or Our Lady of the Rosary. During the first weeks of
our residence at Para, I frequently observed a line of negroes and negresses,
late at night, marching along the streets, singing a chorus. Each carried on
his or her head a quantity of building materials--stones, bricks, mortar, or
planks. I found they were chiefly slaves, who, after their hard day's work,
were contributing a little towards the construction of their church. The
materials had all been purchased by their own savings. The interior was
finished about a year afterwards, and is decorated, I thought, quite as
superbly as the other churches which were constructed, with far larger
means, by the old religious orders more than a century ago. Annually, the
negroes celebrate the festival of Nossa Senora de Rosario, and generally
make it a complete success.
I will now add a few more notes which I have accumulated on the subject
of the natural history, and then we shall have done, for the present, with
Para and its neighbourhood.
CHAPTER III 67
I have already mentioned that monkeys were rare in the immediate vicinity
of Para. I met with only three species in the forest near the city; they are
shy animals, and avoid the neighbourhood of towns, where they are subject
to much persecution by the inhabitants, who kill them for food. The only
kind which I saw frequently was the little Midas ursulus, one of the
Marmosets, a family peculiar to tropical America, and differing in many
essential points of structure and habits from all other apes. They are small
in size, and more like squirrels than true monkeys in their manner of
climbing. The nails, except those of the hind thumbs, are long and
claw-shaped like those of squirrels, and the thumbs of the fore extremities,
or hands, are not opposable to the other fingers. I do not mean to imply that
they have a near relationship to squirrels, which belong to the Rodents, an
inferior order of mammals; their resemblance to those animals is merely a
superficial one. They have two molar teeth less in each jaw than the
Cebidae, the other family of American monkeys; they agree with them,
however, in the sideway position of the nostrils, a character which
distinguishes both from all the monkeys of the old world. The body is long
and slender, clothed with soft hairs, and the tail, which is nearly twice the
length of the trunk, is not prehensile. The hind limbs are much larger in
volume than the anterior pair. The Midas ursulus is never seen in large
flocks; three or four is the greatest number observed together. It seems to
be less afraid of the neighbourhood of man than any other monkey. I
sometimes saw it in the woods which border the suburban streets, and once
I espied two individuals in a thicket behind the English consul's house at
Nazareth. Its mode of progression along the main boughs of the lofty trees
is like that of the squirrel; it does not ascend to the slender branches, or take
those wonderful flying leaps which the Cebidae do, whose prehensile tails
and flexible hands fit them for such headlong travelling. It confines itself to
the larger boughs and trunks of trees, the long nails being of great
assistance to the creature, enabling it to cling securely to the bark, and it is
often seen passing rapidly around the perpendicular cylindrical trunks. It is
a quick, restless, timid little creature, and has a great share of curiosity, for
when a person passes by under the trees along which a flock is running,
they always stop for a few moments to have a stare at the intruder.
CHAPTER III 68
In Para, Midas ursulus is often seen in a tame state in the houses of the
inhabitants. When full grown it is about nine inches long, independently of
the tail, which measures fifteen inches. The fur is thick, and black in colour,
with the exception of a reddish-brown streak down the middle of the back.
When first taken, or when kept tied up, it is very timid and irritable. It will
not allow itself to be approached, but keeps retreating backwards when any
one attempts to coax it. It is always in a querulous humour, uttering a
twittering, complaining noise; its dark, watchful eyes are expressive of
distrust, and observant of every movement which takes place near it. When
treated kindly, however, as it generally is in the houses of the natives, it
becomes very tame and familiar. I once saw one as playful as a kitten,
running about the house after the negro children, who fondled it to their
hearts' content. It acted somewhat differently towards strangers, and
seemed not to like them to sit in the hammock which was slung in the
room, leaping up, trying to bite, and otherwise annoying them. It is
generally fed sweet fruits, such as the banana; but it is also fond of insects,
especially soft-bodied spiders and grasshoppers, which it will snap up with
eagerness when within reach. The expression of countenance in these small
monkeys is intelligent and pleasing. This is partly owing to the open facial
angle, which is given as one of 60; but the quick movements of the head,
and the way they have of inclining it to one side when their curiosity is
excited, contribute very much to give them a knowing expression.
On the Upper Amazons I once saw a tame individual of the Midas leoninus,
a species first described by Humboldt, which was still more playful and
intelligent than the one just described. This rare and beautiful little monkey
is only seven inches in length, exclusive of the tail. It is named leoninus on
account of the long brown mane which depends from the neck, and which
gives it very much the appearance of a diminutive lion. In the house where
it was kept, it was familiar with everyone; its greatest pleasure seeming to
be to climb about the bodies of different persons who entered. The first
time I went in, it ran across the room straightway to the chair on which I
had sat down, and climbed up to my shoulder; having arrived there, it
turned round and looked into my face, showing its little teeth and
chattering, as though it would say, "Well, and how do you do?" It showed
more affection towards its master than towards strangers, and would climb
CHAPTER III 69
up to his head a dozen times in the course of an hour, making a great show
every time of searching there for certain animalcula. Isidore Geoffroy St.
Hilaire relates of a species of this genus, that it distinguished between
different objects depicted on an engraving. M. Audouin showed it the
portraits of a cat and a wasp; at these it became much terrified; whereas, at
the sight of a figure of a grasshopper or beetle, it precipitated itself on the
picture, as if to seize the objects there represented.
Although monkeys are now rare in a wild state near Para, a great number
may be seen semi-domesticated in the city. The Brazilians are fond of pet
animals. Monkeys, however, have not been known to breed in captivity in
this country. I counted, in a short time, thirteen different species, whilst
walking about the Para streets, either at the doors or windows of houses, or
in the native canoes. Two of them I did not meet with afterwards in any
other part of the country. One of these was the well-known Hapale Jacchus,
a little creature resembling a kitten, banded with black and grey all over the
body and tail, and having a fringe of long white hairs surrounding the ears.
It was seated on the shoulder of a young mulatto girl, as she was walking
along the street, and I was told had been captured in the island of Marajo.
The other was a species of Cebus, with a remarkably large head. It had
ruddy-brown fur, paler on the face, but presenting a blackish tuft on the top
of the forehead.
In the wet season serpents are common in the neighbourhood of Para. One
morning, in April, 1849, after a night of deluging rain, the lamplighter, on
his rounds to extinguish the lamps, woke me up to show me a
boa-constrictor he had just killed in the Rua St. Antonio, not far from my
door. He had cut it nearly in two with a large knife, as it was making its
way down the sandy street. Sometimes the native hunters capture boa-
constrictors alive in the forest near the city. We bought one which had been
taken in this way, and kept it for some time in a large box under our
verandah. This is not, however, the largest or most formidable serpent
found in the Amazons region. It is far inferior, in these respects, to the
hideous Sucuruju, or Water Boa (Eunectes murinus), which sometimes
attacks man; but of this I shall have to give an account in a subsequent
chapter.
CHAPTER III 70
It frequently happened, in passing through the thickets, that a snake would

fall from the boughs close to me. Once for a few moments I got completely
entangled in the folds of one, a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six
feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest
part. It was a species of Dryophis. The majority of the snakes seen were
innocuous. One day, however, I trod on the tail of a young serpent
belonging to a very poisonous kind, the Jararaca (Craspedocephalus atrox).
It turned round and bit my trousers; and a young Indian lad, who was
behind me, dexterously cut it through with his knife before it had time to
free itself. In some seasons snakes are very abundant, and it often struck me
as strange that accidents did not occur more frequently than was the case.
Amongst the most curious snakes found here were the Amphisbaenae, a
genus allied to the slow-worm of Europe. Several species occur at Para.
Those brought to me were generally not much more than a foot in length.
They are of cylindrical shape, having, properly speaking, no neck, and the
blunt tail which is only about an inch in length, is of the same shape as the
head. This peculiar form, added to their habit of wriggling backwards as
well as forwards, has given rise to the fable that they have two heads, one at
each extremity. They are extremely sluggish in their motions, and are
clothed with scales that have the form of small imbedded plates arranged in
rings round the body. The eye is so small as to be scarcely perceptible.
They live habitually in the subterranean chambers of the Sauba ant; only
coming out of their abodes occasionally in the night time. The natives call
the Amphisbaena the "Mai das Saubas," or Mother of the Saubas, and
believe it to be poisonous, although it is perfectly harmless. It is one of the
many curious animals which have become the subject of mythical stories
with the natives. They say the ants treat it with great affection, and that if
the snake be taken away from a nest, the Saubas will forsake the spot. I
once took one quite whole out of the body of a young Jararaca, the
poisonous species already alluded to, whose body was so distended with its
contents that the skin was stretched out to a film over the contained
Amphisbaena. I was, unfortunately, not able to ascertain the exact relation
which subsists between these curious snakes and the Sauba ants. I believe
however, they feed upon the Saubas, for I once found remains of ants in the
stomach of one of them. Their motions are quite peculiar; the undilatable
CHAPTER III 71
jaws, small eyes and curious plated integument also distinguish them from
other snakes. These properties have evidently some relation to their
residence in the subterranean abodes of ants. It is now well ascertained by
naturalists, that some of the most anomalous forms amongst Coleopterous
insects are those which live solely in the nests of ants, and it is curious that
an abnormal form of snakes should also be found in the society of these
insects.
The neighbourhood of Para is rich in insects. I do not speak of the number

of individuals, which is probably less than one meets with, excepting ants
and termites, in summer days in temperate latitudes; but the variety, or in
other words, the number of species, is very great. It will convey some idea
of the diversity of butterflies when I mention that about 700 species of that
tribe are found within an hour's walk of the town; while the total number
found in the British Islands does not exceed 66, and the whole of Europe
supports only 321. Some of the most showy species, such as the
swallow-tailed kinds, Papilio Polycaon, Thoas, Torquatus, and others, are
seen flying about the streets and gardens; sometimes they come through the
open windows, attracted by flowers in the apartments. Those species of
Papilio which are most characteristic of the country, so conspicuous in their
velvety-black, green, and rose-coloured hues, which Linnaeus, in pursuance
of his elegant system of nomenclature-- naming the different kinds after the
heroes of Greek mythology-- called Trojans, never leave the shades of the
forest. The splendid metallic blue Morphos, some of which measure seven
inches in expanse, are generally confined to the shady alleys of the forest.
They sometimes come forth into the broad sunlight.
When we first went to look at our new residence in Nazareth, a Morpho

Menelaus, one of the most beautiful kinds, was seen flapping its huge
wings like a bird along the verandah. This species, however, although much
admired, looks dull in colour by the side of its congener, the Morpho
Rhetenor, whose wings, on the upper face, are of quite a dazzling lustre.
Rhetenor usually prefers the broad sunny roads in the forest, and is an
almost unattainable prize, on account of its lofty flight, for it very rarely
descends nearer the ground than about twenty feet. When it comes sailing
along, it occasionally flaps its wings, and then the blue surface flashes in
CHAPTER III 72
the sunlight, so that it is visible a quarter of a mile off. There is another

species of this genus, of a satiny-white hue, the Morpho Uraneis; this is
equally difficult to obtain; the male only has the satiny lustre, the female
being of a pale-lavender colour. It is in the height of the dry season that the
greatest number and variety of butterflies are found in the woods;
especially when a shower falls at intervals of a few days. An infinite
number of curious and rare species may then be taken, most diversified in
habits, mode of flight, colours, and markings: some yellow, others bright
red, green, purple, and blue, and many bordered or spangled with metallic
lines and spots of a silvery or golden lustre. Some have wings transparent
as glass-- one of these clear wings is especially beautiful, namely, the
Hetaira Esmeralda. It has one spot only of opaque colouring on its wings,
which is of a violet and rose hue; this is the only part visible when the
insect is flying low over dead leaves in the gloomy shades where alone it is
found, and it then looks like a wandering petal of a flower.
Bees and wasps are not especially numerous near Para, and I will reserve an
account of their habits for a future chapter. Many species of Mygale, those
monstrous hairy spiders, half a foot in expanse, which attract the attention
so much in museums, are found in sandy places at Nazareth. The different
kinds have the most diversified habits. Some construct, amongst the tiles or
thatch of houses, dens of closely-woven web, which, in its texture, very
much resembles fine muslin; these are often seen crawling over the walls of
apartments. Others build similar nests in trees, and are known to attack
birds. One very robust fellow, the Mygale Blondii, burrows into the earth,
forming a broad, slanting gallery, about two feet long, the sides of which he
lines beautifully with silk. He is nocturnal in his habits. Just before sunset
he may be seen keeping watch within the mouth of his tunnel, disappearing
suddenly when he hears a heavy foot- tread near his hiding place. The
number of spiders ornamented with showy colours was somewhat
remarkable. Some double themselves up at the base of leaf-stalks, so as to
resemble flower-buds, and thus deceive the insects on which they prey. The
most extraordinary-looking spider was a species of Acrosoma, which had
two curved bronze-coloured spines, an inch and a half in length, proceeding
from the tip of its abdomen. It spins a large web, the monstrous appendages
being apparently no impediment to it in its work; but what their use can be I
CHAPTER IV 73
am unable to divine.
Coleoptera, or beetles, at first seemed to be very scarce. This apparent

scarcity has been noticed in other equatorial countries, and arises, probably,
from the great heat of the sun not permitting them to exist in exposed
situations, where they form such conspicuous objects in Europe. Many
hundred species of the different families can be found when they are
patiently searched for in the shady places to which they are confined. It is
vain to look for the Geodephaga, or carnivorous beetles, under stones, or
anywhere, indeed, in open, sunny places. The terrestrial forms of this
interesting family, which abound in England and temperate countries
generally, are scarce in the neighbourhood of Para; in fact, I met with only
four or five species.
On the other hand, the purely arboreal kinds were rather numerous. The
contrary of this happens in northern latitudes, where the great majority of
the species and genera are exclusively terrestrial. The arboreal forms are
distinguished by the structure of the feet, which have broad spongy soles
and toothed claws, enabling them to climb over and cling to branches and
leaves. The remarkable scarcity of ground beetles is, doubtless, attributable
to the number of ants and Termites which people every inch of surface in
all shady places, and which would most likely destroy the larvae of
Coleoptera. Moreover, these active creatures have the same functions as
Coleoptera, and thus render their existence unnecessary. The large
proportion of climbing forms of carnivorous beetles is an interesting fact,
because it affords another instance of the arboreal character which animal
forms tend to assume in equinoctial America, a circumstance which points
to the slow adaptation of the fauna to a forest-clad country throughout an
immense lapse of geological time.
CHAPTER IV
THE TOCANTINS AND CAMETA

CHAPTER IV 74
Preparations for the journey--The Bay of Goajara--Grove of fan- leaved

Palms--The lower Tocantins--Sketch of the River-Vista
Alegre--Baiao--Rapids--Boat journey to the Guariba Falls--Native Life on
the Tocantins--Second journey to Cameta.
August 26th, 1848--Mr. Wallace and I started today on the excursion

,which I have already mentioned as having been planned with Mr. Leavens,
up the river Tocantins, whose mouth lies about forty-five miles in a straight
line, but eighty miles following the bends of the river channels to the
southwest of Para. This river, as before stated, has a course of 1600 miles,
and stands third in rank amongst the streams which form the Amazons
system. The preparations for the journey took a great deal of time and
trouble. We had first to hire a proper vessel, a two-masted vigilinga
twenty-seven feet long, with a flat prow and great breadth of beam and
fitted to live in heavy seas; for, although our voyage was only a river trip,
there were vast sea-like expanses of water to traverse. It was not decked
over, but had two arched awnings formed of strong wickerwork, and
thatched with palm leaves. We then had to store it with provisions for three
months, the time we at first intended to be away; procure the necessary
passports; and, lastly, engage a crew. Mr. Leavens, having had much
experience in the country, managed all these matters. He brought two
Indians from the rice-mills, and these induced another to enroll himself.
We, on our parts, took our cook Isidoro, and a young Indian lad, named
Antonio, who had attached himself to us in the course of our residence at
Nazareth. Our principal man was Alexandro, one of Mr. Leavens's Indians.
He was an intelligent and well-disposed young Tapuyo, an expert sailor,
and an indefatigable hunter. To his fidelity we were indebted for being
enabled to carry out any of the objects of our voyage. Being a native of a
district near the capital, Alexandro was a civilised Tapuyo, a citizen as free
as his white neighbours. He spoke only Portuguese. He was a spare-built
man, rather under the middle height, with fine regular features, and, what
was unusual in Indians, the upper lip decorated with a moustache. Three
years afterwards I saw him at Para in the uniform of the National Guard,
and he called on me often to talk about old times. I esteemed him as a quiet,
sensible, manly young fellow.
CHAPTER IV 75
We set sail in the evening, after waiting several hours in vain for one of our
crew. It was soon dark, the wind blew stiffly, and the tide rushed along with
great rapidity, carrying us swiftly past the crowd of vessels which were
anchored in the port. The canoe rolled a good deal. After we had made five
or six miles of way, the tide turned and we were obliged to cast anchor. Not
long after, we lay ourselves down, all three together, on the mat which was
spread over the floor of our cabin, and soon fell asleep.
On awaking at sunrise the next morning, we found ourselves gliding

upwards with the tide, along the Bahia or Bay, as it is called, of Goajara.
This is a broad channel lying between the mainland and a line of islands
which extends some distance beyond the city. Into it three large rivers
discharge their waters, namely, the Guama, the Acara, and the Moju-- so
that it forms a kind of sub-estuary within the grand estuary of Para. It is
nearly four miles broad. The left bank, along which we were now sailing,
was beautiful in the extreme; not an inch of soil was to be seen; the water
frontage presented a compact wall of rich and varied forest, resting on the
surface of the stream. It seemed to form a finished border to the water
scene, where the dome-like, rounded shapes of exogenous trees which
constituted the mass formed the groundwork, and the endless diversity of
broad-leaved Heliconiae and Palms--each kind differing in stem, crown,
and fronds--the rich embroidery. The morning was calm and cloudless; and
the slanting beams of the early sun, striking full on the front of the forest,
lighted up the whole most gloriously. The only sound of life which reached
us was the call of the Serracura (Gallinula Cayennensis), a kind of
wild-fowl; all else was so still that the voices of boatmen could be plainly
heard from canoes passing a mile or two distant from us. The sun soon
gains great power on the water, but with it the sea-breeze increases in
strength, moderating the heat which would otherwise be almost
insupportable. We reached the end of the Goajara about midday, and then
entered the narrower channel of the Moju. Up this we travelled, partly
rowing and partly sailing between the same unbroken walls of forest, until
the morning of the 28th.
August 29th--The Moju, a stream slightly inferior to the Thames in size, is

connected about twenty miles from its mouth by means of a short, artificial
CHAPTER IV 76
canal with a small stream, the Igarape- mirim, which flows the opposite
way into the water-system of the Tocantins. Small vessels like ours take
this route in preference to the stormy passage by way of the main river,
although the distance is considerably greater. We passed through the canal
yesterday, and today have been threading our way through a labyrinth of
narrow channels, their banks all clothed with the same magnificent forest,
but agreeably varied by houses of planters and settlers. We passed many
quite large establishments, besides one pretty little village called Santa
Anna. All these channels are washed through by the tides--the ebb, contrary
to what takes place in the short canal, setting towards the Tocantins. The
water is almost tepid (77 Fahr.), and the rank vegetation all around seems
reeking with moisture. The country however, as we were told, is perfectly
healthy. Some of the houses are built on wooden piles driven into the mud
of the swamp.
In the afternoon we reached the end of the last channel, called the Murut
Ipucu, which runs for several miles between two unbroken lines of
fan-leaved palms, forming colossal palisades with their straight stems . On
rounding a point of land, we came in full view of the Tocantins. The event
was announced by one of our Indians, who was on the lookout at the prow,
shouting: "La esta o Parana-uassu!" "Behold, the great river!" It was a
grand sight- -a broad expanse of dark waters dancing merrily to the breeze;
the opposite shore, a narrow blue line, miles away.
We went ashore on an island covered with palm trees, to make a fire and
boil our kettle for tea. I wandered a short way inland, and was astounded at
the prospect. The land lay below the upper level of the daily tides, so that
there was no underwood, and the ground was bare. The trees were almost
all of one species of Palm, the gigantic fan-leaved Mauritia flexuosa; only
on the borders was there a small number of a second kind, the equally
remarkable Ubussu palm, Manicaria saccifera. The Ubussu has erect, uncut
leaves, twenty-five feet long, and six feet wide, all arranged round the top
of a four-foot high stem, so as to form a figure like that of a colossal
shuttlecock. The fan-leaved palms, which clothed nearly the entire islet,
had huge cylindrical smooth stems, three feet in diameter, and about a
hundred feet high. The crowns were formed of enormous clusters of
CHAPTER IV 77
fan-shaped leaves, the stalks alone of which measured seven to ten feet in
length. Nothing in the vegetable world could be more imposing than this
grove of palms. There was no underwood to obstruct the view of the long
perspective of towering columns. The crowns, which were densely packed
together at an immense height overhead, shut out the rays of the sun; and
the gloomy solitude beneath, through which the sound of our voices
seemed to reverberate, could be compared to nothing so well as a solemn
temple. The fruits of the two palms were scattered over the ground; those of
the Ubussu adhere together by twos and threes, and have a rough,
brown-coloured shell; the fruit of the Mauritia, on the contrary, is of a
bright red hue, and the skin is impressed with deep-crossing lines, which
give it a resemblance to a quilted cricket-ball.
About midnight, the tide being favourable and the breeze strong, we
crossed the river, taking it in a slanting direction a distance of sixteen miles,
and arrived at eight o'clock the following morning at Cameta. This is a
town of some importance, pleasantly situated on the somewhat high terra
firma of the left bank of the Tocantins. I will defer giving an account of the
place till the end of this narrative of our Tocantins voyage. We lost here
another of our men, who got drinking with some old companions ashore,
and were obliged to start on the difficult journey up the river with two
hands only, and they in a very dissatisfied humour with the prospect.
The river view from Cameta is magnificent. The town is situated, as

already mentioned, on a high bank, which forms quite a considerable
elevation for this flat country, and the broad expanse of dark-green waters
is studded with low, palm-clad islands-- the prospect down river, however,
being clear, or bounded only by a sea-like horizon of water and sky. The
shores are washed by the breeze-tossed waters into little bays and creeks,
fringed with sandy beaches. The Tocantins has been likened, by Prince
Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, to the Ganges. It is
upwards of ten miles in breadth at its mouth; opposite Cameta it is five
miles broad. Mr. Burchell, the well-known English traveller, descended the
river from the mining provinces of interior Brazil some years before our
visit. Unfortunately, the utility of this fine stream is impaired by the
numerous obstructions to its navigation in the shape of cataracts and rapids,
CHAPTER IV 78
which commence, in ascending, at about 120 miles above Cameta, as will

be seen in the sequel.
August 30th.--Arrived, in company with Senor Laroque, an intelligent

Portuguese merchant, at Vista Alegre, fifteen miles above Cameta. This
was the residence of Senor Antonio Ferreira Gomez, and was a fair sample
of a Brazilian planter's establishment in this part of the country. The
buildings covered a wide space, the dwelling-house being separated from
the place of business, and as both were built on low, flooded ground, the
communication between the two was by means of a long wooden bridge.
From the office and visitors' apartments a wooden pier extended into the
river. The whole was raised on piles above the high-water mark. There was
a rude mill for grinding sugar-cane, worked by bullocks; but cashaca, or
rum, was the only article manufactured from the juice. Behind the buildings
was a small piece of ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit
trees-- orange, lemon, genipapa, goyava, and others; and beyond this, a
broad path through a neglected plantation of coffee and cacao, led to
several large sheds, where the farinha, or mandioca meal, was
manufactured. The plantations of mandioca are always scattered about in
the forest, some of them being on islands in the middle of the river. Land
being plentiful, and the plough, as well as, indeed, nearly all other
agricultural implements, unknown, the same ground is not planted three
years together; but a new piece of forest is cleared every alternate year, and
the old clearing suffered to relapse into jungle.
We stayed here two days, sleeping ashore in the apartment devoted to

strangers. As usual in Brazilian houses of the middle class, we were not
introduced to the female members of the family, and, indeed, saw nothing
of them except at a distance. In the forest and thickets about the place we
were tolerably successful in collecting, finding a number of birds and
insects which do not occur at Para. I saw here, for the first time, the
sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on the topmost bough of a
very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach of an ordinary
fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its plumage was plainly
discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet bird. A much commoner
species was the Cigana or Gipsy (Opisthocomus cristatus), a bird belonging
CHAPTER IV 79
to the same order (Gallinacea) as our domestic fowl. It is about the size of a
pheasant; the plumage is dark brown, varied with reddish, and the head is
adorned with a crest of long feathers. It is a remarkable bird in many
respects. The hind toe is not placed high above the level of the other toes,
as it is in the fowl order generally, but lies on the same plane with them; the
shape of the foot becomes thus suited to the purely arboreal habits of the
bird, enabling it to grasp firmly the branches of trees. This is a
distinguishing character of all the birds in equinoctial America which
represents the fowl and pheasant tribes of the old world, and affords
another proof of the adaptation of the fauna to a forest region. The Cigana
lives in considerable flocks on the lower trees and bushes bordering the
streams and lagoons, and feeds on various wild fruits, especially the sour
Goyava (Psidium sp). The natives say it devours the fruit of arborescent
Arums (Caladium arborescens), which grow in crowded masses around the
swampy banks of lagoons. Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss; it makes the
noise when alarmed or when disturbed by passing canoes, all the
individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree. It is
polygamous, like other members of the same order. It is never, however, by
any chance, seen on the ground, and is nowhere domesticated. The flesh
has an unpleasant odour of musk combined with wet hides--a smell called
by the Brazilians catinga; it is, therefore, uneatable. If it be as unpalatable
to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution
which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great
numbers throughout the country.
We lost another of our crew here; and thus, at the commencement of our
voyage, had before us the prospect of being forced to return, from sheer
want of hands, to manage the canoe. Senor Gomez, to whom we had
brought letters of introduction from Senor Joao Augusto Correia, a
Brazilian gentlemen of high standing at Para, tried what he could do to
induce the canoe-men of his neighbourhood to engage with us, but it was a
vain endeavour. The people of these parts seemed to be above working for
wages. They are naturally indolent, and besides, have all some little
business or plantation of their own, which gives them a livelihood with
independence. It is difficult to obtain hands under any circumstances, but it
was particularly so in our case, from being foreigners, and suspected, as
CHAPTER IV 80
was natural amongst ignorant people, of being strange in our habits. At

length, our host lent us two of his slaves to help us on another stage,
namely, to the village of Baiao, where we had great hopes of having this,
our urgent want, supplied by the military commandant of the district.
September 2nd--The distance from Vista Alegre to Baiao is about

twenty-five miles. We had but little wind, and our men were therefore
obliged to row the greater part of the way. The oars used in such canoes as
ours are made by tying a stout paddle to the end of a long pole by means of
woody lianas. The men take their stand on a raised deck, formed by a few
rough planks placed over the arched covering in the fore part of the vessel,
and pull with their backs to the stern. We started at six a.m., and about
sunset reached a point where the west channel of the river, along which we
had been travelling since we left Cameta, joined a broader middle one, and
formed with it a great expanse of water. The islands here seem to form two
pretty regular lines, dividing the great river into three channels. As we
progressed slowly, we took the montaria, and went ashore, from time to
time, to the houses, which were numerous on the river banks as well as on
the larger islands. In low situations they had a very unfinished appearance,
being mere frameworks raised high on wooden piles, and thatched with the
leaves of the Ubussu palm. In their construction another palm tree is made
much use of, viz., the Assai (Euterpe oleracea). The outer part of the stem
of this species is hard and tough as horn-- it is split into narrow planks, and
these form a great portion of the walls and flooring. The residents told us
that the western channel becomes nearly dry in the middle of the fine
season, but that at high water, in April and May, the river rises to the level
of the house floors. The river bottom is everywhere sandy, and the country
perfectly healthy. The people seemed to all be contented and happy, but
idleness and poverty were exhibited by many unmistakeable signs. As to
the flooding of their island abodes, they did not seem to care about that at
all. They seem to be almost amphibious, or as much at home on the water
as on land. It was really quite alarming to see men and women and
children, in little leaky canoes laden to the water-level with bag and
baggage, crossing broad reaches of river.
CHAPTER IV 81
Most of them have houses also on the terra firma, and reside in the cool
palm swamps of the Ygapo islands, as they are called, only in the hot and
dry season. They live chiefly on fish, shellfish (amongst which were large
Ampullariae, whose flesh I found, on trial, to be a very tough morsel), the
never failing farinha, and the fruits of the forest. Among the latter, the fruits
of palm trees occupied the chief place. The Assai is the most in use, but this
forms a universal article of diet in all parts of the country. The fruit, which
is perfectly round, and about the size of a cherry, contains but a small
portion of pulp lying between the skin and the hard kernel. This is made,
with the addition of water, into a thick, violet-coloured beverage, which
stains the lips like blackberries. The fruit of the Miriti is also a common
article of food, although the pulp is sour and unpalatable, at least to
European tastes. It is boiled, and then eaten with farinha. The Tucuma
(Astrocaryum tucuma), and the Mucuja (Acrocomia lasiospatha), grow
only on the mainland. Their fruits yield a yellowish, fibrous pulp, which the
natives eat in the same way as the Miriti. They contain so much fatty
matter, that vultures and dogs devour them greedily.
Early on the morning of September 3rd we reached the right or eastern

bank, which is forty to sixty feet high at this point. The houses were more
substantially built than those we had hitherto seen. We succeeded in buying
a small turtle; most of the inhabitants had a few of these animals, which
they kept in little enclosures made with stakes. The people were of the
same class everywhere, Mamelucos. They were very civil; we were not
able, however, to purchase much fresh food from them. I think this was
owing to their really not having more than was absolutely required to
satisfy their own needs. In these districts, where the people depend solely
on fishing for animal food, there is a period of the year when they suffer
hunger, so that they are disposed to highly prize a small stock when they
have it. They generally answered in the negative when we asked, money in
hand, whether they had fowls, turtles, or eggs to sell. "Nao ha, sinto que
nao posso lhe ser bom"; or, "Nao ha, men coracao-- we have none; I am
sorry I cannot oblige you"; or, "There is none, my heart."
Sept. 3rd to 7th.--At half-past eight a.m. we arrived at Baiao, which is built
on a very high bank, and contains about 400 inhabitants. We had to climb
CHAPTER IV 82
to the village up a ladder, which is fixed against the bank, and, on arriving
at the top, took possession of a room, which Senhor Seixas had given
orders to be prepared for us. He himself was away at his sitio, and would
not be here until the next day. We were now quite dependent upon him for
men to enable us to continue our voyage, and so had no remedy but to wait
his leisure. The situation of the place, and the nature of the woods around it,
promised well for novelties in birds and insects; so we had no reason to be
vexed at the delay, but brought our apparatus and store-boxes up from the
canoe, and set to work.
The easy, lounging life of the people amused us very much. I afterwards
had plenty of time to become used to tropical village life. There is a free,
familiar, pro-bono publico style of living in these small places, which
requires some time for a European to fall into. No sooner were we
established in our rooms, than a number of lazy young fellows came to look
on and make remarks, and we had to answer all sorts of questions. The
houses have their doors and windows open to the street, and people walk in
and out as they please; there is always, however, a more secluded
apartment, where the female members of the families reside. In their
familiarity there is nothing intentionally offensive, and it is practised
simply in the desire to be civil and sociable. A young Mameluco, named
Soares, an Escrivao, or public clerk, took me into his house to show me his
library. I was rather surprised to see a number of well-thumbed Latin
classics: Virgil, Terence, Cicero's Epistles, and Livy. I was not familiar
enough, at this early period of my residence in the country, with Portuguese
to converse freely with Senhor Scares, or ascertain what use he made of
these books; it was an unexpected sight, a classical library in a
mud-plastered and palm-thatched hut on the banks of the Tocantins.
The prospect from the village was magnificent, over the green wooded
islands, far away to the grey line of forest on the opposite shore of the
Tocantins. We were now well out of the low alluvial country of the
Amazons proper, and the climate was evidently much drier than it is near
Para. They had had no rain here for many weeks, and the atmosphere was
hazy around the horizon-- so much so that the sun, before setting, glared
like a blood-red globe. At Para this never happens; the stars and sun are as
CHAPTER IV 83
clear and sharply defined when they peep above the distant treetops as they
are at the zenith. This beautiful transparency of the air arises, doubtless,
from the equal distribution through it of invisible vapour. I shall ever
remember, in one of my voyages along the Para river, the grand spectacle
that was once presented at sunrise. Our vessel was a large schooner, and we
were bounding along before a spanking breeze, which tossed the waters
into foam as the day dawned. So clear was the air, that the lower rim of the
full moon remained sharply defined until it touched the western horizon,
while at the same time, the sun rose in the east. The two great orbs were
visible at the same time, and the passage from the moonlit night to day was
so gentle that it seemed to be only the brightening of dull weather.
The woods around Baiao were of second growth, the ground having been
formerly cultivated. A great number of coffee and cotton trees grew
amongst the thickets. A fine woodland pathway extends for miles over the
high, undulating bank, leading from one house to another along the edge of
the cliff. I went into several of them, and talked to their inmates. They were
all poor people. The men were out fishing, some far away, a distance of
many days journey; the women plant mandioca, make the farinha, spin and
weave cotton, manufacture soap of burnt cacao shells and andiroba oil, and
follow various other domestic employments. I asked why they allowed their
plantations to run to waste. They said that it was useless trying to plant
anything hereabout; the Sauba ant devoured the young coffee trees, and
everyone who attempted to contend against this universal ravager was sure
to be defeated. The country, for many miles along the banks of the river,
seemed to be well peopled. The inhabitants were nearly all of the tawny-
white Mameluco class. I saw a good many mulattos, but very few negroes
and Indians, and none that could be called pure whites.
When Senor Seixas arrived, he acted very kindly. He provided us at once

with two men, killed an ox in our honour, and treated us altogether with
great consideration. We were not, however, introduced to his family. I
caught a glimpse once of his wife, a pretty little Mameluco woman, as she
was tripping with a young girl, whom I supposed to be her daughter, across
the backyard. Both wore long dressing-gowns made of bright-coloured
calico print, and had long wooden tobacco-pipes in their mouths. The room
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in which we slept and worked had formerly served as a storeroom for

cacao, and at night I was kept awake for hours by rats and cockroaches,
which swarm in all such places. The latter were running about all over the
walls; now and then one would come suddenly with a whirr full at my face,
and get under my shirt if I attempted to jerk it off. As to the rats, they were
chasing one another by the dozens all night long over the floor, up and
down the edges of the doors, and along the rafters of the open roof.
September 7th.--We started from Baiao at an early hour. One of our new
men was a good-humoured, willing young mulatto named Jose; the other
was a sulky Indian called Manoel, who seemed to have been pressed into
our service against his will. Senor Seixas, on parting, sent a quantity of
fresh provisions on board. A few miles above Baiao the channel became
very shallow; we ran aground several times, and the men had to disembark
and shove the vessel off. Alexandro shot several fine fish here, with bow
and arrow. It was the first time I had seen fish captured in this way. The
arrow is a reed, with a steel barbed point, which is fixed in a hole at the
end, and secured by fine twine made from the fibres of pineapple leaves. It
is only in the clearest water that fish can be thus shot--and the only skill
required is to make, in taking aim, the proper allowance for refraction.
The next day before sunrise a fine breeze sprang up, and the men awoke
and set the sails. We glided all day through channels between islands with
long, white, sandy beaches, over which, now and then, aquatic and wading
birds were seen running. The forest was low, and had a harsh, dry aspect.
Several palm trees grew here which we had not before seen. On low
bushes, near the water, pretty, red-headed tanagers (Tanagra gularis) were
numerous, flitting about and chirping like sparrows. About half-past four
p.m., we brought to at the mouth of a creek or channel, where there was a
great extent of sandy beach. The sand had been blown by the wind into
ridges and undulations, and over the more moist parts, large flocks of
sandpipers were running about. Alexandro and I had a long ramble over the
rolling plain, which came as an agreeable change after the monotonous
forest scenery amid which we had been so long travelling. He pointed out
to me the tracks of a huge jaguar on the sand. We found here, also, our first
turtle's nest, and obtained 120 eggs from it, which were laid at a depth of
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nearly two feet from the surface-- the mother first excavating a hole and
afterwards, covering it up with sand. The place is discoverable only by
following the tracks of the turtle from the water. I saw here an alligator for
the first time, which reared its head and shoulders above the water just after
I had taken a bath near the spot. The night was calm and cloudless, and we
employed the hours before bedtime in angling by moonlight.
On the 10th, we reached a small settlement called Patos, consisting of about

a dozen houses, and built on a high, rocky bank, on the eastern shore. The
rock is the same nodular conglomerate which is found at so many places,
from the seacoast to a distance of 600 miles up the Amazons. Mr. Leavens
made a last attempt here to engage men to accompany us to the Araguaya,
but it was in vain; not a soul could be induced by any amount of wages to
go on such an expedition. The reports as to the existence of cedar were very
vague. All said that the tree was plentiful somewhere, but no one could fix
on the precise locality. I believe that the cedar grows, like all other forest
trees, in a scattered way, and not in masses anywhere. The fact of its being
the principal tree observed floating down with the current of the Amazons
is to be explained by its wood being much lighter than that of the majority
of trees. When the banks are washed away by currents, trees of all species
fall into the river; but the heavier ones, which are the most numerous, sink,
and the lighter, such as the cedar, alone float down to the sea.
Mr. Leavens was told that there were cedar trees at Trocara, on the opposite
side of the river, near some fine rounded hills covered with forest, visible
from Patos; so there we went. We found here several families encamped in
a delightful spot. The shore sloped gradually down to the water, and was
shaded by a few wide-spreading trees. There was no underwood. A great
number of hammocks were seen slung between the tree trunks, and the
litter of a numerous household lay scattered about. Women, old and young,
some of the latter very good-looking, and a large number of children,
besides pet animals, enlivened the encampment. They were all half-breeds,
simple, well-disposed people, and explained to us that they were
inhabitants of Cameta, who had come thus far, eighty miles, to spend the
summer months. The only motive they could give for coming was that: "it
was so hot in the town in the verao (summer), and they were all so fond of
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fresh fish."
Thus, these simple folks think nothing of leaving home and business to
come on a three months' picnic. It is the annual custom of this class of
people throughout the province to spend a few months of the fine season in
the wilder parts of the country. They carry with them all the farinha they
can scrape together, this being the only article of food necessary to provide.
The men hunt and fish for the day's wants, and sometimes collect a little
India-rubber, salsaparilla, or copaiba oil, to sell to traders on their return;
the women assist in paddling the canoes, do the cooking, and sometimes
fish with rod and line. The weather is enjoyable the whole time, and so
days and weeks pass happily away.
One of the men volunteered to walk with us into the forest, and show us a
few cedar trees. We passed through a mile or two of spiny thickets, and at
length came upon the banks of the rivulet Trocara, which flows over a
stony bed, and, about a mile above its mouth, falls over a ledge of rocks,
thus forming a very pretty cascade. In the neighbourhood, we found a
number of specimens of a curious land-shell, a large flat Helix, with a
labyrinthine mouth (Anastoma). We learned afterwards that it was a species
which had been discovered a few years previously by Dr. Gardner, the
botanist, on the upper part of the Tocantins.
We saw here, for the first time, the splendid Hyacinthine macaw
(Macrocercus hyacinthinus, Lath., the Araruna of the natives), one of the
finest and rarest species of the Parrot family. It only occurs in the interior of
Brazil, from 16' S. lat. to the southern border of the Amazons valley. It is
three feet long from the beak to the tip of the tail, and is entirely of a soft
hyacinthine blue colour, except round the eyes, where the skin is naked and
white. It flies in pairs, and feeds on the hard nuts of several palms, but
especially of the Mucuja (Acrocomia lasiospatha). These nuts, which are so
hard as to be difficult to break with a heavy hammer, are crushed to a pulp
by the powerful beak of this macaw.
Mr. Leavens was thoroughly disgusted with the people of Patos. Two men
had come from below with the intention, I believe, of engaging with us, but
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they now declined. The inspector, constable, or governor of the place

appeared to be a very slippery customer, and I fancy discouraged the men
from going, whilst making a great show of forwarding our views. These
outlying settlements are the resort of a number of idle, worthless characters.
There was a kind of festival going on, and the people fuddled themselves
with cashiri, an intoxicating drink invented by the Indians. It is made by
soaking mandioca cakes in water until fermentation takes place, and tastes
like new beer.
Being unable to obtain men, Mr. Leavens now gave up his project of
ascending the river as far as the Araguaya. He assented to our request,
however, to ascend to the cataracts near Arroyos. We started, therefore,
from Patos with a more definite aim before us than we had hitherto. The
river became more picturesque as we advanced. The water was very low, it
being now the height of the dry reason; the islands were smaller than those
further down, and some of them were high and rocky. Bold wooded bluffs
projected into the stream, and all the shores were fringed with beaches of
glistening white sand. On one side of the river there was an extensive
grassy plain or campo with isolated patches of trees scattered over it. On
the 14th and following day we stopped several times to ramble ashore. Our
longest excursion was to a large shallow lagoon, choked up with aquatic
plants, which lay about two miles across the campo. At a place called
Juquerapua, we engaged a pilot to conduct us to Arroyos, and a few miles
above the pilot's house, arrived at a point where it was not possible to
advance further in our large canoe on account of the rapids.
September 16th.--Embarked at six a.m. in a large montaria which had been

lent to us for this part of our voyage by Senor Seixas, leaving the vigilinga
anchored close to a rocky islet, named Santa Anna, to await our return.
Isidoro was left in charge, and we were sorry to be obliged to leave behind
also our mulatto Jose, who had fallen ill since leaving Baiao. We had then
remaining only Alexandro, Manoel, and the pilot, a sturdy Tapuyo named
Joaquim-- scarcely a sufficient crew to paddle against the strong currents.
At ten a.m. we arrived at the first rapids, which are called Tapaiunaquara.
The river, which was here about a mile wide, was choked up with rocks, a
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broken ridge passing completely across it. Between these confused piles of
stone the currents were fearfully strong, and formed numerous eddies and
whirlpools. We were obliged to get out occasionally and walk from rock to
rock, whilst the men dragged the canoe over the obstacles. Beyond
Tapaiunaquara, the stream became again broad and deep, and the river
scenery was beautiful in the extreme. The water was clear and of a
bluish-green colour. On both sides of the stream stretched ranges of
wooded hills, and in the middle picturesque islets rested on the smooth
water, whose brilliant green woods fringed with palms formed charming
bits of foreground to the perspective of sombre hills fading into grey in the
distance. Joaquim pointed out to us grove after grove of Brazil nut trees
(Bertholletia excelsa) on the mainland. This is one of the chief collecting
grounds for this nut. The tree is one of the loftiest in the forest, towering far
above its fellows; we could see the woody fruits, large and round as
cannon-balls, dotted over the branches. The currents were very strong in
some places, so that during the greater part of the way the men preferred to
travel near the shore, and propel the boat by means of long poles.
We arrived at Arroyos about four o'clock in the afternoon, after ten hours'
hard pull. The place consists simply of a few houses built on a high bank,
and forms a station where canoemen from the mining countries of the
interior of Brazil stop to rest themselves before or after surmounting the
dreaded falls and rapids of Guaribas, situated a couple of miles further up.
We dined ashore, and in the evening again embarked to visit the falls. The
vigorous and successful way in which our men battled with the terrific
currents excited our astonishment. The bed of the river, here about a mile
wide, is strewn with blocks of various sizes, which lie in the most irregular
manner, and between them rush currents of more or less rapidity. With an
accurate knowledge of the place and skillful management, the falls can be
approached in small canoes by threading the less dangerous channels. The
main fall is about a quarter of a mile wide; we climbed to an elevation
overlooking it, and had a good view of the cataract. A body of water rushes
with terrific force down a steep slope, and boils up with deafening roar
around the boulders which obstruct its course. The wildness of the whole
scene was very impressive. As far as the eye could see, stretched range
after range of wooded hills and scores of miles of beautiful wilderness,
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inhabited only by scanty tribes of wild Indians. In the midst of such a

solitude, the roar of the cataract seemed fitting music.
September 17th.--We commenced early in the morning our downward

voyage. Arroyos is situated in about 4 10' S. lat.; and lies, therefore, about
130 miles from the mouth of the Tocantins. Fifteen miles above Guaribas,
another similar cataract called Tabocas lies across the river. We were told
that there were in all fifteen of these obstructions to navigate, between
Arroyos and the mouth of the Araguaya. The worst was the Inferno, the
Guaribas standing second to it in evil reputation. Many canoes and lives
have been lost here, most of the accidents arising through the vessels being
hurled against an enormous cubical mass of rock called the Guaribinha,
which we, on our trip to the falls in the small canoe, passed round with the
greatest ease about a quarter of a mile below the main falls. This, however,
was the dry season; in the time of full waters, a tremendous current sets
against it. We descended the river rapidly, and found it excellent fun
shooting the rapids. The men seemed to delight in choosing the swiftest
parts of the current; they sang and yelled in the greatest excitement,
working the paddles with great force, and throwing clouds of spray above
us as we bounded downwards. We stopped to rest at the mouth of a rivulet
named Caganxa. The pilot told us that gold had been found in the bed of
this brook; so we had the curiosity to wade several hundred yards through
the icy cold waters in search of it. Mr. Leavens seemed very much
interested in the matter. He picked up all the shining stones he could espy
in the pebbly bottom, in hopes of finding diamonds also. There is, in fact,
no reason why both gold and diamonds should not be found here, the hills
being a continuation of those of the mining countries of interior Brazil, and
the brooks flowing through the narrow valleys between them.
On arriving at the place where we had left our canoe, we found poor Jose
the mulatto much worse, so we hastened on to Juquerapua to procure aid.
An old half-caste woman took charge of him; she made poultices of the
pulp of a wild fruit, administered cooling draughts made from herbs which
grew near the house, and in fact, acted the part of nurse admirably. We
stayed at this place all night and part of the following day, and I had a stroll
along a delightful pathway, which led over hill and dale, two or three miles
CHAPTER IV 90
through the forest. I was surprised at the number and variety of

brilliantly-coloured butterflies; they were all of small size and started forth
from the low bushes, which bordered the road, at every step I took. I first
heard here the notes of a trogon; it was seated alone on a branch, at no great
elevation; a beautiful bird, with glossy-green back and rose-coloured breast
(probably Trogon melanurus). At intervals it uttered, in a complaining tone,
a sound resembling the words "qua, qua." It is a dull inactive bird, and not
very ready to take flight when approached. In this respect, however, the
trogons are not equal to the jacamars, whose stupidity in remaining at their
posts, seated on low branches in the gloomiest shades of the forest, is
somewhat remarkable in a country where all other birds are exceedingly
wary. One species of jacamar was not uncommon here (Galbula viridis); I
sometimes saw two or three together seated on a slender branch, silent and
motionless with the exception of a slight movement of the head; when an
insect flew past within a short distance, one of the birds would dart off,
seize it, and return again to its sitting-place. The trogons are found in the
tropics of both hemispheres. The jacamars, which are clothed in plumage of
the most beautiful golden-bronze and steel colours, are peculiar to tropical
America.
At night I slept ashore as a change from the confinement of the canoe,

having obtained permission from Senor Joaquim to sling my hammock
under his roof. The house, like all others in these out- of-the-way parts of
the country, was a large open, palm-thatched shed, having one end enclosed
by means of partitions also made of palm-leaves, so as to form a private
apartment. Under the shed were placed all the household utensils--
earthenware jars, pots, and kettles, hunting and fishing implements,
paddles, bows and arrows, harpoons, and so forth. One or two common
wooden chests serve to contain the holiday clothing of the females. There is
no other furniture except a few stools and the hammock, which answers the
purposes of chair and sofa. When a visitor enters, he is asked to sit down in
a hammock; persons who are on intimate terms with each other recline
together in the same hammock, one at each end. This is a very convenient
arrangement for friendly conversation. There are neither tables nor chairs;
the cloth for meals is spread on a mat, and the guests squat round in any
position they choose. There is no cordiality of manners, but the treatment of
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the guests shows a keen sense of the duties of hospitality on the part of the
host. There is a good deal of formality in the intercourse of these half-wild
mamelucos, which, I believe, has been chiefly derived from their Indian
forefathers, although a little of it may have been copied from the
Portuguese.
A little distance from the house were the open sheds under which the
farinha for the use of the establishment was manufactured. In the centre of
each shed stood the shallow pans, made of clay and built over ovens, where
the meal is roasted. A long flexible cylinder made of the peel of a
marantaceous plant, plaited into the proper form, hung suspended from a
beam; it is in this that the pulp of the mandioca is pressed, and from it the
juice, which is of a highly poisonous nature, although the pulp is
wholesome food, runs into pans placed beneath to receive it. A wooden
trough, such as is used in all these places for receiving the pulp before the
poisonous matter is extracted, stood on the ground, and from the posts hung
the long wicker-work baskets, or aturas, in which the women carry the
roots from the roca or clearing; a broad ribbon made from the inner bark of
the monguba tree is attached to the rims of the baskets, and is passed round
the forehead of the carriers, to relieve their backs in supporting the heavy
load. Around the shed were planted a number of banana and other fruit
trees; among them were the never- failing capsicum-pepper bushes,
brilliant as holly-trees at Christmas time with their fiery-red fruit, and
lemon trees; the one supplying the pungent, the other the acid, for sauce to
the perpetual meal of fish. There is never in such places any appearance of
careful cultivation-- no garden or orchard. The useful trees are surrounded
by weeds and bushes, and close behind rises the everlasting forest.
There were other strangers under Senor Joaquim's roof besides

myself--mulattos, mamelucos, and Indian,--so we formed altogether a large
party. Houses occur at rare intervals in this wild country, and hospitality is
freely given to the few passing travellers. After a frugal supper, a large
wood fire was lighted in the middle of the shed, and all turned in to their
hammocks, and began to converse. A few of the party soon dropped asleep;
others, however, kept awake until a very late hour telling stories. Some
related adventures which had happened to them while hunting or fishing;
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others recounted myths about the Curupira, and other demons or spirits of
the forest. They were all very appropriate to the time and place, for now
and then a yell or a shriek resounded through the gloomy wilderness around
the shed. One old parchment-faced fellow, with a skin the colour of
mahogany, seemed to be a capital story-teller; but I was sorry I did not
know enough of the language to follow him in all the details which he gave.
Amongst other things, he related an adventure he had once had with a
jaguar. He got up from his hammock in the course of the narrative to give it
the greater effect by means of gestures; he seized a bow and a large taquara
arrow to show how he slew the beast, imitated its hoarse growl, and danced
about the fire like a demon.
In descending the river we landed frequently, and Mr. Wallace and I lost no
chance of adding to our collections, so that before the end of our journey,
we had got together a very considerable number of birds, insects, and
shells, chiefly taken, however, in the low country. Leaving Baiao, we took
our last farewell of the limpid waters and varied scenery of the upper river,
and found ourselves again in the humid flat region of the Amazons valley.
We sailed down this lower part of the river by a different channel from the
one we travelled along in ascending, and frequently went ashore on the low
islands in mid-river. As already stated, these are covered with water in the
wet season; but at this time, there having been three months of fine
weather, they were dry throughout, and by the subsidence of the waters,
placed four or five feet above the level of the river. They are covered with a
most luxuriant forest, comprising a large number of india-rubber trees. We
found several people encamped here, who were engaged in collecting and
preparing the rubber, and thus had an opportunity of observing the process.
The tree which yields this valuable sap is the Siphonia elastica, a member
of the Euphorbiaceous order; it belongs, therefore, to a group of plants
quite different from that which furnishes the caoutchouc of the East Indies
and Africa. This latter is the product of different species of Ficus, and is
considered, I believe, in commerce, an inferior article to the India-rubber of
Para. The Siphonia elastica grows only on the lowlands in the Amazons
region; hitherto, the rubber has been collected chiefly in the islands and
swampy parts of the mainland within a distance of fifty to a hundred miles
CHAPTER IV 93
to the west of Para; but there are plenty of untapped trees still growing in
the wilds of the Tapajos, Madeira, Jurua, and Jauari, as far as 1800 miles
from the Atlantic coast. The tree is not remarkable in appearance; in bark
and foliage it is not unlike the European ash. But the trunk, like that of all
forest trees, shoots up to an immense height before throwing off branches.
The trees seem to be no man's property hereabout. The people we met with
told us they came every year to collect rubber on these islands as soon as
the waters had subsided, namely in August, and remained until January or
February.
The process is very simple. Every morning each person, man or woman, to
whom is allotted a certain number of trees, goes the round of the whole and
collects in a large vessel the milky sap which trickles from gashes made in
the bark on the preceding evening, and which is received in little clay cups,
or in ampullaria shells stuck beneath the wounds. The sap, which at first is
of the consistence of cream, soon thickens; the collectors are provided with
a great number of wooden moulds of the shape in which the rubber is
wanted, and when they return to the camp, they dip them into the liquid,
laying on, in the course of several days, one coat after another. When this is
done, the substance is white and hard; the proper colour and consistency are
given by passing it repeatedly through a thick black smoke obtained by
burning the nuts of certain palm trees, after which process the article is
ready for sale.
India-rubber is known throughout the province only by the name of seringa,

the Portuguese word for syringe; it owes this appellation to the
circumstance that it was only in this form that the first Portuguese settlers
noticed it to be employed by the aborigines. It is said that the Indians were
first taught to make syringes of rubber by seeing natural tubes formed by it
when the spontaneously-flowing sap gathered round projecting twigs.
Brazilians of all classes still use it extensively in the form of syringes, for
injections form a great feature in the popular system of cures; the rubber for
this purpose is made into a pear- shaped bottle, and a quill fixed in the long
neck.
CHAPTER IV 94
September 24th.--Opposite Cameta, the islands are all planted with cacao,
the tree which yields the chocolate nut. The forest is not cleared for the
purpose, but the cacao plants are stuck in here and there almost at random
amongst the trees. There are many houses on the banks of the river, all
elevated above the swampy soil on wooden piles, and furnished with broad
ladders by which to mount to the ground floor. As we passed by in our
canoe, we could see the people at their occupations in the open verandas,
and in one place saw a ball going on in broad daylight; there were fiddles
and guitars hard at work, and a number of lads in white shirts and trousers
dancing with brown damsels clad in showy print dresses. The cacao tree
produces a curious impression on account of the flowers and fruit growing
directly out of the trunk and branches. There is a whole group of wild fruit
trees which have the same habit in this country. In the wildernesses where
the cacao is planted, the collecting of the fruit is dangerous due to the
number of poisonous snakes which inhabit the places. One day, when we
were running our montaria to a landing- place, we saw a large serpent on
the trees overhead as we were about to brush past; the boat was stopped just
in the nick of time, and Mr. Leavens brought the reptile down with a charge
of shot.
September 26th.--At length we got clear of the islands, and saw once more
before us the sea-like expanse of waters which forms the mouth of the
Tocantins. The river had now sunk to its lowest point, and numbers of
fresh-water dolphins were rolling about in shoaly places. There are here
two species, one of which was new to science when I sent specimens to
England; it is called the Tucuxi (Steno tucuxi of Gray). When it comes to
the surface to breathe, it rises horizontally, showing first its back fin, then
draws an inspiration, and dives gently down, head foremost. This mode of
proceeding distinguishes the Tucuxi at once from the other species, which
is called Bouto or porpoise by the natives (Inia Geoffroyi of Desmarest).
When this rises the top of the head is the part first seen; it then blows, and
immediately afterwards dips head downwards, its back curving over,
exposing successively the whole dorsal ridge with its fin. It seems thus to
pitch heels over head, but does not show the tail fin. Besides this peculiar
motion, it is distinguished from the Tucuxi by its habit of generally going
in pairs. Both species are exceedingly numerous throughout the Amazons
CHAPTER IV 95
and its larger tributaries, but they are nowhere more plentiful than in the
shoaly water at the mouth of the Tocantins, especially in the dry season. In
the Upper Amazons a third pale flesh-coloured species is also abundant (the
Delphinus pallidus of Gervais). With the exception of a species found in the
Ganges, all other varieties of dolphin inhabit the sea exclusively. In the
broader parts of the Amazons, from its mouth to a distance of fifteen
hundred miles in the interior, one or other of the three kinds here mentioned
are always heard rolling, blowing, and snorting, especially at night, and
these noises contribute much to the impression of sea-wide vastness and
desolation which haunts the traveller. Besides dolphins in the water, frigate
birds in the air are characteristic of this lower part of the Tocantins. Flocks
of them were seen the last two or three days of our journey, hovering above
at an immense height. Towards night, we were obliged to cast anchor over
a shoal in the middle of the river to await the ebb tide. The wind blew very
strongly, and this, together with the incoming flow, caused such a heavy
sea that it was impossible to sleep. The vessel rolled and pitched until every
bone in our bodies ached with the bumps we received, and we were all
more or less seasick. On the following day we entered the Anapu, and on
the 30th September, after threading again the labyrinth of channels
communicating between the Tocantins and the Moju, arrived at Para.
I will now give a short account of Cameta, the principal town on the banks
of the Tocantins, which I visited for the second time, in June,1849. Mr.
Wallace, in the same month, departed from Para to explore the rivers
Guama and Capim. I embarked as passenger in a Cameta trading vessel, the
St. John, a small schooner of thirty tons burthen. I had learnt by this time
that the only way to attain the objects for which I had come to this country
was to accustom myself to the ways of life of the humbler classes of the
inhabitants. A traveller on the Amazons gains little by being furnished with
letters of recommendation to persons of note, for in the great interior
wildernesses of forest and river the canoemen have pretty much their own
way; the authorities cannot force them to grant passages or to hire
themselves to travellers, and therefore, a stranger is obliged to ingratiate
himself with them in order to get conveyed from place to place. I
thoroughly enjoyed the journey to Cameta; the weather was again beautiful
in the extreme. We started from Para at sunrise on the 8th of June, and on
CHAPTER IV 96
the 10th emerged from the narrow channels of the Anapu into the broad
Tocantins. The vessel was so full of cargo that there was no room to sleep
in the cabin; so we passed the nights on deck. The captain or supercargo,
called in Portuguese cabo, was a mameluco, named Manoel, a quiet,
good-humoured person, who treated me with the most unaffected civility
during the three days' journey. The pilot was also a mameluco, named John
Mendez, a handsome young fellow, full of life and spirit. He had on board a
wire guitar or viola, as it is here called; and in the bright moonlight nights,
as we lay at anchor hour after hour waiting for the tide, he enlivened us all
with songs and music. He was on the best of terms with the cabo, both
sleeping in the same hammock slung between the masts. I passed the nights
wrapped in an old sail outside the roof of the cabin. The crew, five in
number, were Indians and half-breeds, all of whom treated their two
superiors with the most amusing familiarity, yet I never sailed in a better
managed vessel than the St. John.
In crossing to Cameta we had to await the flood-tide in a channel called

Entre-as-Ilhas, which lies between two islands in mid- river, and John
Mendez, being in good tune, gave us an extempore song, consisting of a
great number of verses. The crew lay about the deck listening, and all
joined in the chorus. Some stanzas related to me, telling how I had come all
the way from "Inglaterra," to skin monkeys and birds and catch insects; the
last-mentioned employment of course giving ample scope for fun. He
passed from this to the subject of political parties in Cameta; and then, as
all the hearers were Cametaenses and understood the hits, there were roars
of laughter, some of them rolling over and over on the deck, so much were
they tickled. Party spirit runs high at Cameta, not merely in connection with
local politics, but in relation to affairs of general concern, such as the
election of members to the Imperial Parliament, and so forth. This political
strife is partly attributable to the circumstance that a native of Cameta, Dr.
Angelo Custodio Correia, had been in almost every election, one of the
candidates for the representation of the province. I fancied these shrewd but
unsophisticated canoe-men saw through the absurdities attending these
local contests, and hence their inclination to satirise them; they were,
however, evidently partisans of Dr. Angelo. The brother of Dr. Angelo,
Joao Augusto Correia, a distinguished merchant, was an active canvasser.
CHAPTER IV 97
The party of the Correias was the Liberal, or, as it is called throughout
Brazil, the Santa Luzia faction; the opposite side, at the head of which was
one Pedro Moraes, was the Conservative, or Saquarema party. I preserved
one of the stanzas of the song, which, however, does not contain much
point; it ran thus:
Ora pana, tana pana!, pana tana, Joao Augusto he bonito e homem pimpao,
Mas Pedro he feio e hum grande ladrao, (Chorus) Ora pana, etc.
John Augustus is handsome and as a man ought to be, But Peter is ugly and
a great thief. (Chorus) Ora pana, etc.
The canoe-men of the Amazons have many songs and choruses, with which
they are in the habit of relieving the monotony of their slow voyages, and
which are known all over the interior. The choruses consist of a simple
strain, repeated almost to weariness, and sung generally in unison, but
sometimes with an attempt at harmony. There is a wildness and sadness
about the tunes which harmonise well with, and in fact are born of, the
circumstances of the canoe-man's life: the echoing channels, the endless
gloomy forests, the solemn nights, and the desolate scenes of broad and
stormy waters and falling banks. Whether they were invented by the
Indians or introduced by the Portuguese it is hard to decide, as many of the
customs of the lower classes of Portuguese are so similar to those of the
Indians that they have become blended with them. One of the commonest
songs is very wild and pretty. It has for refrain the words "Mai, Mai"
("Mother, Mother"), with a long drawl on the second word. The stanzas are
quite variable; the best wit on board starts the verse, improvising as he goes
on, and the others join in the chorus. They all relate to the lonely river life
and the events of the voyage-- the shoals, the wind, how far they shall go
before they stop to sleep, and so forth. The sonorous native names of
places, Goajara, Tucumanduba, etc., add greatly to the charm of the wild
music. Sometimes they bring in the stars thus:
A lua esta sahindo, Mai, Mai! A lua esta sahindo, Mai, Mai! As sete
estrellas estao chorando, Mai, Mai! Por s'acharem desamparados, Mai, Mai!
CHAPTER IV 98
The moon is rising, Mother, Mother! The moon is rising, Mother, Mother!
The seven stars (Pleiades) are weeping, Mother, Mother! To find
themselves forsaken, Mother, mother!
I fell asleep about ten o'clock, but at four in the morning John Mendez
woke me to enjoy the sight of the little schooner tearing through the waves
before a spanking breeze. The night was transparently clear and almost
cold, the moon appeared sharply defined against the dark blue sky, and a
ridge of foam marked where the prow of the vessel was cleaving its way
through the water. The men had made a fire in the galley to make tea of an
acid herb, called erva cidreira, a quantity of which they had gathered at the
last landing-place, and the flames sparkled cheerily upwards. It is at such
times as these that Amazon travelling is enjoyable, and one no longer
wonders at the love which many, both natives and strangers, have for this
wandering life. The little schooner sped rapidly on with booms bent and
sails stretched to the utmost; just as day dawned, we ran with scarcely
slackened speed into the port of Cameta, and cast anchor.
I stayed at Cameta until the 16th of July, and made a considerable

collection of the natural productions of the neighbourhood. The town in
1849 was estimated to contain about 5000 inhabitants, but the municipal
district of which Cameta is the capital numbered 20,000; this, however,
comprised the whole of the lower part of the Tocantins, which is the most
thickly populated part of the province of Para. The productions of the
district are cacao, india-rubber, and Brazil nuts. The most remarkable
feature in the social aspect of the place is the hybrid nature of the whole
population, the amalgamation of the white and Indian races being here
complete. The aborigines were originally very numerous on the western
bank of the Tocantins, the principal tribe having been the Camutas, from
which the city takes its name. They were a superior nation, settled, and
attached to agriculture, and received with open arms the white immigrants
who were attracted to the district by its fertility, natural beauty, and the
healthfulness of the climate. The Portuguese settlers were nearly all males,
the Indian women were good-looking, and made excellent wives; so the
natural result has been, in the course of two centuries, a complete blending
of the two races. There is now, however, a considerable infusion of negro
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blood in the mixture, several hundred African slaves having been

introduced during the last seventy years. The few whites are chiefly
Portuguese, but there are also two or three Brazilian families of pure
European descent. The town consists of three long streets, running parallel
to the river, with a few shorter ones crossing them at right angles. The
houses are very plain, being built, as usual in this country, simply of a
strong framework, filled up with mud, and coated with white plaster. A few
of them are of two or three stories. There are three churches, and also a
small theatre, where a company of native actors at the time of my visit were
representing light Portuguese plays with considerable taste and ability. The
people have a reputation all over the province for energy and perseverance;
and it is often said that they are as keen in trade as the Portuguese. The
lower classes are as indolent and sensual here as in other parts of the
province, a moral condition not to be wondered at in a country where
perpetual summer reigns, and where the necessities of life are so easily
obtained. But they are light-hearted, quick-witted, communicative, and
hospitable. I found here a native poet, who had written some pretty verses,
showing an appreciation of the natural beauties of the country, and was told
that the Archbishop of Bahia, the primate of Brazil, was a native of
Cameta. It is interesting to find the mamelucos displaying talent and
enterprise, for it shows that degeneracy does not necessarily result from the
mixture of white and Indian blood. The Cametaenses boast, as they have a
right to do, of theirs being the only large town which resisted successfully
the anarchists in the great rebellion of 1835-6. While the whites of Para
were submitting to the rule of half-savage revolutionists, the mamelucos of
Cameta placed themselves under the leadership of a courageous priest,
named Prudencio. They armed themselves, fortified the place, and repulsed
the large forces which the insurgents of Para sent to attack the place. The
town not only became the refuge for all loyal subjects, but was a centre
whence large parties of volunteers sallied forth repeatedly to attack the
anarchists in their various strongholds.
The forest behind Cameta is traversed by several broad roads, which lead
over undulating ground many miles into the interior. They pass generally
under shade, and part of the way through groves of coffee and orange trees,
fragrant plantations of cacao, and tracts of second-growth woods. The
CHAPTER IV 100
narrow brook-watered valleys, with which the land is intersected, alone

have remained clothed with primaeval forest, at least near the town. The
houses along these beautiful roads belong chiefly to Mameluco, mulatto,
and Indian families, each of which has its own small plantation. There are
only a few planters with larger establishments, and these have seldom more
than a dozen slaves. Besides the main roads, there are endless bypaths
which thread the forest and communicate with isolated houses. Along these
the traveller may wander day after day without leaving the shade, and
everywhere meet with cheerful, simple, and hospitable people.
Soon after landing, I was introduced to the most distinguished citizen of the
place, Dr. Angelo Custodio Correia, whom I have already mentioned. This
excellent man was a favourable specimen of the highest class of native
Brazilians. He had been educated in Europe, was now a member of the
Brazilian Parliament, and had been twice president of his native
province.His manners were less formal, and his goodness more thoroughly
genuine, perhaps, than is the rule generally with Brazilians. He was
admired and loved, as I had ample opportunity of observing, throughout all
Amazonia. He sacrificed his life in 1855, for the good of his fellow-
townsmen, when Cameta was devastated by the cholera; having stayed
behind with a few heroic spirits to succour invalids and direct the burying
of the dead, when nearly all the chief citizens had fled from the place. After
he had done what he could, he embarked for Para but was himself then
attacked with cholera, and died on board the steamer before he reached the
capital. Dr. Angelo received me with the usual kindness which he showed
to all strangers. He procured me, unsolicited, a charming country house,
free of rent, hired a mulatto servant for me, and thus relieved me of the
many annoyances and delays attendant on a first arrival in a country town
where even the name of an inn is unknown. The rocinha, thus given up for
my residence, belonged to a friend of his, Senor Jose Raimundo Furtado, a
stout florid- complexioned gentleman, such a one as might be met with any
day in a country town in England. To him also I was indebted for many acts
of kindness.
The rocinha was situated near a broad grassy road bordered by lofty woods,
which leads from Cameta to the Aldeia, a village two miles distant. My first
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walks were along this road. From it branches another similar but still more
picturesque road, which runs to Curima and Pacaja, two small settlements,
several miles distant, in the heart of the forest. The Curima road is beautiful
in the extreme. About half a mile from the house where I lived, it crosses a
brook flowing through a deep dell by means of a long rustic wooden
bridge. The virgin forest is here left untouched; numerous groups of slender
palms, mingled with lofty trees overrun with creepers and parasites, fill the
shady glen and arch over the bridge, forming one of the most picturesque
scenes imaginable. A little beyond the bridge there was an extensive grove
of orange and other trees, which yielded me a rich harvest. The Aldeia road
runs parallel to the river, the land from the border of the road to the
indented shore of the Tocantins forming a long slope which was also richly
wooded; this slope was threaded by numerous shady paths, and abounded
in beautiful insects and birds. At the opposite or southern end of the town,
there was a broad road called the Estrada da Vacaria-- this ran along the
banks of the Tocantins at some distance from the river, and continued over
hill and dale, through bamboo thickets and palm swamps, for about fifteen
miles.
At Cameta I chanced to verify a fact relating to the habits of a large hairy

spider of the genus Mygale, in a manner worth recording. The species was
M. avicularia, or one very closely allied to it; the individual was nearly two
inches in length of body, but the legs expanded seven inches, and the entire
body and legs were covered with coarse grey and reddish hairs. I was
attracted by a movement of the monster on a tree-trunk; it was close
beneath a deep crevice in the tree, across which was stretched a dense white
web. The lower part of the web was broken, and two small birds, finches,
were entangled in the pieces; they were about the size of the English siskin,
and I judged the two to be male and female. One of them was quite dead,
the other lay under the body of the spider, not quite dead, and was smeared
with the filthy liquor or saliva exuded by the monster. I drove away the
spider and took the birds, but the second one soon died. The fact of species
of Mygale sallying forth at night, mounting trees, and sucking the eggs and
young of hummingbirds, has been recorded long ago by Madame Merian
and Palisot de Beauvois; but, in the absence of any confirmation, it has
come to be discredited. From the way the fact has been related, it would
CHAPTER IV 102
appear that it had been merely derived from the report of natives, and had
not been witnessed by the narrators. Count Langsdorff, in his Expedition
into the Interior of Brazil, states that he totally disbelieved the story. I
found the circumstance to be quite a novelty to the residents hereabout. The
Mygales are quite common insects: some species make their cells under
stones, others form artistical tunnels in the earth, and some build their dens
in the thatch of houses. The natives call them Aranhas carangueijeiras, or
crab-spiders. The hairs with which they are clothed come off when touched,
and cause a peculiar and almost maddening irritation. The first specimen
that I killed and prepared was handled incautiously, and I suffered terribly
for three days afterwards. I think this is not owing to any poisonous quality
residing in the hairs, but to their being short and hard, and thus getting into
the fine creases of the skin. Some Mygales are of immense size. One day I
saw the children belonging to an Indian family, who collected for me with
one of these monsters secured by a cord round its waist, by which they
were leading it about the house as they would a dog.
The only monkeys I observed at Cameta were the Couxio (Pithecia

Satanas)--a large species, clothed with long brownish-black hair- -and the
tiny Midas argentatus. The Couxio has a thick bushy tail, and the hair of the
head, which looks as if it had been carefully combed, sits on it like a wig. It
inhabits only the most retired parts of the forest, on the terra firma, and I
observed nothing of its habits. The little Midas argentatus is one of the
rarest of the American monkeys; indeed, I have not heard of its being found
anywhere except near Cameta, where I once saw three individuals, looking
like so many white kittens, running along a branch in a cacao grove; in their
motions, they resembled precisely the Midas ursulus already described. I
saw afterwards a pet animal of this species, and heard that there were many
so kept, and that they were esteemed as great treasures. The one mentioned
was full-grown, although it measured only seven inches in length of body.
It was covered with long, white, silky hairs, the tail being blackish, and the
face nearly naked and flesh-coloured. It was a most timid and sensitive
little thing. The woman who owned it carried it constantly in her bosom,
and no money would induce her to part with her pet. She called it Mico. It
fed from her mouth and allowed her to fondle it freely, but the nervous little
creature would not permit strangers to touch it. If any one attempted to do
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so, it shrank back, the whole body trembling with fear, and its teeth
chattered while it uttered its tremulous, frightened tones. The expression of
its features was like that of its more robust brother, Midas ursulus; the eyes,
which were black, were full of curiosity and mistrust, and were always kept
fixed upon the person who attempted to advance towards it.
In the orange groves and other parts, hummingbirds were plentiful, but I
did not notice more than three species. I saw one day a little pigmy
belonging to the genus Phaethornis in the act of washing itself in a brook;
perched on a thin branch, one end of which was under water. It dipped
itself, then fluttered its wings and pruned its feathers, and seemed
thoroughly to enjoy itself alone in the shady nook which it had chosen--a
place overshadowed by broad leaves of ferns and Heliconiae. I thought, as I
watched it, that there was no need for poets to invent elves and gnomes
while Nature furnishes us with such marvellous little sprites ready at hand.
My return journey to Para afforded many incidents characteristic of

Amazonian travelling. I left Cameta on the 16th of July. My luggage was
embarked in the morning in the Santa Rosa, a vessel of the kind called
cuberta, or covered canoe. The cuberta is very much used on these rivers. It
is not decked, but the sides forward are raised and arched over so as to
admit of cargo being piled high above the water-line. At the stern is a neat
square cabin, also raised, and between the cabin and covered forepart is a
narrow piece decked over, on which are placed the cooking arrangements.
This is called the tombadilha or quarterdeck, and when the canoe is heavily
laden, it goes underwater as the vessel heels over to the wind. There are two
masts, rigged with fore and aft sails--the foremast has often besides a main
and top sail. The forepart is planked over at the top, and on this raised deck
the crew work the vessel, pulling it along, when there is no wind, by means
of the long oars already described.
As I have just said, my luggage was embarked in the morning. I was

informed that we should start with the ebb-tide in the afternoon; so I
thought I should have time to pay my respects to Dr. Angelo and other
friends, whose extreme courtesy and goodness had made my residence at
Cameta so agreeable. After dinner the guests, according to custom at the
CHAPTER IV 104
house of the Correias, walked into the cool verandah which overlooks the
river; and there we saw the Santa Rosa, a mere speck in the offing miles
away, tacking down river with a fine breeze. I was now in a fix, for it
would be useless attempting to overtake the cuberta, and besides the sea ran
too high for any montaria. I was then told that I ought to have been aboard
hours before the time fixed for starting, because when a breeze springs up,
vessels start before the tide turns; the last hour of the flood not being very
strong. All my precious collections, my clothes, and other necessaries were
on board, and it was indispensable that I should be at Para when the things
were disembarked. I tried to hire a montaria and men, but was told that it
would be madness to cross the river in a small boat with this breeze. On
going to Senor Laroque, another of my Cameta friends, I was relieved of
my embarrassment, for I found there an English gentleman, Mr. Patchett of
Pernambuco, who was visiting Para and its neighbourhood on his way to
England, and who, as he was going back to Para in a small boat with four
paddles, which would start at midnight, kindly offered me a passage.
The evening from seven to ten o'clock was very stormy. About seven, the
night became intensely dark, and a terrific squall of wind burst forth, which
made the loose tiles fly over the housetops; to this succeeded lightning and
stupendous claps of thunder, both nearly simultaneous. We had had several
of these short and sharp storms during the past month. At midnight, when
we embarked, all was as calm as though a ruffle had never disturbed air,
forest, or river. The boat sped along like an arrow to the rhythmic paddling
of the four stout youths we had with us, who enlivened the passage with
their wild songs. Mr. Patchett and I tried to get a little sleep, but the cabin
was so small and encumbered with boxes placed at all sorts of angles, that
we found sleep impossible. I was just dozing when the day dawned, and, on
awakening, the first object I saw was the Santa Rosa, at anchor under a
green island in mid-river. I preferred to make the remainder of the voyage
in company of my collections, so bade Mr. Patchett good-day. The owner
of the Santa Rosa, Senor Jacinto Machado, whom I had not seen before,
received me aboard, and apologised for having started without me. He was
a white man, a planter, and was now taking his year's production of cacao,
about twenty tons, to Para. The canoe was very heavily laden, and I was
rather alarmed to see that it was leaking at all points. The crew were all in
CHAPTER IV 105
the water diving about to feel for the holes, which they stopped with pieces
of ray and clay, and an old negro was baling the water out of the hold. This
was a pleasant prospect for a three-day voyage! Senor Machado treated it as
the most ordinary incident possible: "It was always likely to leak, for it was
an old vessel that had been left as worthless high and dry on the beach, and
he had bought it very cheap."
When the leaks were stopped, we proceeded on our journey and at night
reached the mouth of the Anapu. I wrapped myself in an old sail, and fell
asleep on the raised deck. The next day, we threaded the Igarape-mirim,
and on the 19th descended the Moju. Senor Machado and I by this time had
become very good friends. At every interesting spot on the banks of the
Moju, he manned the small boat and took me ashore. There are many large
houses on this river belonging to what were formerly large and flourishing
plantations, but which, since the Revolution of 1835-6, had been suffered to
go to decay. Two of the largest buildings were constructed by the Jesuits in
the early part of the last century. We were told that there were formerly
eleven large sugar mills on the banks of the Moju, while now there are only
three.
At Burujuba, there is a large monastery in a state of ruin; part of the edifice,

however, was still inhabited by a Brazilian family. The walls are four feet
in thickness. The long dark corridors and gloomy cloisters struck me as
very inappropriate in the midst of this young and radiant nature. They
would be better if placed on some barren moor in Northern Europe than
here in the midst of perpetual summer. The next turn in the river below
Burujuba brought the city of Para into view. The wind was now against us,
and we were obliged to tack about. Towards evening, it began to blow
stiffly, the vessel heeled over very much, and Senor Machado, for the first
time, trembled for the safety of his cargo; the leaks burst out afresh when
we were yet two miles from the shore. He ordered another sail to be hoisted
in order to run more quickly into port, but soon afterwards an extra puff of
wind came, and the old boat lurched alarmingly, the rigging gave way, and
down fell boom and sail with a crash, encumbering us with the wreck. We
were then obliged to have recourse to oars; and as soon as we were near the
land, fearing that the crazy vessel would sink before reaching port, I begged
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Senor Machado to send me ashore in the boat with the more precious
portion of my collections.
CHAPTER V
CARIPI AND THE BAY OF MARAJO
River Para and Bay of Marajo--Journey to Caripi--Negro Observance of

Christmas--A German Family--Bats--Ant-eaters--Hummingbirds--
Excursion to the Murucupi--Domestic Life of the Inhabitants-- Hunting
Excursion with Indians--White Ants
That part of the Para river which lies in front of the city, as I have already
explained, forms a narrow channel, being separated from the main waters
of the estuary by a cluster of islands. This channel is about two miles broad,
and constitutes part of the minor estuary of Goajara, into which the three
rivers Guama, Moju, and Acara discharge their waters. The main channel of
the Para lies ten miles away from the city, directly across the river; at that
point, after getting clear of the islands, a great expanse of water is beheld,
ten to twelve miles in width; on the opposite shore the island of Marajo,
being visible only in clear weather as a line of tree-tops dotting the horizon.
A little further upwards, that is to the southwest, the mainland on the right
or eastern shore appears--this is called Carnapijo; it is rocky, covered with
the neverending forest, and the coast, which is fringed with broad sandy
beaches, describes a gentle curve inwards. The broad reach of the Para in
front of this coast is called the Bahia, or Bay of Marajo. The coast and the
interior of the land are peopled by civilised Indians and Mamelucos, with a
mixture of free negroes and mulattos. They are poor, for the waters are not
abundant in fish, and they are dependent for a livelihood solely on their
small plantations, and the scant supply of game found in the woods. The
district was originally peopled by various tribes of Indians, of whom the
principal were the Tupinambas and Nhengahibas. Like all the coast tribes,
whether inhabiting the banks of the Amazons or the seashore between Para
and Bahia, they were far more advanced in civilisation than the hordes
scattered through the interior of the country, some of which still remain in
CHAPTER V 107
the wild state, between the Amazons and the Plata. There are three villages
on the coast of Carnapijo, and several planters' houses, formerly the centres
of flourishing estates, which have now relapsed into forest in consequence
of the scarcity of labour and diminished enterprise. One of the largest of
these establishments is called Caripi. At the time of which I am speaking, it
belonged to a Scotch gentleman, Mr. Campbell, who had married the
daughter of a large Brazilian proprietor. Most of the occasional English and
American visitors to Para had made some stay at Caripi, and it had obtained
quite a reputation for the number and beauty of the birds and insects found
there; I therefore applied for, and obtained permission, to spend two or
three months at the place. The distance from Para was about twenty-three
miles, round by the northern end of the Ilha das oncas (Isle of Tigers),
which faces the city. I bargained for a passage thither with the cabo of a
small trading-vessel, which was going past the place, and started on the 7th
of December, 1848.
We were thirteen persons aboard: the cabo, his pretty mulatto mistress, the
pilot and five Indian canoemen, three young mamelucos (tailor-apprentices
who were taking a holiday trip to Cameta), a heavily chained runaway
slave, and myself. The young mamelucos were pleasant, gentle fellows;
they could read and write, and amused themselves on the voyage with a
book containing descriptions and statistics of foreign countries, in which
they seemed to take great interest--one reading while the others listened. At
Uirapiranga, a small island behind the Ilha das oncas, we had to stop a short
time to embark several pipes of cashaca at a sugar estate. The cabo took the
montaria and two men; the pipes were rolled into the water and floated to
the canoe, the men passing cables round and towing them through a rough
sea. Here we slept, and the following morning, continuing our voyage,
entered a narrow channel which intersects the land of Carnapijo. At 2 p.m.
we emerged from this channel, which is called the Aitituba, or Arrozal, into
the broad Bahia, and then saw, two or three miles away to the left, the
red-tiled mansion of Caripi, embosomed in woods on the shores of a
charming little bay.
The water is very shallow near the shore, and when the wind blows there is
a heavy ground swell. A few years previously, an English gentleman, Mr.
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Graham, an amateur naturalist, was capsized here and drowned with his
wife and child, while passing in a heavily- laden montaria to his large
canoe. Remembering their fate, I was rather alarmed to see that I should be
obliged to take all my luggage ashore in one trip in a leaky little boat. The
pile of chests with two Indians and myself sank the montaria almost to the
level of the water. I was kept busy bailing all the way. The Indians manage
canoes in this condition with admirable skill. They preserve the nicest
equilibrium, and paddle so gently that not the slightest oscillation is
perceptible. On landing, an old negress named Florinda, the feitora or
manageress of the establishment (which was kept only as a poultry-farm
and hospital for sick slaves), gave me the keys, and I forthwith took
possession of the rooms I required.
I remained here nine weeks, or until the 12th of February, 1849. The house
was very large and most substantially built, but consisted of only one story.
I was told it was built by the Jesuits more than a century ago. The front had
no veranda, the doors opening upon a slightly elevated terrace about a
hundred yards distant from the broad sandy beach. Around the residence
the ground had been cleared to the extent of two or three acres, and was
planted with fruit trees. Well-trodden pathways through the forest led to
little colonies of the natives on the banks of retired creeks and rivulets in
the interior. I led here a solitary but not unpleasant life; for there was a
great charm in the loneliness of the place. The swell of the river beating on
the sloping beach caused an unceasing murmur, which lulled me to sleep at
night, and seemed appropriate music in those midday hours when all nature
was pausing breathless under the rays of a vertical sun. Here I spent my
first Christmas Day in a foreign land. The festival was celebrated by the
negroes of their own free will and in a very pleasing manner. The room
next to the one I had chosen was the capella, or chapel. It had a little altar
which was neatly arranged, and the room was furnished with a magnificent
brass chandelier. Men, women, and children were busy in the chapel all day
on the 24th of December decorating the altar with flowers and strewing the
floor with orange-leaves. They invited some of their neighbours to the
evening prayers, and when the simple ceremony began an hour before
midnight, the chapel was crowded. They were obliged to dispense with the
mass, for they had no priest; the service therefore consisted merely of a
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long litany and a few hymns. There was placed on the altar a small image
of the infant Christ, the "Menino Deos" as they called it, or the child-god,
which had a long ribbon depending from its waist. An old white-haired
negro led off the litany, and the rest of the people joined in the responses.
After the service was over they all went up to the altar, one by one, and
kissed the end of the ribbon. The gravity and earnestness shown throughout
the proceedings were remarkable. Some of the hymns were very simple and
beautiful, especially one beginning "Virgensoberana," a trace of whose
melody springs to my recollection whenever I think on the dreamy solitude
of Caripi.
The next day after I arrived, two blue-eyed and red-haired boys came up
and spoke to me in English, and presently their father made his appearance.
They proved to be a German family named Petzell, who were living in the
woods, Indian fashion, about a mile from Caripi. Petzell explained to me
how he came here. He said that thirteen years ago he came to Brazil with a
number of other Germans under engagement to serve in the Brazilian army.
When his time had expired he came to Para to see the country, but after a
few months' rambling left the place to establish himself in the United
States. There he married, went to Illinois, and settled as farmer near St.
Louis. He remained on his farm seven or eight years, and had a family of
five children. He could never forget, however, the free river-life and
perpetual summer of the banks of the Amazons; so, he persuaded his wife
to consent to break up their home in North America, and migrate to Para.
No one can imagine the difficulties the poor fellow had to go through
before reaching the land of his choice. He first descended the Mississippi,
feeling sure that a passage to Para could be got at New Orleans. He was
there told that the only port in North America he could start from was New
York, so away he sailed for New York; but there was no chance of a vessel
sailing thence to Para, so he took a passage to Demerara, as bringing him,
at any rate, near to the desired land. There is no communication whatever
between Demerara and Para, and he was forced to remain here with his
family four or five months, during which they all caught the yellow fever,
and one of his children died. At length, he heard of a small coasting vessel
going to Cayenne, so he embarked, and thereby got another stage nearer the
end of his journey. A short time after reaching Cayenne, he shipped in a
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schooner that was going to Para, or rather the island of Marajo, for a cargo
of cattle. He had now fixed himself, after all his wanderings, in a healthy
and fertile little nook on the banks of a rivulet near Caripi, built himself a
log-hut, and planted a large patch of mandioca and Indian corn. He seemed
to be quite happy, but his wife complained much of the want of wholesome
food, meat, and wheaten bread. I asked the children whether they liked the
country; they shook their heads, and said they would rather be in Illinois.
Petzell told me that his Indian neighbours treated him very kindly; one or
other of them called almost every day to see how he was getting on, and
they had helped him in many ways. He had a high opinion of the Tapuyos,
and said, "If you treat them well, they will go through fire to serve you."
Petzell and his family were expert insect-collectors, so I employed them at

this work during my stay at Caripi. The daily occurrences here were after a
uniform fashion. I rose with the dawn, took a cup of coffee, and then sallied
forth after birds. At ten I breakfasted, and devoted the hours from ten until
three to entomology. The evening was occupied in preserving and storing
my captures. Petzell and I sometimes undertook long excursions, occupying
the whole day. Our neighbours used to bring me all the quadrupeds, birds,
reptiles, and shells they met with, and so altogether I was enabled to
acquire a good collection of the productions of the district.
The first few nights I was much troubled by bats. The room where I slept
had not been used for many months, and the roof was open to the tiles and
rafters. The first night I slept soundly and did not perceive anything
unusual, but on the next I was aroused about midnight by the rushing noise
made by vast hosts of bats sweeping about the room. The air was alive with
them; they had put out the lamp, and when I relighted it the place appeared
blackened with the impish multitudes that were whirling round and round.
After I had laid about well with a stick for a few minutes, they disappeared
amongst the tiles, but when all was still again they returned, and once more
extinguished the light. I took no further notice of them, and went to sleep.
The next night several got into my hammock; I seized them as they were
crawling over me, and dashed them against the wall. The next morning I
found a wound, evidently caused by a bat, on my hip. This was rather
unpleasant, so I set to work with the negroes, and tried to exterminate them.
CHAPTER V 111
I shot a great many as they hung from the rafters, and the negroes having
mounted with ladders to the roof outside, routed out from beneath the caves
many hundreds of them, including young broods. There were altogether
four species--two belonging to the genus Dysopes, one to Phyllostoma, and
the fourth to Glossophaga. By far the greater number belonged to the
Dysopes perotis, a species having very large ears, and measuring two feet
from tip to tip of the wings. The Phyllostoma was a small kind, of a
dark-grey colour, streaked with white down the back, and having a
leaf-shaped fleshy expansion on the tip of the nose. I was never attacked by
bats except on this occasion. The fact of their sucking the blood of persons
sleeping, from wounds which they make in the toes, is now well
established; but it is only a few persons who are subject to this
blood-letting. According to the negroes, the Phyllostoma is the only kind
which attacks man. Those which I caught crawling over me were Dysopes,
and I am inclined to think many different kinds of bats have this propensity.
One day I was occupied searching for insects in the bark of a fallen tree,
when I saw a large cat-like animal advancing towards the spot. It came
within a dozen yards before perceiving me. I had no weapon with me but an
old chisel, and was getting ready to defend myself if it should make a
spring, when it turned around hastily and trotted off. I did not obtain a very
distinct view of it, but I could see its colour was that of the Puma, or
American Lion, although it was rather too small for that species. The Puma
is not a common animal in the Amazons forests. I did not see altogether
more than a dozen skins, in the possession of the natives. The fur is of a
fawn colour. On account of its hue resembling that of a deer common in the
forests, the natives call it the Sassu-arana, [The old zoologist Marcgrave
called the Puma the Cuguacuarana, probably (the c's being soft) a
misspelling of Sassu-arana; hence, the name Cougouar employed by French
zoologists, and copied in most works on natural history.] or the false deer;
that is, an animal which deceives one at first sight by its superficial
resemblance to a deer. The hunters are not at all afraid of it, and speak
always in disparaging terms of its courage. Of the Jaguar, they give a very
different account.
CHAPTER V 112
The only species of monkey I met with at Caripi was the same
dark-coloured little Midas already mentioned as found near Para. The great
Anteater, Tamandua of the natives (Myrmecophaga jubata), was not
uncommon here. After the first few weeks of residence, I ran short of fresh
provisions. The people of the neighbourhood had sold me all the fowls they
could spare; I had not yet learned to eat the stale and stringy salt-fish which
is the staple food in these places, and for several days I had lived on
rice-porridge, roasted bananas, and farinha. Florinda asked me whether I
could eat Tamandua. I told her almost anything in the shape of flesh would
be acceptable; so the same day she went with an old negro named Antonio
and the dogs, and in the evening brought one of the animals. The meat was
stewed and turned out very good, something like goose in flavour. The
people at Caripi would not touch a morsel, saying it was not considered fit
to eat in these parts; I had read, however, that it was an article of food in
other countries of South America. During the next two or three weeks,
whenever we were short of fresh meat, Antonio was always ready, for a
small reward, to get me a Tamandua. But one day he came to me in great
distress, with the news that his favourite dog, Atrevido, had been caught in
the grip of an anteater, and was killed. We hastened to the place, and
found the dog was not dead, but severely torn by the claws of the animal,
which itself was mortally wounded, and was now relaxing its grasp.
The habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata are now pretty well known. It is
not uncommon in the drier forests of the Amazons valley, but is not found,
I believe, in the Ygapo, or flooded lands. The Brazilians call the species the
Tamandua bandeira, or the Banner Anteater, the term banner being applied
in allusion to the curious colouration of the animal, each side of the body
having a broad oblique stripe, half grey and half black, which gives it some
resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an excessively long slender
muzzle, and a wormlike extensile tongue. Its jaws are destitute of teeth. The
claws are much elongated, and its gait is very awkward. It lives on the
ground, and feeds on termites, or white ants -- the long claws being
employed to pull in pieces the solid hillocks made by the insects, and the
long flexible tongue to lick them up from the crevices. All the other species
of this singular genus are arboreal. I met with four species altogether. One
was the Myrmecophaga tetradactyla; the two others, more curious and less
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known, were very small kinds, called Tamandua-i. Both are similar in
size--ten inches in length, exclusive of the tail--and in the number of the
claws, having two of unequal length to the anterior feet, and four to the
hind feet. One species is clothed with greyish-yellow silky hair-- this is of
rare occurrence. The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour, without silky
lustre. One was brought to me alive at Caripi, having been caught by an
Indian, clinging motionless inside a hollow tree. I kept it in the house about
twenty-four hours. It had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and
extremely small eyes. It remained nearly all the time without motion except
when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back
of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its
manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave
it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night
on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it on a
tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduas are
nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which
construct earthy nests that look like ugly excrescences on the trunks and
branches of trees. The different kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to
various modes of life, terrestrial and arboreal. Those which live on trees are
again either diurnal or nocturnal, for Myrmecophaga tetradactyla is seen
moving along the main branches in the daytime. The allied group of the
Sloths, which are still more exclusively South American forms than
ant-eaters are, at the present time furnish arboreal species only, but
formerly terrestrial forms of sloths also existed, as the Megatherium, whose
mode of life was a puzzle, seeing that it was of too colossal a size to live on
trees, until Owen showed how it might have obtained its food from the
ground.
In January the orange-trees became covered with blossom, at least to a

greater extent than usual, for they flower more or less in this country all the
year round--and attracting a great number of hummingbirds. Every day, in
the cooler hours of the morning, and in the evening from four o'clock until
six, they were to be seen whirring about the trees by scores. Their motions
are unlike those of all other birds. They dart to and fro so swiftly that the
eye can scarcely follow them, and when they stop before a flower, it is only
for a few moments. They poise themselves in an unsteady manner, their
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wings moving with inconceivable rapidity, probe the flower, and then shoot
off to another part of the tree. They do not proceed in that methodical
manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from
one part of the tree to another in the most capricious way. Sometimes two
males close with each other and fight, mounting upwards in the struggle, as
insects are often seen to do when similarly engaged, and then separating
hastily and darting back to their work. Now and then they stop to rest,
perching on leafless twigs, where they may be sometimes seen probing,
from the places where they sit, the flowers within their reach. The brilliant
colours with which they are adorned cannot be seen whilst they are
fluttering about, nor can the different species be distinguished unless they
have a deal of white hue in their plumage, such as Heliothrix auritus, which
is wholly white underneath, although of a glittering green colour above, and
the white-tailed Florisuga mellivora.
There is not a great variety of hummingbirds in the Amazons region, the

number of species being far smaller in these uniform forest plains than in
the diversified valleys of the Andes, under the same parallels of latitude.
The family is divisible into two groups, contrasted in form and habits: one
containing species which live entirely in the shade of the forest, and the
other comprising those which prefer open sunny places. The forest species
(Phaethorninae) are seldom seen at flowers, flowers being, in the shady
places where they abide, of rare occurrence; but they search for insects on
leaves, threading the bushes and passing above and beneath each leaf with
wonderful rapidity. The other group (Trochilinae) are not quite confined to
cleared places, as they come into the forest wherever a tree is in blossom,
and descend into sunny openings where flowers are to be found. But it is
only where the woods are less dense than usual that this is the case; in the
lofty forests and twilight shades of the lowlands and islands, they are
scarcely ever seen. I searched well at Caripi, expecting to find the
Lophornis Gouldii, which I was told had been obtained in the locality. This
is one of the most beautiful of all hummingbirds, having round the neck a
frill of long white feathers tipped with golden green. I was not, however, so
fortunate as to meet with it. Several times I shot by mistake a hummingbird
hawk-moth instead of a bird. This moth (Macroglossa Titan) is somewhat
smaller than hummingbirds generally are; but its manner of flight, and the
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way it poises itself before a flower whilst probing it with its proboscis, are
precisely like the same actions of hummingbirds. It was only after many
days' experience that I learned to distinguish one from the other when on
the wing. This resemblance has attracted the notice of the natives, all of
whom, even educated whites, firmly believe that one is transmutable into
the other. They have observed the metamorphosis of caterpillars into
butterflies, and think it not at all more wonderful that a moth should change
into a hummingbird. The resemblance between this hawk-moth and a
hummingbird is certainly very curious, and strikes one even when both are
examined in the hand. Holding them sideways, the shape of the head and
position of the eyes in the moth are seen to be nearly the same as in the
bird, the extended proboscis representing the long beak. At the tip of the
moth's body there is a brush of long hair-scales resembling feathers, which,
being expanded, looks very much like a bird's tail. But, of course, all these
points of resemblance are merely superficial. The negroes and Indians tried
to convince me that the two were of the same species. "Look at their
feathers," they said; "their eyes are the same, and so are their tails." This
belief is so deeply rooted that it was useless to reason with them on the
subject. The Macroglossa moths are found in most countries, and have
everywhere the same habits; one well-known species is found in England.
Mr. Gould relates that he once had a stormy altercation with an English
gentleman, who affirmed that hummingbirds were found in England, for he
had seen one flying in Devonshire, meaning thereby the moth Macroglossa
stellatarum. The analogy between the two creatures has been brought about,
probably, by the similarity of their habits, there being no indication of the
one having been adapted in outward appearance with reference to the other.
It has been observed that hummingbirds are unlike other birds in their
mental qualities, resembling in this respect insects rather than
warm-blooded vertebrate animals. The want of expression in their eyes, the
small degree of versatility in their actions, the quickness and precision of
their movements, are all so many points of resemblance between them and
insects.
In walking along the alleys of the forest, a Phaethornis frequently crosses

one's path, often stopping suddenly and remaining poised in midair, a few
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feet distant from the face of the intruder. The Phaethorninae are certainly
more numerousin the Amazons region that the Trochilinae. They build their
nests, which are made of fine vegetable fibres and lichens; densely woven
together and thickly lined with silk-cotton from the fruit of the samauma
tree (Eriodendron samauma); and on the inner sides lined with of the tips of
palm-fronds. They are long and purseshaped. The young when first hatched
have very much shorter bills than their parents. The only species of
Trochilinae which I found at Caripi were the little brassy-green Polytmus
viridissimus, the sapphire and emerald (Thalurania furcata), and the large
falcate-winged Campylopterus obscurus.
Snakes were very numerous at Caripi; many harmless species were found
near the house, and these sometimes came into the rooms. I was wandering
one day amongst the green bushes of Guajara, a tree which yields a
grape-like berry (Chrysobalanus Icaco) and grows along all these sandy
shores, when I was startled by what appeared to be the flexuous stem of a
creeping plant endowed with life and threading its way amongst the leaves
and branches. This animated liana turned out to be a pale-green snake, the
Dryophis fulgida. Its whole body is of the same green hue, and it is thus
rendered undistinguishable amidst the foliage of the Guajara bushes, where
it prowls in search of its prey-- treefrogs and lizards. The forepart of its
head is prolonged into a slender pointed beak, and the total length of the
reptile was six feet. There was another kind found amongst bushes on the
borders of the forest closely allied to this, but much more slender, viz., the
Dryophis acuminata. This grows to a length of four feet eight inches, the
tail alone being twenty-two inches; but the diameter of the thickest part of
the body is little more than a quarter of an inch. It is of light-brown colour,
with iridescent shades variegated with obscurer markings, and looks like a
piece of whipcord. One individual which I caught of this species had a
protuberance near the middle of the body. Upon opening it, I found a
half-digested lizard which was much more bulky than the snake itself.
Another kind of serpent found here, a species of Helicops, was

amphibiousin its habits. I saw several of this in wet weather on the beach,
which, on being approached, always made straightway for the water, where
they swamwith much grace and dexterity. Florinda one day caught a
CHAPTER V 117
Helicops while angling for fish, it having swallowed the fishhook with the
bait. She and others told me these water-snakes lived on small fishes, but I
did not meet with any proof of the statement. In the woods, snakes were
constantly occurring; it was not often, however, that I saw poisonous
species. There were many arboreal kinds besides the two just mentioned;
and it was rather alarming, in entomologising about the trunks of trees, to
suddenly encounter, on turning round, as sometimes happened, a pair of
glittering eyes and a forked tongue within a few inches of one's head. The
last kind I shall mention is the Coral-snake, which is a most beautiful object
when seen coiled up on black soil in the woods. The one I saw here was
banded with black and vermilion, the black bands having each two clear
white rings. The state of specimens preserved in spirits can give no idea of
the brilliant colours which adorn the Coral-snake in life.
Petzell and I, as already mentioned, made many excursions of long extent

in the neighbouring forest. We sometimes went to Murucupi, a creek which
passes through the forest, about four miles behind Caripi, the banks of
which are inhabited by Indians and half- breeds who have lived there for
many generations in perfect seclusion from the rest of the world-- the place
being little known or frequented. A path from Caripi leads to it through a
gloomy tract of virgin forest, where the trees are so closely packed together
that the ground beneath is thrown into the deepest shade, under which
nothing but fetid fungi and rotting vegetable debris is to be seen. On
emerging from this unfriendly solitude near the banks of the Murucupi, a
charming contrast is presented. A glorious vegetation, piled up to an
immense height, clothes the banks of the creek, which traverses a broad
tract of semi-cultivated ground, and the varied masses of greenery are
lighted up with the sunny glow. Open palm-thatched huts peep forth here
and there from amidst groves of banana, mango, cotton, and papaw trees
and palms. On our first excursion, we struck the banks of the river in front
of a house of somewhat more substantial architecture than the rest, having
finished mud walls that were plastered and whitewashed, and had a
covering of red tiles. It seemed to be full of children, and the aspect of the
household was improved by a number of good-looking mameluco women,
who were busily employed washing, spinning, and making farinha. Two of
them, seated on a mat in the open verandah, were engaged sewing dresses,
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for a festival was going to take place a few days hence at Balcarem, a
village eight miles distant from Murucupi, and they intended to be present
to hear mass and show their finery. One of the children, a naked boy about
seven years of age, crossed over with the montaria to fetch us. We were
made welcome at once, and asked to stay for dinner. On our accepting the
invitation, a couple of fowls were killed, and a wholesome stew of
seasoned rice and fowls soon put into preparation. It is not often that the
female members of a family in these retired places are familiar with
strangers; but, these people had lived a long time in the capital, and
therefore, were more civilised than their neighbours. Their father had been
a prosperous tradesman, and had given them the best education the place
afforded. After his death the widow with several daughters, married and
unmarried, retired to this secluded spot, which had been their sitio, farm or
country-house, for many years. One of the daughters was married to a
handsome young mulatto, who was present, and sang us some pretty songs,
accompanying himself on the guitar.
After dinner I expressed a wish to see more of the creek; so a lively and
polite old man, whom I took to be one of the neighbours, volunteered as
guide. We embarked in a little montaria, and paddled some three or four
miles up and down the stream. Although I had now become familiarised
with beautiful vegetation, all the glow of fresh admiration came again to me
in this place. The creek was about a hundred yards wide, but narrower in
some places. Both banks were masked by lofty walls of green drapery, here
and there a break occurring, through which, under overarching trees,
glimpses were obtained of the palm- thatched huts of settlers. The
projecting boughs of lofty trees, which in some places stretched half-way
across the creek, were hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an
endless variety of creeping plants clothed the water-frontage, some of
which, especially the Bignonias, were ornamented with large gaily-
coloured flowers. Art could not have assorted together beautiful vegetable
forms so harmoniously as was here done by Nature. Palms, as usual,
formed a large proportion of the lower trees; some of them, however, shot
up their slim stems to a height of sixty feet or more, and waved their
bunches of nodding plumes between us and the sky. One kind of palm, the
Pashiuba (Iriartea exorhiza), which grows here in greater abundance than
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elsewhere, was especially attractive. It is not one of the tallest kinds, for
when full-grown its height is not more, perhaps, than forty feet; the leaves
are somewhat less drooping, and the leaflets much broader than in other
species, so that they have not that feathery appearance which those of some
palms have, but still they possess their own peculiar beauty. My guide put
me ashore in one place to show me the roots of the Pashiuba. These grow
above ground, radiating from the trunk many feet above the surface, so that
the tree looks as if supported on stilts; and a person can, in old trees, stand
upright amongst the roots with the perpendicular stem wholly above his
head. It adds to the singularity of their appearance that these roots, which
have the form of straight rods, are studded with stout thorns, while the
trunk of the tree is quite smooth. The purpose of this curious arrangement
is, perhaps, similar to that of the buttress roots already described--namely,
to recompense the tree by root-growth above the soil for its inability, in
consequence of the competition of neighbouring roots, to extend it
underground. The great amount of moisture and nutriment contained in the
atmosphere may also favour these growths.
On returning to the house, I found Petzell had been well occupied during
the hot hours of the day collecting insects in a neighbouring clearing. Our
kind hosts gave us a cup of coffee about five o'clock, and we then started
for home. The last mile of our walk was performed in the dark. The forest
in this part is obscure even in broad daylight, but I was scarcely prepared
for the intense opacity of darkness which reigned here on this night, and
which prevented us from seeing each other while walking side by side.
Nothing occurred of a nature to alarm us, except that now and then a
sudden rush was heard among the trees, and once a dismal shriek startled
us. Petzell tripped at one place and fell all his length into the thicket. With
this exception, we kept well to the pathway, and in due time arrived safely
at Caripi.
One of my neighbours at Murucupi was a hunter of reputation in these

parts. He was a civilised Indian, married and settled, named Raimundo,
whose habit was to sally forth at intervals to certain productive
hunting-grounds, the situation of which he kept secret, and procure fresh
provisions for his family. I had found out by this time that animal food was
CHAPTER V 120
as much a necessary of life in this exhausting climate as it is in the North of

Europe. An attempt which I made to live on vegetable food was quite a
failure, and I could not eat the execrable salt-fish which Brazilians use. I
had been many days without meat of any kind, and nothing more was to be
found near Caripi, so I asked as a favour of Senor Raimundo permission to
accompany him on one of his hunting-trips, and shoot a little game for my
own use. He consented, and appointed a day on which I was to come over
to his house to sleep, so as to be ready for starting with the ebb-tide shortly
after midnight.
The locality we were to visit was situated near the extreme point of the land
of Carnapijo, where it projects northwardly into the middle of the Para
estuary, and is broken into a number of islands. On the afternoon of January
11th, 1849, I walked through the woods to Raimundo's house, taking
nothing with me but a double-barrelled gun, a supply of ammunition, and a
box for the reception of any insects I might capture. Raimundo was a
carpenter, and seemed to be a very industrious, man; he had two
apprentices, Indians like himself: one a young lad, and the other apparently
about twenty years of age. His wife was of the same race. The Indian
women are not always of a taciturn disposition like their husbands. Senora
Dominga was very talkative; there was another old squaw at the house on a
visit, and the tongues of the two were going at a great rate the whole
evening, using only the Tupi language. Raimundo and his apprentices were
employed building a canoe. Notwithstanding his industry, he seemed to be
very poor, and this was the condition of most of the residents on the banks
of the Murucupi. They have, nevertheless, considerable plantations of
mandioca and Indian corn, besides small plots of cotton, coffee, and
sugarcane; the soil is very fertile, they have no rent to pay, and no direct
taxes. There is, moreover, always a market in Para, twenty miles distant, for
their surplus produce, and a ready communication with it by water.
In the evening we had more visitors. The sounds of pipe and tabor were
heard, and presently a procession of villagers emerged from a pathway
through the mandioca fields. They were on a begging expedition for St.
Thome, the patron saint of Indians and Mamelucos. One carried a banner,
on which was crudely painted the figure of St. Thome with a glory round
CHAPTER V 121
his head. The pipe and tabor were of the simplest description. The pipe was
a reed pierced with four holes, by means of which a few unmusical notes
were produced, and the tabor was a broad hoop with a skin stretched over
each end. A deformed young man played both the instruments. Senor
Raimundo received them with the quiet politeness which comes so
naturally to the Indian when occupying the position of host. The visitors,
who had come from the Villa de Conde, five miles through the forest, were
invited to rest.
Raimundo then took the image of St. Thome from one of the party, and
placed it by the side of Nossa Senhora in his own oratorio, a little decorated
box in which every family keeps its household gods, finally lighting a
couple of wax candles before it. Shortly afterwards a cloth was laid on a
mat, and all the guests were invited to supper. The fare was very scanty-- a
boiled fowl with rice, a slice of roasted pirarucu, farinha, and bananas. Each
one partook very sparingly, some of the young men contenting themselves
with a plateful of rice. One of the apprentices stood behind with a bowl of
water and a towel, with which each guest washed his fingers and rinsed his
mouth after the meal. They stayed all night-- the large open shed was filled
with hammocks, which were slung from pole to pole; and upon retiring,
Raimundo gave orders for their breakfast in the morning.
Raimundo called me at two o'clock, when we embarked (he, his older

apprentice Joaquim, and myself) in a shady place where it was so dark that
I could see neither canoe nor water, taking with us five dogs. We glided
down a winding creek where huge trunks of trees slanted across close
overhead, and presently emerged into the Murucupi. A few yards further on
we entered the broader channel of the Aitituba. This we crossed, and
entered another narrow creek on the opposite side. Here the ebb-tide was
against us, and we had great difficulty in making progress. After we had
struggled against the powerful current a distance of two miles, we came to
a part where the ebb-tide ran in the opposite direction, showing that we had
crossed the watershed. The tide flows into this channel or creek at both
ends simultaneously, and meets in the middle, although there is apparently
no difference of level, and the breadth of the water is the same. The tides
are extremely intricate throughout all the infinite channels and creeks
CHAPTER V 122
which intersect the lands of the Amazons delta.
The moon now broke forth and lighted up the trunks of colossal trees, the
leaves of monstrous Jupati palms which arched over the creek, and revealed
groups of arborescent arums standing like rows of spectres on its banks. We
had a glimpse now and then into the black depths of the forest, where all
was silent except the shrill stridulation of wood-crickets. Now and then a
sudden plunge in the water ahead would startle us, caused by heavy fruit or
some nocturnal animal dropping from the trees. The two Indians here rested
on their paddles and allowed the canoe to drift with the tide. A pleasant
perfume came from the forest, which Raimundo said proceeded from a
cane-field. He told me that all this land was owned by large proprietors at
Para, who had received grants from time to time from the Government for
political services. Raimundo was quite in a talkative humour; he related to
me many incidents of the time of the "Cabanagem," as the revolutionary
days of 1835-6 are popularly called. He said he had been much suspected
himself of being a rebel, but declared that the suspicion was unfounded.
The only complaint he had to make against the white man was that he
monopolised the land without having any intention or prospect of
cultivating it. He had been turned out of one place where he had squatted
and cleared a large piece of forest. I believe the law of Brazil at this time
was that the new lands should become the property of those who cleared
and cultivated them, if their right was not disputed within a given term of
years by some one who claimed the proprietorship. This land-law has since
been repealed, and a new one adopted founded on that of the United States.
Raimundo spoke of his race as the redskins, "pelle vermelho." They meant
well to the whites, and only begged to be let alone. "God," he said, "had
given room enough for us all."
It was pleasant to hear the shrewd good-natured fellow talk in this strain.
Our companion, Joaquim, had fallen asleep; the night air was cool, and the
moonlight lit up the features of Raimundo, revealing a more animated
expression than is usually observable in Indian countenances. I always
noticed that Indians were more cheerful on a voyage, especially in the cool
hours of night and morning, than when ashore. There is something in their
constitution of body which makes them feel excessively depressed in the
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hot hours of the day, especially inside their houses. Their skin is always hot
to the touch. They certainly do not endure the heat of their own climate so
well as the whites. The negroes are totally different in this respect; the heat
of midday has very little effect on them, and they dislike the cold nights on
the river.
We arrived at our hunting-ground about half-past four. The channel was

broader here and presented several ramifications. It yet wanted an hour and
a half to daybreak, so Raimundo,recommended me to have a nap. We both
stretched ourselves on the benches of the canoe and fell asleep, letting the
boat drift with the tide, which was now slack. I slept well considering the
hardness of our bed, and when I awoke in the middle of a dream about
home-scenes, the day was beginning to dawn. My clothes were quite wet
with the dew. The birds were astir, the cicadas had begun their music, and
the Urania Leilus, a strange and beautiful tailed and gilded moth, whose
habits are those of a butterfly, commenced to fly in flocks over the tree-
tops. Raimundo exclaimed "Clareia o dia!"--"The day brightens!" The
change was rapid: the sky in the east assumed suddenly the loveliest azure
colour, across which streaks of thin white clouds were painted. It is at such
moments as this when one feels how beautiful our earth truly is! The
channel on whose waters our little boat was floating was about two hundred
yards wide; others branched off right and left, surrounding the group of
lonely islands which terminate the land of Carnapijo. The forest on all sides
formed a lofty hedge without a break; below, it was fringed with mangrove
bushes, whose small foliage contrasted with the large glossy leaves of the
taller trees, or the feather and fan- shaped fronds of palms.
Being now arrived at our destination, Raimundo turned up his trousers and
shirt-sleeves, took his long hunting-knife, and leapt ashore with the dogs.
He had to cut a gap in order to enter the forest. We expected to find Pacas
and Cutias; and the method adopted to secure them was this: at the present
early hour they would be seen feeding on fallen fruits, but would quickly,
on hearing a noise, betake themselves to their burrows; Raimundo was then
to turn them out by means of the dogs, and Joaquim and I were to remain in
the boat with our guns, ready to shoot all that came to the edge of the
stream--the habits of both animals, when hard-pressed, being to take to the
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water. We had not long to wait. The first arrival was a Paca, a reddish,
nearly tail-less rodent, spotted with white on the sides, and intermediate in
size and appearance between a hog and a hare. My first shot did not take
effect; the animal dived into the water and did not reappear. A second was
brought down by my companion as it was rambling about under the
mangrove bushes. A Cutia next appeared: this is also a rodent, about
one-third the size of the Paca; it swims, but does not dive, and I was
fortunate enough to shoot it. We obtained in this way two more Pacas and
another Cutia. All the time the dogs were yelping in the forest.
Shortly afterwards Raimundo made his appearance, and told us to paddle to

the other side of the island. Arrived there, we landed and prepared for
breakfast. It was a pretty spot--a clean, white, sandy beach beneath the
shade of wide-spreading trees. Joaquim made a fire. He first scraped fine
shavings from the midrib of a Bacaba palm-leaf; these he piled into a little
heap in a dry place, and then struck a light in his bamboo tinderbox with a
piece of an old file and a flint, the tinder being a felt-like substance
manufactured by an ant (Polyrhachis bispinosus). By gentle blowing, the
shavings ignited, dry sticks were piled on them, and a good fire soon
resulted. He then singed and prepared the cutia, finishing by running a spit
through the body and fixing one end in the ground in a slanting position
over the fire. We had brought with us a bag of farinha and a cup containing
a lemon, a dozen or two of fiery red peppers, and a few spoonsful of salt.
We breakfasted heartily when our cutia was roasted, and washed the meal
down with a calabash full of the pure water of the river.
After breakfast the dogs found another cutia, which was hidden in its
burrow two or three feet beneath the roots of a large tree, and it took
Raimundo nearly an hour to disinter it. Soon afterwards we left this place,
crossed the channel, and, paddling past two islands, obtained a glimpse of
the broad river between them, with a long sandy spit, on which stood
several scarlet ibises and snow-white egrets. One of the islands was low
and sandy, and half of it was covered with gigantic arum-trees, the
often-mentioned Caladium arborescens, which presented a strange sight.
Most people are acquainted with the little British species, Arum
maculatum, which grows in hedge-bottoms, and many, doubtless, have
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admired the larger kinds grown in hothouses; they can therefore form some
idea of a forest of arums. On this islet the woody stems of the plants near
the bottom were eight to ten inches in diameter, and the trees were twelve
to fifteen feet high-- all growing together in such a manner that there was
just room for a man to walk freely between them. There was a canoe
inshore, with a man and a woman-- the man, who was hooting with all his
might, told us in passing that his son was lost in the "aningal"
(arum-grove). He had strayed while walking ashore, and the father had now
been an hour waiting for him in vain.
About one o'clock we again stopped at the mouth of a little creek. It was
now intensely hot. Raimundo said deer were found here; so he borrowed
my gun, as being a more effective weapon than the wretched arms called
Lazarinos, which he, in common with all the native hunters, used, and
which sell at Para for seven or eight shillings apiece. Raimundo and
Joaquim now stripped themselves quite naked, and started off in different
directions through the forest, going naked in order to move with less noise
over the carpet of dead leaves, among which they stepped so stealthily that
not the slightest rustle could be heard. The dogs remained in the canoe, in
the neighbourhood of which I employed myself two hours entomologising.
At the end of that time my two companions returned, having met with no
game whatever.
We now embarked on our return voyage. Raimundo cut two slender poles,
one for a mast and the other for a sprit-- to these he rigged a sail we had
brought in the boat, for we were to return by the open river, and expected a
good wind to carry us to Caripi. As soon as we got out of the channel we
began to feel the wind--the sea-breeze, which here makes a clean sweep
from the Atlantic. Our boat was very small and heavily laden; and when,
after rounding a point, I saw the great breadth we had to traverse (seven
miles), I thought the attempt to cross in such a slight vessel foolhardy in the
extreme. The waves ran very high, there was no rudder, Raimundo steered
with a paddle, and all we had to rely upon to save us from falling into the
trough of the sea and being instantly swamped were his nerve and skill.
There was just room in the boat for our three selves, the dogs, and the game
we had killed, and when between the swelling ridges of waves in so frail a
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shell, our destruction seemed inevitable; as it was, we shipped a little water

now and then. Joaquim assisted with his paddle to steady the boat-- my
time was fully occupied in bailing out the water and watching the dogs,
which were crowded together in the prow, yelling with fear-- one or other
of them occasionally falling over the side and causing great commotion in
scrambling in again. Off the point was a ridge of rocks, over which the
surge raged furiously. Raimundo sat at the stern, rigid and silent, his eye
steadily watching the prow of the boat. It was almost worth the risk and
discomfort of the passage to witness the seamanlike ability displayed by
Indians on the water. The little boat rode beautifully, rising well with each
wave, and in the course of an hour and a half we arrived at Caripi,
thoroughly tired and wet through to the skin.
On the 16th of January, the dry season came abruptly to an end. The
sea-breezes, which had been increasing in force for some days, suddenly
ceased, and the atmosphere became misty; at length heavy clouds collected
where a uniform blue sky had for many weeks prevailed, and down came a
succession of heavy showers, the first of which lasted a whole day and
night. This seemed to give a new stimulus to animal life. On the first night
there was a tremendous uproar--tree-frogs, crickets, goat-suckers, and owls
all joining to perform a deafening concert. One kind of goat- sucker kept
repeating at intervals throughout the night a phrase similar to the
Portuguese words, "Joao corta pao,"--"John, cut wood"-- a phrase which
forms the Brazilian name of the bird. An owl in one of the Genipapa trees
muttered now and then a succession of syllables resembling the word
"Murucututu." Sometimes the croaking and hooting of frogs and toads were
so loud that we could not hear one another's voices within doors. Swarms
of dragonflies appeared in the daytime about the pools of water created by
the rain, and ants and termites came forth in the winged state in vast
numbers. I noticed that the winged termites, or white ants, which came by
hundreds to the lamps at night, when alighting on the table, often jerked off
their wings by a voluntary movement. On examination I found that the
wings were not shed by the roots, for a small portion of the stumps
remained attached to the thorax. The edge of the fracture was in all cases
straight, not ruptured; there is, in fact, a natural seam crossing the member
towards its root, and at this point the long wing naturally drops or is jerked
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off when the insect has no further use for it. The white ant is endowed with
wings simply for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its
wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or other
colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate its kind. The winged
individuals are males and females, while the great bulk of their wingless
fraternity are of no sex, but are of two castes, soldiers and workers, which
are restricted to the functions of building the nests, nursing, and defending
the young brood. The two sexes mate while on the ground, after the wings
are shed; and then the married couples, if they escape the numerous
enemies which lie in wait for them, proceed to the task of founding new
colonies. Ants and white ants have much that is analogous in their modes of
life-- they belong, however, to two widely different orders of insects,
strongly contrasted in their structure and manner of growth.
I amassed at Caripi a very large collection of beautiful and curious insects,

amounting altogether to about twelve hundred species. The number of
Coleoptera was remarkable, seeing that this order is so poorly represented
near Para. I attributed their abundance to the number of new clearings made
in the virgin forest by the native settlers. The felled timber attracts
lignivorous insects, and these draw in their train the predaceous species of
various families. As a general rule, the species were smaller and much less
brilliant in colours than those of Mexico and South Brazil. The species too,
although numerous, were not represented by great numbers of individuals;
they were also extremely nimble, and therefore much less easy of capture
than insects of the same order in temperate climates. The carnivorous
beetles at Caripi were, like those of Para, chiefly arboreal. Most of them
exhibited a beautiful contrivance for enabling them to cling to and run over
smooth or flexible surfaces, such as leaves. Their tarsi or feet are broad, and
furnished beneath with a brush of short stiff hairs; while their claws are
toothed in the form of a comb, adapting them for clinging to the smooth
edges of leaves, the joint of the foot which precedes the claw being cleft so
as to allow free play to the claw in grasping. The common dung-beetles at
Caripi, which flew about in the evening like the Geotrupes, the familiar
"shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hum" of our English lanes, were of
colossal size and beautiful colours. One kind had a long spear-shaped horn
projecting from the crown of its head (Phanaeus lancifer). A blow from this
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fellow, as he came heavily flying along, was never very pleasant. All the
tribes of beetles which feed on vegetable substances, fresh or decayed, were
very numerous. The most beautiful of these, but not the most common,
were the Longicornes; very graceful insects, having slender bodies and long
antennae, often ornamented with fringes and tufts of hair. They were found
on flowers, on trunks of trees, or flying about the new clearings. One small
species (Coremia hirtipes) has a tuft of hairs on its hind legs, while many of
its sister species have a similar ornament on the antennae. It suggests
curious reflections when we see an ornament like the feather of a
grenadier's cap situated on one part of the body in one species, and in a
totally different part in nearly allied ones. I tried in vain to discover the use
of these curious brush-like decorations. On the trunk of a living leguminous
tree, Petzell found a number of a very rare and handsome species, the
Platysternus hebraeus, which is of a broad shape, coloured ochreous, but
spotted and striped with black, so as to resemble a domino. On the felled
trunks of trees, swarms of gilded-green Longicornes occurred, of small size
(Chrysoprasis), which looked like miniature musk- beetles, and, indeed, are
closely allied to those well-known European insects.
At length, on the 12th of February, I left Caripi, my Negro and Indian

neighbours bidding me a warm "adios." I had passed a delightful time,
notwithstanding the many privations undergone in the way of food. The
wet season had now set in; the lowlands and islands would soon become
flooded daily at high water, and the difficulty of obtaining fresh provisions
would increase. I intended, therefore, to spend the next three months at
Para, in the neighbourhood of which there was still much to be done in the
intervals of fine weather, and then start off on another excursion into the
interior.
CHAPTER VI
THE LOWER AMAZONS-PARA TO OBYDOS
Modes of Travelling on the Amazons--Historical Sketch of the Early

Explorations of the River--Preparations for Voyage--Life on Board a Large
CHAPTER VI 129
Trading Vessel--The narrow channels joining the Para to the

Amazons--First Sight of the Great River--Gurupa--The Great
Shoal--Flat-topped Mountains--Santarem--Obydos
At the time of my first voyage up the Amazons--namely, in 1849-- nearly

all communication with the interior was by means of small sailing-vessels,
owned by traders residing in the remote towns and villages, who seldom
came to Para themselves, but entrusted vessels and cargoes to the care of
half-breeds or Portuguese cabos. Sometimes, indeed, they risked all in the
hands of the Indian crew, making the pilot, who was also steersman, do
duty as supercargo. Now and then, Portuguese and Brazilian merchants at
Para furnished young Portuguese with merchandise, and dispatched them to
the interior to exchange the goods for produce among the scattered
population. The means of communication, in fact, with the upper parts of
the Amazons had been on the decline for some time, on account of the
augmented difficulty of obtaining hands to navigate vessels. Formerly,
when the Government wished to send any important functionary, such as a
judge or a military commandant, into the interior, they equipped a
swift-sailing galliota manned with ten or a dozen Indians. These could
travel, on the average, in one day farther than the ordinary sailing craft
could in three. Indian paddlers were now, however, almost impossible to be
obtained, and Government officers were obliged to travel as passengers in
trading-vessels. The voyage made in this way was tedious in the extreme.
When the regular east-wind blew--the "vento geral," or trade-wind of the
Amazons--sailing- vessels could get along very well; but when this failed,
they were obliged to remain, sometimes many days together, anchored near
the shore, or progress laboriously by means of the "espia."
The latter mode of travelling was as follows. The montaria, with twenty or
thirty fathoms of cable, one end of which was attached to the foremast, was
sent ahead with a couple of hands, who secured the other end of the rope to
some strong bough or treetrunk; the crew then hauled the vessel up to the
point, after which the men in the boat re-embarked the cable, and paddled
forwards to repeat the process. In the dry season, from August to
December, when the trade-wind is strong and the currents slack, a schooner
could reach the mouth of the Rio Negro, a thousand miles from Para, in
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about forty days; but in the wet season, from January to July, when the
east-wind no longer blows and the Amazons pours forth its full volume of
water, flooding the banks and producing a tearing current, it took three
months to travel the same distance. It was a great blessing to the inhabitants
when, in 1853, a line of steamers was established, and this same journey
could be accomplished with ease and comfort, at all seasons, in eight days!
It is, perhaps, not generally known that the Portuguese, as early as 1710,
had a fair knowledge of the Amazons; but the information gathered by their
Government, from various expeditions undertaken on a grand scale, was
long withheld from the rest of the world, through the jealous policy which
ruled in their colonial affairs. From the foundation of Para by Caldeira, in
1615, to the settlement of the boundary line between the Spanish and
Portuguese possessions, Peru and Brazil, in 1781-91, numbers of these
expeditions were undertaken in succession . The largest was the one
commanded by Pedro Texeira in 1637-9, who ascended the river to Quito
by way of the Napo, a distance of about 2800 miles, with 45 canoes and
900 men, and returned to Para without any great misadventure by the same
route. The success of this remarkable undertaking amply proved, at that
early date, the facility of the river navigation, the practicability of the
country, and the good disposition of the aboriginal inhabitants. The river,
however, was first discovered by the Spaniards, the mouth having been
visited by Pinzon in 1500, and nearly the whole course of the river
navigated by Orellana in 1541-2. The voyage of the latter was one of the
most remarkable on record. Orellana was a lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro,
Governor of Quito, and accompanied the latter in an adventurous journey
which he undertook across the easternmost chain of the Andes, down into
the sweltering valley of the Napo, in search of the land of El Dorado, or the
Gilded King. They started with 300 soldiers and 4000 Indian porters; but,
arrived on the banks of one of the tributaries of the Napo, their followers
were so greatly decreased in number by disease and hunger, and the
remainder so much weakened, that Pizarro was obliged to despatch
Orellana with fifty men, in a vessel they had built, to the Napo, in search of
provisions. It can be imagined by those acquainted with the Amazons
country how fruitless this errand would be in the wilderness of forest where
Orellana and his followers found themselves when they reached the Napo,
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and how strong their disinclination would be to return against the currents
and rapids which they had descended. The idea then seized them to commit
themselves to the chances of the stream, although ignorant whither it would
lead. So onward they went. From the Napo they emerged into the main
Amazons, and, after many and various adventures with the Indians on its
banks, reached the Atlantic-- eight months from the date of their entering
the great river. [It was during this voyage that the nation of female warriors
was said to have been met with; a report which gave rise to the Portuguese
name of the river, Amazonas. It is now pretty well known that this is a mere
fable, originating in the love of the marvellous which distinguished the
early Spanish adventurers, and impaired the credibility of their narratives.]
Another remarkable voyage was accomplished, in a similar manner, by a

Spaniard named Lopez d'Aguirre, from Cusco, in Peru, down the Ucayali, a
branch of the Amazons flowing from the south, and therefore, from an
opposite direction to that of the Napo. An account of this journey was sent
by D'Aguirre, in a letter to the King of Spain, from which Humboldt has
given an extract in his narrative. As it is a good specimen of the quaintness
of style and looseness of statement exhibited by these early narrators of
adventures in South America, I will give a translation of it:
"We constructed rafts, and, leaving behind our horses and baggage, sailed
down the river (the Ucayali) with great risk, until we found ourselves in a
gulf of fresh water. In this river Maranon we continued more than ten
months and a half, down to its mouth, where it falls into the sea. We made
one hundred days' journey, and travelled 1500 leagues. It is a great and
fearful stream, has 80 leagues of fresh water at its mouth, vast shoals, and
800 leagues of wilderness without any kind of inhabitants, [This account
disagrees with that of Acunna, the historiographer of Texeira's expedition,
who accompanied him, in 1639, on his return voyage from Quito. Acunna
speaks of a very numerous population on the banks of the Amazons.] as
your Majesty will see from the true and correct narrative of the journey
which we have made. It has more than 6000 islands. God knows how we
came out of this fearful sea!"
CHAPTER VI 132
Many expeditions were undertaken in the course of the eighteenth century;

in fact, the crossing of the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, by
way of the Amazons, seems to have become by this time a common
occurrence. The only voyage, however, which yielded much scientific
information to the European public was that of the French astronomer, La
Condamine, in 1743-4. The most complete account yet published of the
river is that given by Von Martius in the third volume of Spix and Martius'
Travels. These most accomplished travellers were eleven months in the
country-- namely, from July, 1819, to June, 1820--and ascended the river to
the frontiers of the Brazilian territory. The accounts they have given of the
geography, ethnology, botany, history, and statistics of the Amazons region
are the most complete that have ever been given to the world. Their
narrative was not published until 1831, and was unfortunately inaccessible
to me during the time I travelled in the same country.
While preparing for my voyage it happened, fortunately, that the

half-brother of Dr. Angelo Custodio, a young mestizo named Joao da
Cunha Correia, was about to start for the Amazons on a trading expedition
in his own vessel, a schooner of about forty tons' burthen. A passage for me
was soon arranged with him through the intervention of Dr. Angelo, and we
started on the 5th of September, 1849. I intended to stop at some village on
the northern shore of the Lower Amazons, where it would be interesting to
make collections, in order to show the relations of the fauna to those of
Para and the coast region of Guiana. As I should have to hire a house or hut
wherever I stayed, I took all the materials for housekeeping--cooking
utensils, crockery, and so forth. To these were added a stock of such
provisions as it would be difficult to obtain in the interior--also
ammunition, chests, store-boxes, a small library of natural history books,
and a hundredweight of copper money. I engaged, after some trouble, a
Mameluco youth to accompany me as servant--a short, fat, yellow-faced
boy named Luco, whom I had already employed at Para in collecting. We
weighed anchor at night, and on the following day found ourselves gliding
along the dark-brown waters of the Moju.
Joao da Cunha, like most of his fellow countrymen, took matters very
easily. He was going to be absent in the interior several years, and
CHAPTER VI 133
therefore, intended to diverge from his route to visit his native place,
Cameta, and spend a few days with his friends. It seemed not to matter to
him that he had a cargo of merchandise, vessel, and crew of twelve persons,
which required an economical use of time; "pleasure first and business
afterwards" appeared to be his maxim. We stayed at Cameta twelve days.
The chief motive for prolonging the stay to this extent was a festival at the
Aldeia, two miles below Cameta, which was to commence on the 21st, and
which my friend wished to take part in. On the day of the festival the
schooner was sent down to anchor off the Aldeia, and master and men gave
themselves up to revelry. In the evening a strong breeze sprang up, and
orders were given to embark. We scrambled down in the dark through the
thickets of cacao, orange, and coffee trees which clothed the high bank,
and, after running great risk of being swamped by the heavy sea in the
crowded montaria, got all aboard by nine o'clock. We made all sail amidst
the "adios" shouted to us by Indian and mulatto sweethearts from the top of
the bank, and, tide and wind being favourable, were soon miles away.
Our crew consisted, as already mentioned, of twelve persons. One was a

young Portuguese from the province of Traz os Montes, a pretty sample of
the kind of emigrants which Portugal sends to Brazil. He was two or three
and twenty years of age, and had been about two years in the country,
dressing and living like the Indians, to whom he was certainly inferior in
manners. He could not read or write, whereas one at least of our Tapuyos
had both accomplishments. He had a little wooden image of Nossa Senora
in his rough wooden clothes-chest, and to this he always had recourse when
any squall arose, or when we ran aground on a shoal. Another of our sailors
was a tawny white of Cameta; the rest were Indians, except the cook, who
was a Cafuzo, or half- breed between the Indian and negro. It is often said
that this class of mestizos is the most evilly-disposed of all the numerous
crosses between the races inhabiting Brazil; but Luiz was a simple,
good-hearted fellow, always ready to do one a service. The pilot was an old
Tapuyo of Para, with regular oval face and well-shaped features. I was
astonished at his endurance. He never quitted the helm night or day, except
for two or three hours in the morning. The other Indians used to bring him
his coffee and meals, and after breakfast one of them relieved him for a
time, when he used to lie down on the quarterdeck and get his two hours
CHAPTER VI 134
nap. The Indians forward had things pretty much their own way. No system
of watches was followed; when any one was so disposed, he lay down on
the deck and went to sleep; but a feeling of good fellowship seemed always
to exist amongst them. One of them was a fine specimen of the Indian
race-- a man just short of six feet high, with remarkable breadth of shoulder
and full muscular chest. His comrades called him the commandant, on
account of his having been one of the rebel leaders when the Indians and
others took Santarem in 1835. They related of him that, when the legal
authorities arrived with an armed flotilla to recapture the town, he was one
of the last to quit, remaining in the little fortress which commands the place
to make a show of loading the guns, although the ammunition had given
out long ago. Such were our travelling companions. We lived almost the
same as on board ship. Our meals were cooked in the galley; but, where
practicable, and during our numerous stoppages, the men went in the
montaria to fish near the shore, so that our breakfasts and dinners of salt
pirarucu were sometimes varied with fresh food.
September 24th--We passed Entre-as-Ilhas with the morning tide yesterday,

and then made across to the eastern shore--the starting-point for all canoes
which have to traverse the broad mouth of the Tocantins going west. Early
this morning we commenced the passage. The navigation is attended with
danger on account of the extensive shoals in the middle of the river, which
are covered only by a small depth of water at this season of the year. The
wind was fresh, and the schooner rolled and pitched like a ship at sea. The
distance was about fifteen miles. In the middle, the river-view was very
imposing. Towards the northeast there was a long sweep of horizon clear of
land, and on the southwest stretched a similar boundless expanse, but
varied with islets clothed with fan-leaved palms, which, however, were
visible only as isolated groups of columns, tufted at the top, rising here and
there amidst the waste of waters. In the afternoon we rounded the
westernmost point; the land, which is not terra firma, but simply a group of
large islands forming a portion of the Tocantins delta, was then about three
miles distant.
On the following day (25th) we sailed towards the west, along the upper
portion of the Para estuary, which extends seventy miles beyond the mouth
CHAPTER VI 135
of the Tocantins. It varies in width from three to five miles, but broadens
rapidly near its termination, where it is eight or nine miles wide. The
northern shore is formed by the island of Marajo, and is slightly elevated
and rocky in some parts. A series of islands conceals the southern shore
from view most of the way. The whole country, mainland and islands, is
covered with forest. We had a good wind all day, and about 7 p.m. entered
the narrow river of Breves, which commences abruptly the extensive
labyrinth of channels that connects the Para with the Amazons. The sudden
termination of the Para at a point where it expands to so great a breadth is
remarkable; the water, however, is very shallow over the greater portion of
the expanse. I noticed both on this and on the three subsequent occasions of
passing this place in ascending and descending the river, that the flow of
the tide from the east along the estuary, as well as up the Breves, was very
strong. This seems sufficient to prove that no considerable volume of water
passes by this medium from the Amazons to the Para, and that the opinion
of those geographers is an incorrect one, who believe the Para to be one of
the mouths of the great river. There is, however, another channel
connecting the two rivers, which enters the Para six miles to the south of
the Breves. The lower part of its course for eighteen miles is formed by the
Uanapu, a large and independent river flowing from the south. The tidal
flow is said by the natives to produce little or no current up this river--a fact
which seems to afford a little support to the view just stated.
We passed the village of Breves at 3 p.m. on the 26th. It consists of about

forty houses, most of which are occupied by Portuguese shopkeepers. A
few Indian families reside here, who occupy themselves with the
manufacture of ornamental pottery and painted cuyas, which they sell to
traders or passing travellers. The cuyas--drinking-cups made from
gourds--are sometimes very tastefully painted. The rich black ground
colour is produced by a dye made from the bark of a tree called Comateu,
the gummy nature of which imparts a fine polish. The yellow tints are made
with the Tabatinga clay; the red with the seeds of the Urucu, or anatto
plant; and the blue with indigo, which is planted round the huts. The art is
indigenous with the Amazonian Indians, but it is only the settled
agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi stock who practise it.
CHAPTER VI 136
September 27th-30th.--After passing Breves, we continued our way slowly

along a channel, or series of channels, of variable width. On the morning of
the 27th we had a fair wind, the breadth of the stream varying from about
150 to 400 yards. About midday we passed, on the western side, the mouth
of the Aturiazal, through which, on account of its swifter current, vessels
pass in descending from the Amazons to Para. Shortly afterwards we
entered the narrow channel of the Jaburu, which lies twenty miles above the
mouth of the Breves. Here commences the peculiar scenery of this
remarkable region. We found ourselves in a narrow and nearly straight
canal, not more than eighty to a hundred yards in width, and hemmed in by
two walls of forest, which rose quite perpendicularly from the water to a
height of seventy or eighty feet. The water was of great and uniform depth,
even close to the banks. We seemed to be in a deep gorge, and the strange
impression the place produced was augmented by the dull echoes wakened
by the voices of our Indians and the splash of their paddles. The forest was
excessively varied. Some of the trees, the dome-topped giants of the
Leguminous and Bombaceous orders, reared their heads far above the
average height of the green walls. The fan-leaved Miriti palm was scattered
in some numbers amidst the rest, a few solitary specimens shooting up their
smooth columns above the other trees. The graceful Assai palm grew in
little groups, forming feathery pictures set in the rounder foliage of the
mass. The Ubussu, lower in height, showed only its shuttlecock shaped
crowns of huge undivided fronds, which, being of a vivid pale-green,
contrasted forcibly against the sombre hues of the surrounding foliage. The
Ubussu grew here in great numbers; the equally remarkable Jupati palm
(Rhaphia taedigera), which, like the Ubussu, is peculiar to this district,
occurred more sparsely, throwing its long shaggy leaves, forty to fifty feet
in length, in broad arches over the canal. An infinite diversity of
smaller-sized palms decorated the water's edge, such as the Maraja-i
(Bactris, many species), the Ubim (Geonoma), and a few stately Bacabas
(Oenocarpus Bacaba). The shape of this last is exceedingly elegant, the size
of the crown being in proper proportion to the straight smooth stem. The
leaves, down even to the bases of the glossy petioles, are of a rich
dark-green colour, and free from spines.
CHAPTER VI 137
"The forest wall"--I am extracting from my journal-"under which we are

now moving, consists, besides palms, of a great variety of ordinary forest
trees. From the highest branches of these down to the water sweep ribbons
of climbing plants of the most diverse and ornamental foliage possible.
Creeping convolvuli and others have made use of the slender lianas and
hanging air roots as ladders to climb by. Now and then appears a Mimosa
or other tree having similar fine pinnate foliage, and thick masses of Inga
border the water, from whose branches hang long bean-pods, of different
shape and size according to the species, some of them a yard in length.
Flowers there are very few. I see, now and then, a gorgeous crimson
blossom on long spikes ornamenting the sombre foliage towards the
summits of the forest. I suppose it to belong to a climber of the
Combretaceous order. There are also a few yellow and violet
Trumpet-flowers (Bignoniae). The blossoms of the Ingas, although not
conspicuous, are delicately beautiful. The forest all along offers so dense a
front that one never obtains a glimpse into the interior of the wilderness."
The length of the Jaburu channel is about thirty-five miles, allowing for the
numerous abrupt bends which occur between the middle and the northern
end of its course. We were three days and a half accomplishing the passage.
The banks on each side seemed to be composed of hard river-mud with a
thick covering of vegetable mold, so that I should imagine this whole
district originated in a gradual accumulation of alluvium, through which the
endless labyrinths of channels have worked their deep and narrow beds.
The flood-tide as we travelled northward became gradually of less
assistance to us, as it caused only a feeble current upwards. The pressure of
the waters from the Amazons here makes itself felt; as this is not the case
lower down, I suppose the currents are diverted through some of the
numerous channels which we passed on our right, and which traverse, in
their course towards the sea, the northwestern part of Marajo. In the
evening of the 29th we arrived at a point where another channel joins the
Jaburu from the northeast. Up this the tide was flowing; we turned
westward, and thus met the flood coming from the Amazons. This point is
the object of a strange superstitious observance on the part of the
canoemen. It is said to be haunted by a Paje, or Indian wizard, whom it is
necessary to propitiate by depositing some article on the spot, if the
CHAPTER VI 138
voyager wishes to secure a safe return from the "sertao," as the interior of
the country is called. The trees were all hung with rags, shirts, straw hats,
bunches of fruit, and so forth. Although the superstition doubtless
originated with the aborigines, I observed in both my voyages, that it was
only the Portuguese and uneducated Brazilians who deposited anything.
The pure Indians gave nothing, and treated the whole affair as a humbug;
but they were all civilised Tapuyos.
On the 30th, at 9 p.m., we reached a broad channel called Macaco, and now
left the dark, echoing Jaburu. The Macaco sends off branches towards the
northwest coast of Marajo. It is merely a passage amongst a cluster of
islands, between which a glimpse is occasionally obtained of the broad
waters of the main Amazons. A brisk wind carried us rapidly past its
monotonous scenery, and early in the morning of the 1st of October we
reached the entrance of the Uituquara, or the Wind-hole, which is fifteen
miles distant from the end of the Jaburu. This is also a winding channel,
thirty-five miles in length, threading a group of islands, but it is much
narrower than the Macaco.
On emerging from the Uituquara on the 2nd, we all went ashore-- the men
to fish in a small creek; Joao da Cunha and I to shoot birds. We saw a flock
of scarlet and blue macaws (Macrocercus Macao) feeding on the fruits of a
Bacaba palm, and looking like a cluster of flaunting banners beneath its
dark-green crown. We landed about fifty yards from the place, and crept
cautiously through the forest, but before we reached them they flew off
with loud harsh screams. At a wild fruit tree we were more successful, as
my companion shot an anaca (Derotypus coronatus), one of the most
beautiful of the parrot family. It is of a green colour, and has a hood of
feathers, red bordered with blue, at the back of its head, which it can
elevate or depress at pleasure. The anaca is the only new-world parrot
which nearly resembles the cockatoo of Australia. It is found in all the
lowlands throughout the Amazons region, but is not a common bird
anywhere. Few persons succeed in taming it, and I never saw one that had
been taught to speak. The natives are very fond of the bird nevertheless,
and keep it in their houses for the sake of seeing the irascible creature
expand its beautiful frill of feathers, which it readily does when excited.
CHAPTER VI 139
The men returned with a large quantity of fish. I was surprised at the great
variety of species; the prevailing kind was a species of Loricaria, a foot in
length, and wholly encased in bony armour. It abounds at certain seasons in
shallow water. The flesh is dry, but very palatable. They brought also a
small alligator, which they called Jacare curua, and said it was a kind found
only in shallow creeks. It was not more than two feet in length, although
full-grown according to the statement of the Indians, who said it was a "mai
d'ovos," or mother of eggs, as they had pillaged the nest, which they had
found near the edge of the water. The eggs were rather larger than a hen's,
and regularly oval in shape, presenting a rough hard surface of shell.
Unfortunately, the alligator was cut up ready for cooking when we returned
to the schooner, and I could not therefore make a note of its peculiarities.
The pieces were skewered and roasted over the fire, each man being his
own cook. I never saw this species of alligator afterwards.
October 3rd--About midnight the wind, for which we had long been
waiting, sprang up; the men weighed anchor, and we were soon fairly
embarked on the Amazons. I rose long before sunrise to see the great river
by moonlight. There was a spanking breeze, and the vessel was bounding
gaily over the waters. The channel along which we were sailing was only a
narrow arm of the river, about two miles in width: the total breadth at this
point is more than twenty miles, but the stream is divided into three parts
by a series of large islands. The river, notwithstanding this limitation of its
breadth, had a most majestic appearance. It did not present that lake-like
aspect which the waters of the Para and Tocantins affect, but had all the
swing, so to speak, of a vast flowing stream. The ochre-coloured turbid
waters offered also a great contrast to the rivers belonging to the Para
system. The channel formed a splendid reach, sweeping from southwest to
northeast, with a horizon of water and sky both upstream and down. At 11
a.m. we arrived at Gurupa, a small village situated on a rocky bank thirty or
forty feet high. Here we landed, and I had an opportunity of rambling in the
neighbouring woods, which are intersected by numerous pathways, and
carpeted with Lycopodia growing to a height of eight or ten inches, and
enlivened by numbers of glossy blue butterflies of the Theclidae or
hairstreak family. At 5 p.m. we were again under way. Soon after sunset, as
we were crossing the mouth of the Xingu, the first of the great tributaries of
CHAPTER VI 140
the Amazons, 1200 miles in length, a black cloud arose suddenly in the
northeast. Joao da Cunha ordered all sails to be taken in, and immediately
afterwards a furious squall burst forth, tearing the waters into foam, and
producing a frightful uproar in the neighbouring forests. A drenching rain
followed, but in half an hour all was again calm and the full moon appeared
sailing in a cloudless sky.
From the mouth of the Xingu the route followed by vessels leads straight
across the river, here ten miles broad. Towards midnight the wind failed us,
when we were close to a large shoal called the Baixo Grande. We lay here
becalmed in the sickening heat for two days, and when the trade-wind
recommenced with the rising moon at 10 p.m. on the 6th, we found
ourselves on a ice-shore. Notwithstanding all the efforts of our pilot to
avoid it, we ran aground. Fortunately the bottom consisted only of soft
mud, so that by casting anchor to windward, and hauling in with the whole
strength of crew and passengers, we got off after spending an
uncomfortable night. We rounded the point of the shoal in two fathoms'
water; the head of the vessel was then put westward, and by sunrise we
were bounding forward before a steady breeze, all sail set and everybody in
good humour.
The weather was now delightful for several days in succession, the air
transparently clear, and the breeze cool and invigorating. At daylight, on
the 6th, a chain of blue hills, the Serra de Almeyrim, appeared in the
distance on the north bank of the river. The sight was most exhilarating
after so long a sojourn in a flat country. We kept to the southern shore,
passing in the course of the day the mouths of the Urucuricaya and the
Aquiqui, two channels which communicate with the Xingu. The whole of
this southern coast hence to near Santarem, a distance of 130 miles, is
lowland and quite uninhabited. It is intersected by short arms or back
waters of the Amazons, which are called in the Tupi language
Paranamirims, or little rivers. By keeping to these, small canoes can travel a
great part of the distance without being much exposed to the heavy seas of
the main river. The coast throughout has a most desolate aspect; the forest
is not so varied as on the higher land; and the water-frontage, which is
destitute of the green mantle of climbing plants that form so rich a
CHAPTER VI 141
decoration in other parts, is encumbered at every step with piles of fallen

trees; and peopled by white egrets, ghostly storks, and solitary herons.
In the evening we passed Almeyrim. The hills, according to Von Martius,

who landed here, are about 800 feet above the level of the river, and are
thickly wooded to the summit. They commence on the east by a few low
isolated and rounded elevations; but towards the west of the village, they
assume the appearance of elongated ridges which seem as if they had been
planed down to a uniform height by some external force. The next day we
passed in succession a series of similar flat-topped hills, some isolated and
of a truncated-pyramidal shape, others prolonged to a length of several
miles. There is an interval of low country between these and the Almeyrim
range, which has a total length of about twenty-five miles; then commences
abruptly the Serra de Marauaqua, which is succeeded in a similar way by
the Velha Pobre range, the Serras de Tapaiuna-quara, and Paraua-quara. All
these form a striking contrast to the Serra de Almeyrim in being quite
destitute of trees. They have steep rugged sides, apparently clothed with
short herbage, but here and there exposing bare white patches. Their total
length is about forty miles. In the Tear, towards the interior, they are
succeeded by other ranges of hills communicating with the central
mountain-chain of Guiana, which divides Brazil from Cayenne.
As we sailed along the southern shore, during the 6th and two following
days, the table-topped hills on the opposite side occupied most of our
attention. The river is from four to five miles broad, and in some places
long, low wooded islands intervene in mid-stream, whose light-green, vivid
verdure formed a strangely beautiful foreground to the glorious landscape
of broad stream and grey mountain. Ninety miles beyond Almeyrim stands
the village of Monte Alegre, which is built near the summit of the last hill
visible of this chain. At this point the river bends a little towards the south,
and the hilly country recedes from its shores to reappear at Obydos, greatly
decreased in height, about a hundred miles further west.
We crossed the river three times between Monte Alegre and the next town,
Santarem. In the middle the waves ran very high, and the vessel lurched
fearfully, hurling everything that was not well secured from one side of the
CHAPTER VI 142
deck to the other. On the morning of the 9th of October, a gentle wind
carried us along a "remanso," or still water, under the southern shore. These
tracts of quiet water are frequent on the irregular sides of the stream, and
are the effect of counter movements caused by the rapid current of its
central parts. At 9 a.m. we passed the mouth of a Parana-mirim, called
Mahica, and then found a sudden change in the colour of the water and
aspect of the banks. Instead of the low and swampy water-frontage which
had prevailed from the mouth of the Xingu, we saw before us a broad
sloping beach of white sand. The forest, instead of being an entangled mass
of irregular and rank vegetation as hitherto, presented a rounded outline,
and created an impresssion of repose that was very pleasing. We now
approached, in fact, the mouth of the Tapajos, whose clear olive- green
waters here replaced the muddy current against which we had so long been
sailing. Although this is a river of great extent-- 1000 miles in length, and,
for the last eighty miles of its course, four to ten in breadth--its contribution
to the Amazons is not perceptible in the middle of the stream. The white
turbid current of the main river flows disdainfully by, occupying nearly the
whole breadth of the channel, while the darker water of its tributary seems
to creep along the shore, and is no longer distinguishable four or five miles
from its mouth.
We reached Santarem at 11 a.m. The town has a clean and cheerful

appearance from the river. It consists of three long streets, with a few short
ones crossing them at right angles, and contains about 2500 inhabitants. It
lies just within the mouth of Tapajos, and is divided into two parts, the
town and the aldeia or village. The houses of the white and trading classes
are substantially built, many being of two and three stories, and all
white-washed and tiled. The aldeia, which contains the Indian portion of
the population, or did so formerly, consists mostly of mud huts, thatched
with palm leaves. The situation of the town is very beautiful. The land,
although but slightly elevated, does not form, strictly speaking, a portion of
the alluvial river plains of the Amazons, but is rather a northern
prolongation of the Brazilian continental land. It is scantily wooded, and
towards the interior consists of undulating campos, which are connected
with a series of hills extending southward as far as the eye can reach. I
subsequently made this place my headquarters for three years; an account
CHAPTER VI 143
of its neighbourhood is therefore, reserved for another chapter. At the first

sight of Santarem, one cannot help being struck with the advantages of its
situation. Although 400 miles from the sea, it is accessible to vessels of
heavy tonnage coming straight from the Atlantic. The river has only two
slight bends between this port and the sea, and for five or six months in the
year the Amazonian trade wind blows with very little interruption, so that
sailing ships coming from foreign countries could reach the place with little
difficulty. We ourselves had accomplished 200 miles, or about half the
distance from the sea, in an ill-rigged vessel, in three days and a half.
Although the land in the immediate neighbourhood is perhaps ill adapted
for agriculture, an immense tract of rich soil, with forest and meadowland,
lies on the opposite banks of the river, and the Tapajos leads into the heart
of the mining provinces of interior Brazil. But where is the population to
come from to develop the resources of this fine country? At present, the
district within a radius of twenty-five miles contains barely 6500
inhabitants; behind the town, towards the interior, the country is
uninhabited, and jaguars roam nightly, at least in the rainy season, close up
to the ends of the suburban streets.
From information obtained here, I fixed upon the next town, Obydos, as the
best place to stay for a few weeks, in order to investigate the natural
productions of the north side of the Lower Amazons. We started at sunrise
on the 10th, and being still favoured by wind and weather, made a pleasant
passage, reaching Obydos, which is nearly fifty miles distant from
Santarem, by midnight. We sailed all day close to the southern shore, and
found the banks here and there dotted with houses of settlers, each
surrounded by its plantation of cacao, which is the staple product of the
district. This coast has an evil reputation for storms and mosquitoes, but we
fortunately escaped both. It was remarkable that we had been troubled by
mosquitoes only on one night, and then to a small degree, during the whole
of our voyage.
I landed at Obydos the next morning, and then bid adieu to my kind friend
Joao da Cunha, who, after landing my baggage, got up his anchor and
continued on his way. The town contains about 1200 inhabitants, and is
airily situated on a high bluff, ninety or a hundred feet above the level of
CHAPTER VI 144
the river. The coast is precipitous for two or three miles hence to the west.
The cliffs consist of the parti-coloured clay, or Tabatinga, which occurs so
frequently throughout the Amazons region; the strong current of the river
sets full against them in the season of high water, and annually carries away
large portions. The clay in places is stratified alternately pink and yellow,
the pink beds being the thickest and of much harder texture than the others.
When I descended the river in 1859, a German Major of Engineers, in the

employ of the Government, told me that he had found calcareous layers,
thickly studded with marine shells interstratified with the clay. On the top
of the Tabatinga lies a bed of sand, in some places several feet thick, and
the whole formation rests on strata of sandstone, which are exposed only
when the river reaches its lowest level. Behind the town rises a fine
rounded hill, and a range of similar elevations extends six miles westward,
terminating at the mouth of the Trombetas, a large river flowing through
the interior of Guiana. Hills and lowlands alike are covered with a sombre
rolling forest. The river here is contracted to a breadth of rather less than a
mile (1738 yards), and the entire volume of its waters, the collective
product of a score of mighty streams, is poured through the strait with
tremendous velocity. It must be remarked, however, that the river valley
itself is not contracted to this breadth, the opposite shore not being
continental land, but a low alluvial tract, subject to inundation more or less
in the rainy season. Behind it lies an extensive lake, called the Lago Grande
da Villa Franca, which communicates with the Amazons, both above and
below Obydos, and has therefore, the appearance of a by-water or an old
channel of the river. This lake is about thirty-five miles in length, and from
four to ten in width; but its waters are of little depth, and in the dry season
its dimensions are much lessened. It has no perceptible current, and does
not therefore, now divert any portion of the waters of the Amazons from
their main course past Obydos.
I remained at Obydos from the 11th of October to the 19th of November. I

spent three weeks here, also, in 1859, when the place was much changed
through the influx of Portuguese immigrants and the building of a fortress
on the top of the bluff. It is one of the pleasantest towns on the river. The
houses are all roofed with tiles, and are mostly of substantial architecture.
CHAPTER VI 145
The inhabitants, at least at the time of my first visit, were naive in their
ways, kind and sociable. Scarcely any palm-thatched huts are to be seen,
for very few Indians now reside here. It was one of the early settlements of
the Portuguese, and the better class of the population consists of
old-established white families, who exhibit however, in some cases, traces
of cross with the Indian and negro. Obydos and Santarem have received,
during the last eighty years, considerable importations of negro slaves;
before that time, a cruel traffic was carried on in Indians for the same
purpose of forced servitude, but their numbers have gradually dwindled
away, and Indians now form an insignificant element in the population of
the district.
Most of the Obydos townsfolk are owners of cacao plantations, which are
situated on the low lands in the vicinity. Some are large cattle proprietors,
and possess estates of many square leagues' extent in the campo, or
grass-land districts, which border the Lago Grande, and other similar inland
lakes, near the villages of Faro and Alemquer. These campos bear a crop of
nutritious grass; but in certain seasons, when the rising of the Amazons
exceeds the average, they are apt to be flooded, and then the large herds of
half wild cattle suffer great mortality from drowning, hunger, and
alligators. Neither in cattle-keeping nor cacao-growing are any but the
laziest and most primitive methods followed, and the consequence is that
the proprietors are generally poor. A few, however, have become rich by
applying a moderate amount of industry and skill to the management of
their estates. People spoke of several heiresses in the neighbourhood whose
wealth was reckoned in oxen and slaves; a dozen slaves and a few hundred
head of cattle being considered a great fortune. Some of them I saw had
already been appropriated by enterprising young men, who had come from
Para and Maranham to seek their fortunes in this quarter.
The few weeks I spent here passed away pleasantly. I generally spent the
evenings in the society of the townspeople, who associated together
(contrary to Brazilian custom) in European fashion; the different families
meeting at one another's houses for social amusement, bachelor friends not
being excluded, and the whole company, married and single, joining in
simple games. The meetings used to take place in the sitting-rooms, and not
CHAPTER VI 146
in the open verandas--a fashion almost compulsory on account of the

mosquitoes; but the evenings here are very cool, and the closeness of a
room is not so much felt as it is in Para. Sunday was strictly observed at
Obydos--at least all the shops were closed, and almost the whole population
went to church. The Vicar, Padre Raimundo do Sanchez Brito, was an
excellent old man, and I fancy the friendly manners of the people, and the
general purity of morals at Obydos, were owing in great part to the good
example he set to his parishioners.
The forest at Obydos seemed to abound in monkeys, for I rarely passed a

day without seeing several. I noticed four species: the Coaita (Ateles
paniscus), the Chrysothrix sciureus, the Callithrix torquatus, and our old
Para friend, Midas ursulus. The Coaita is a large black monkey, covered
with coarse hair, and having the prominent parts of the face of a tawny
flesh-coloured hue. It is the largest of the Amazonian monkeys in stature,
but is excelled in bulk by the "Barrigudo" (Lagothrix Humboldtii) of the
Upper Amazons. It occurs throughout the lowlands of the Lower and Upper
Amazons, but does not range to the south beyond the limits of the river
plains. At that point an allied species, the White-whiskered Coaita (Ateles
marginatus) takes its place. The Coaitas are called by zoologists spider
monkeys, on account of the length and slenderness of their body and limbs.
In these apes the tail, as a prehensile organ, reaches its highest degree of
perfection; and on this account it would, perhaps, be correct to consider the
Coaitas as the extreme development of the American type of apes. As far as
we know, from living and fossil species, the New World has progressed no
farther than the Coaita towards the production of a higher form of the
Quadrumanous order. The tendency of Nature here has been, to all
appearance, simply to perfect those organs which adapt the species more
and more completely to a purely arboreal life; and no nearer approach has
been made towards the more advanced forms of anthropoid apes, which are
the products of the Old World solely. The flesh of this monkey is much
esteemed by the natives in this part of the country, and the Military
Commandant of Obydos, Major Gama, every week sent a negro hunter to
shoot one for his table. One day I went on a Coaita hunt, borrowing a negro
slave of a friend to show me the way. When in the deepest part of a ravine
we heard a rustling sound in the trees overheard, and Manoel soon pointed
CHAPTER VI 147
out a Coaita to me. There was something human-like in its appearance, as

the lean, dark, shaggy creature moved deliberately amongst the branches at
a great height. I fired, but unfortunately only wounded it in the belly. It fell
with a crash headlong about twenty or thirty feet, and then caught a bough
with its tail, which grasped it instantaneously, and then the animal remained
suspended in mid-air. Before I could reload, it recovered itself and mounted
nimbly to the topmost branches out of the reach of a fowling-piece, where
we could perceive the poor thing apparently probing the wound with its
fingers.
Coaitas are more frequently kept in a tame state than any other kind of
monkey. The Indians are very fond of them as pets, and the women often
suckle them when young at their breasts. They become attached to their
masters, and will sometimes follow them on the ground to considerable
distances. I once saw a most ridiculously tame Coaita. It was an old female
which accompanied its owner, a trader on the river, in all his voyages. By
way of giving me a specimen of its intelligence and feeling, its master set to
and rated it soundly, calling it scamp, heathen, thief, and so forth, all
through the copious Portuguese vocabulary of vituperation. The poor
monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this
display of anger. It began by looking earnestly at him, then it whined, and
lastly rocked its body to and fro with emotion, crying piteously, and
passing its long gaunt arms continually over its forehead; for this was its
habit when excited, and the front of the head was worn quite bald in
consequence. At length its master altered his tone. "It's all a lie, my old
woman; you're an angel, a flower, a good affectionate old creature," and so
forth. Immediately the poor monkey ceased its wailing, and soon after came
over to where the man sat. The disposition of the Coaita is mild in the
extreme-- it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the
Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer
relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief,
and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing,
which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons
procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe and
poisoned darts, and restoring life by putting a little salt (the antidote to the
Urari poison with which the darts are tipped) in its mouth. The animals thus
CHAPTER VI 148
caught become tame forthwith. Two females were once kept at the Jardin
des Plantes of Paris, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire relates of them that they
rarely quitted each other, remaining most of the time in close embrace,
folding their tails around one another's bodies. They took their meals
together; and it was remarked on such occasions, when the friendship of
animals is put to a hard test, that they never quarrelled or disputed the
possession of a favourite fruit with each other.
The neighbourhood of Obydos was rich also in insects. In the broad alleys
of the forest a magnificent butterfly of the genus Morpho, six to eight
inches in expanse, the Morpho Hecuba, was seen daily gliding along at a
height of twenty feet or more from the ground. Amongst the lower trees
and bushes numerouskinds of Heliconii, a group of butterflies peculiar to
tropical America, having long narrow wings, were very abundant. The
prevailing ground colour of the wings of these insects is a deep black, and
on this are depicted spots and streaks of crimson, white, and bright yellow,
in different patterns according to the species. Their elegant shape, showy
colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects,
and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the
physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers.
Next to the Heliconii, the Catagrammas (C. astarte and C. peristera) were
the most conspicuous. These have a very rapid and short flight, settling
frequently and remaining stationary for a long time on the trunks of trees.
The colours of their wings are vermilion and black, the surface having a
rich velvety appearance. The genus owes its Greek name Catagramma
(signifying "a letter beneath") to the curious markings of the underside of
the wings, resembling Arabic numerals. The species and varieties are of
almost endless diversity, but the majority inhabit the hot valleys of the
eastern parts of the Andes. Another butterfly nearly allied to these,
Callithea Leprieurii, was also very abundant here at the marshy head of the
pool before mentioned. The wings are of a rich dark-blue colour, with a
broad border of silvery green. These two groups of Callithea and
Catagramma are found only in tropical America, chiefly near the equator,
and are certainly amongst the most beautiful productions of a region where
the animals and plants seem to have been fashioned in nature's choicest
CHAPTER VI 149
moulds.
A great variety of other beautiful and curious insects adorned these pleasant
woods. Others were seen only in the sunshine in open places. As the waters
retreated from the beach, vast numbers of sulphur-yellow and orange
coloured butterflies congregated on the moist sand. The greater portion of
them belonged to the genus Callidryas. They assembled in densely-packed
masses, sometimes two or three yards in circumference, their wings all held
in an upright position, so that the beach looked as though variegated with
beds of crocuses. These Callidryades seem to be migratory insects, and
have large powers of dissemination. During the last two days of our
voyage, the great numbers constantly passing over the river attracted the
attention of every one on board. They all crossed in one direction, namely,
from north to south, and the processions were uninterrupted from an early
hour in the morning until sunset. All the individuals which resort to the
margins of sandy beaches are of the male sex. The females are much more
rare, and are seen only on the borders of the forest, wandering from tree to
tree, and depositing their eggs on low mimosas which grow in the shade.
The migrating hordes, as far as I could ascertain, are composed only of
males, and on this account I believe their wanderings do not extend very
far.
A strange kind of wood-cricket is found in this neighbourhood, the males of

which produce a very loud and not unmusical noise by rubbing together the
overlapping edges of their wing-cases. The notes are certainly the loudest
and most extraordinary that I ever heard produced by an orthopterous
insect. The natives call it the Tanana, in allusion to its music, which is a
sharp, resonant stridulation resembling the syllables ta-na-na, ta-na- na,
succeeding each other with little intermission. It seems to be rare in the
neighbourhood. When the natives capture one, they keep it in a
wicker-work cage for the sake of hearing it sing. A friend of mine kept one
six days. It was lively only for two or three, and then its loud note could be
heard from one end of the village to the other. When it died he gave me the
specimen, the only one I was able to procure. It is a member of the family
Locustidae, a group intermediate between the Cricket (Achetidae) and the
Grasshoppers (Acridiidae). The total length of the body is two inches and a
CHAPTER VI 150
quarter; when the wings are closed the insect has an inflated vesicular or
bladder-like shape, owing to the great convexity of the thin but firm
parchmenty wing-cases, and the colour is wholly pale-green. The
instrument by which the Tanana produces its music is curiously contrived
out of the ordinary nervures of the wing-cases. In each wing-case the inner
edge, near its origin, has a horny expansion or lobe; on one wing (b) this
lobe has sharp raised margins; on the other (a), the strong nervure which
traverses the lobe on the under side is crossed by a number of fine sharp
furrows like those of a file. When the insect rapidly moves its wings, the
file of the one lobe is scraped sharply across the horny margin of the other,
thus producing the sounds; the parchmenty wing-cases and the hollow
drum-like space which they enclose assist in giving resonance to the tones.
The projecting portions of both wing-cases are traversed by a similar strong
nervure, but this is scored like a file only in one of them, in the other
remaining perfectly smooth.
Other species of the family to which the Tanana belongs have similar
stridulating organs, but in none are these so highly developed as in this
insect; they exist always in the males only, the other sex having the edges
of the wing-cases quite straight and simple. The mode of producing the
sounds and their object have been investigated by several authors with
regard to certain European species. They are the call-notes of the males. In
the common field-cricket of Europe the male has been observed to place
itself, in the evening, at the entrance of its burrow, and stridulate until a
female approaches, when the louder notes are succeeded by a more subdued
tone, while the successful musician caresses with his antennae the mate he
has won. Anyone who will take the trouble may observe a similar
proceeding in the common house-cricket. The nature and object of this
insect music are more uniform than the structure and situation of the
instrument by which it is produced. This differs in each of the three allied
families above mentioned. In the crickets the wing-cases are symmetrical;
both have straight edges and sharply-scored nervures adapted to produce
the stridulation. A distinct portion of their edges is not, therefore, set apart
for the elaboration of a sound-producing instrument. In this family the
wing-cases lie flat on the back of the insect, and overlap each other for a
considerable portion of their extent. In the Locustidae the same members
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have a sloping position on each side of the body, and do not overlap, except
to a small extent near their bases; it is out of this small portion that the
stridulating organ is contrived. Greater resonance is given in most species
by a thin transparent plate, covered by a membrane, in the centre of the
overlapping lobes. In the Grasshoppers (Acridiidae) the wing-cases meet in
a straight suture, and the friction of portions of their edges is no longer
possible. But Nature exhibits the same fertility of resource here as
elsewhere; and in contriving other methods of supplying the males with an
instrument for the production of call-notes indicates the great importance
which she attaches to this function. The music in the males of the
Acridiidae is produced by the scraping of the long hind thighs against the
horny nervures of the outer edges of the wing-cases; a drum- shaped organ
placed in a cavity near the insertion of the thighs being adapted to give
resonance to the tones.
I obtained very few birds at Obydos. There was no scarcity of birds, but
they were mostly common Cayenne species. In early morning, the woods
near my house were quite animated with their songs--an unusual thing in
this country. I heard here for the first time the pleasing wild notes of the
Carashue, a species of thrush, probably the Mimus lividus of ornithologists.
I found it afterwards to be a common bird in the scattered woods of the
campo district near Santarem. It is a much smaller and plainer- coloured
bird than our thrush, and its song is not so loud, varied, or so long
sustained; but the tone is of a sweet and plaintive quality, which harmonises
well with the wild and silent woodlands, where alone it is heard in the
mornings and evenings of sultry tropical days. In course of time the song of
this humble thrush stirred up pleasing associations in my mind, in the same
way as those of its more highly endowed sisters formerly did at home.
There are several allied species in Brazil; in the southern provinces they are
called Sabiahs. The Brazilians are not insensible to the charms of this their
best songster, for I often heard some pretty verses in praise of the Sabiah
sung by young people to the accompaniment of the guitar.
I found several times the nest of the Carashue, which is built of dried grass
and slender twigs, and lined with mud; the eggs are coloured and spotted
like those of our blackbird, but they are considerably smaller. I was much
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pleased with a brilliant little red-headed mannikin, which I shot here (Pipra
cornuta). There were three males seated on a low branch, and hopping
slowly backwards and forwards, near to one another, as though engaged in
a kind of dance. In the pleasant airy woods surrounding the sandy shores of
the pool behind the town, the yellow-bellied Trogon (T. viridis) was very
common. Its back is of a brilliant metallic- green colour, and the breast
steel blue. The natives call it the Suruqua do Ygapo, or Trogon of the
flooded lands, in contradistinction to the red-breasted species, which are
named Surtiquas da terra firma. I often saw small companies of half a
dozen individuals quietly seated on the lower branches of trees. They
remained almost motionless for an hour or two at a time, simply moving
their heads, on the watch for passing insects; or, as seemed more generally
to be the case, scanning the neighbouring trees for fruit, which they darted
off now and then, at long intervals to secure, returning always to the same
perch.
CHAPTER VII
THE LOWER AMAZONS--OBYDOS TO MANAOS, OR THE BARRA

OF THE RIO NEGRO
Departure from Obydos--River Banks and By-channels--Cacao

Planters--Daily Life on Board Our Vessel--Great Storm--Sand- Island and
Its Birds--Hill of Parentins--Negro Trader and Mauhes Indians--Villa
Nova: Its Inhabitants, Forest, and Animal Productions--Cararaucu--A rustic
Festival--Lake of Cararaucu-- Motuca--Flies--Serpa--Christmas
Holidays--River Madeira--A Mameluco Farmer--Mura Indians--Rio
Negro--Description of Barra-- Descent to Para--Yellow Fever
A Trader of Obydos, named Penna, was proceeding about in a cuberta

laden with merchandise to the Rio Negro, intending to stop frequently on
the road, so I bargained with him for a passage. He gave up a part of the
toldo, or fore-cabin as it may be called, and here I slung my hammock and
arranged my boxes so as to be able to work as we went along. The
stoppages I thought would be an advantage, as I could collect in the woods
CHAPTER VII 153
whilst he traded, and thus acquire a knowledge of the productions of many

places on the river which on a direct voyage would be impossible to do. I
provided a stock of groceries for two months' consumption; and, after the
usual amount of unnecessary fuss and delay on the part of the owner, we
started on the 19th of November. Penna took his family with him-- this
comprised a smart, lively mameluco woman, named Catarina, whom we
called Senora Katita, and two children. The crew consisted of three men:
one a sturdy Indian, another a Cafuzo, godson of Penna, and the third, our
best hand, a steady, good-natured mulatto, named Joaquim. My boy Luco
was to assist in rowing and so forth. Penna was a timid middle-aged man, a
white with a slight cross of Indian; when he was surly and obstinate, he
used to ask me to excuse him on account of the Tapuyo blood in his veins.
He tried to make me as comfortable as the circumstances admitted, and
provided a large stock of eatables and drinkables; so that altogether the
voyage promised to be a pleasant one.
On leaving the port of Obydos, we crossed over to the right bank and sailed
with a light wind all day, passing numerous houses, each surrounded by its
grove of cacao trees. On the 20th we made slow progress. After passing the
high land at the mouth of the Trombetas, the banks were low, clayey, or
earthy on both sides. The breadth of the river varies hereabout from two
and a half to three miles, but neither coast is the true terra firma. On the
northern side a by-channel runs for a long distance inland, communicating
with the extensive lake of Faro; on the south, three channels lead to the
similar fresh-water sea of Villa Franca; these are in part arms of the river,
so that the land they surround consists, properly speaking, of islands. When
this description of land is not formed wholly of river deposit, as sometimes
happens, or is raised above the level of the highest floods, it is called
Ygapo alto, and is distinguished by the natives from the true islands of
mid-river, as well as from the terra firma. We landed at one of the cacao
plantations. The house was substantially built; the walls formed of strong
upright posts, lathed across, plastered with mud and whitewashed, and the
roof tiled. The family were mamelucos, and seemed to be an average
sample of the poorer class of cacao growers. All were loosely dressed and
bare-footed. A broad verandah extended along one side of the house, the
floor of which was simply the well- trodden earth; and here hammocks
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were slung between the bare upright supports, a large rush mat being spread
on the ground, upon which the stout matron-like mistress, with a tame
parrot perched upon her shoulder, sat sewing with two pretty little mulatto
girls. The master, coolly clad in shirt and drawers, the former loose about
the neck, lay in his hammock smoking a long gaudily-painted wooden pipe.
The household utensils, earthenware jars, water-pots and saucepans lay at
one end, near which was a wood fire, with the ever-ready coffee-pot
simmering on the top of a clay tripod. A large shed stood a short distance
off, embowered in a grove of banana, papaw, and mango trees; and under it
were the ovens, troughs, sieves, and all other apparatus for the preparation
of mandioca. The cleared space around the house was only a few yards in
extent; beyond it lay the cacao plantations, which stretched on each side
parallel to the banks of the river. There was a path through the forest which
led to the mandioca fields, and several miles beyond to other houses on the
banks of an interior channel. We were kindly received, as is always the case
when a stranger visits these out-of-the-way habitations-- the people being
invariably civil and hospitable. We had a long chat, took coffee, and upon
departing, one of the daughters sent a basket full of oranges for our use
down to the canoe.
The cost of a cacao plantation in the Obydos district is after the rate of 240
reis or sixpence per tree, which is much higher than at Cameta, where I
believe the yield is not so great. The forest here is cleared before planting,
and the trees are grown in rows. The smaller cultivators are all very poor.
Labour is scarce; one family generally manages its own small plantation of
10,000 to 15,000 trees, but at the harvest time neighbours assist each other.
It appeared to me to be an easy, pleasant life; the work is all done under
shade, and occupies only a few weeks in the year. The incorrigible
nonchalance and laziness of the people alone prevent them from
surrounding themselves with all the luxuries of a tropical country. They
might plant orchards of the choicest fruit trees around their houses, grow
Indian corn, and rear cattle and hogs, as intelligent settlers from Europe
would certainly do, instead of indolently relying solely on the produce of
their small plantations, and living on a meagre diet of fish and farinha. In
preparing the cacao they have not devised any means of separating the
seeds well from the pulp, or drying it in a systematic way; the consequence
CHAPTER VII 155
is that, although naturally of good quality, it molds before reaching the

merchants' stores, and does not fetch more than half the price of the same
article grown in other parts of tropical America. The Amazons region is the
original home of the principal species of chocolate tree, the Theobroma
cacao; and it grows in abundance in the forests of the upper river. The
cultivated crop appears to be a precarious one; little or no care, however, is
bestowed on the trees, and even weeding is done very inefficiently. The
plantations are generally old, and have been made on the low ground near
the river, which renders them liable to inundation when this rises a few
inches more than the average. There is plenty of higher land quite suitable
to the tree, but it is uncleared, and the want of labour and enterprise
prevents the establishment of new plantations.
We passed the last houses in the Obydos district on the 20th, and the river
scenery then resumed its usual wild and solitary character, which the
scattered human habitations relieved, although in a small degree. We soon
fell into a regular mode of life on board our little ark. Penna would not
travel by night; indeed, our small crew, wearied by the day's labour,
required rest, and we very rarely had wind in the night. We used to moor
the vessel to a tree, giving out plenty of cable, so as to sleep at a distance
from the banks and free of mosquitoes, which although swarming in the
forest, rarely came many yards out into the river at this season of the year.
The strong current at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the coast
steadied the cuberta head to stream, and kept us from drifting ashore. We
all slept in the open air, as the heat of the cabins was stifling in the early
part of the night. Penna, Senhora Katita, and I slung our hammocks in
triangle between the mainmast and two stout poles fixed in the raised deck.
A sheet was the only covering required, besides our regular clothing, for
the decrease of temperature at night on the Amazons is never so great as to
be felt otherwise than as a delightful coolness after the sweltering heat of
the afternoons.
We used to rise when the first gleam of dawn showed itself above the long,
dark line of forest. Our clothes and hammocks were then generally soaked
with dew, but this was not felt to be an inconvenience. The Indian Manoel
used to revive himself by a plunge in the river, under the bows of the
CHAPTER VII 156
vessel. It is the habit of all Indians, male and female, to bathe early in the
morning; they do it sometimes for warmth's sake, the temperature of the
water being often considerably higher than that of the air. Penna and I
lolled in our hammocks, while Katita prepared the indispensable cup of
strong coffee, which she did with wonderful celerity, smoking meanwhile
her early morning pipe of tobacco. Liberal owners of river craft allow a cup
of coffee sweetened with molasses, or a ration of cashaca, to each man of
their crews; Penna gave them coffee. When all were served, the day's work
began. There was seldom any wind at this early hour, so if there was still
water along the shore, the men rowed, if not, there was no way of
progressing but by espia.
In some places the currents ran with great force close to the banks,
especially where these receded to form long bays or enseadas, as they are
called, and then we made very little headway. In such places the banks
consist of loose earth, a rich crumbly vegetable mold supporting a growth
of most luxuriant forest, of which the currents almost daily carry away
large portions, so that the stream for several yards out is encumbered with
fallen trees whose branches quiver in the current. When projecting points of
land were encountered, it was impossible, with our weak crew, to pull the
cuberta against the whirling torrents which set round them; and in such
cases we had to cross the river, drifting often with the current, a mile or two
lower down on the opposite shore. There generally sprung a light wind as
the day advanced, and then we took down our hammocks, hoisted all sail,
and bowled away merrily. Penna generally preferred to cook the dinner
ashore, when there was little or no wind. About midday on these calm days,
we used to look out for a nice shady nook in the forest with cleared space
sufficient to make a fire upon. I then had an hour's hunting in the
neighbouring wilderness, and was always rewarded by the discovery of
some new species. During the greater part of our voyage, however, we
stopped at the house of some settler, and made our fire in the port. Just
before dinner it was our habit to take a bath in the river, and then, according
to the universal custom on the Amazons, where it seems to be suitable on
account of the weak fish diet, we each took half a tea-cup full of neat
cashaca, the "abre" or " opening," as it is called, and set to on our mess of
stewed pirarucu, beans, and bacon. Once or twice a week we had fowls and
CHAPTER VII 157
rice; at supper, after sunset, we often had fresh fish caught by our men in
the evening. The mornings were cool and pleasant until towards midday;
but in the afternoons, the heat became almost intolerable, especially in
gleamy, squally weather, such as generally prevailed. We then crouched in
the shade of the sails, or went down to our hammocks in the cabin,
choosing to be half stifled rather than expose ourselves on deck to the
sickening heat of the sun.
We generally ceased travelling about nine o'clock, fixing upon a safe spot
wherein to secure the vessel for the night. The cool evening hours were
delicious; flocks of whistling ducks (Anas autumnalis), parrots, and
hoarsely-screaming macaws, pair by pair, flew over from their feeding to
their resting places, as the glowing sun plunged abruptly beneath the
horizon. The brief evening chorus of animals then began, the chief
performers being the howling monkeys, whose frightful unearthly roar
deepened the feeling of solitude which crept up as darkness closed around
us. Soon after, the fireflies in great diversity of species came forth and
flitted about the trees. As night advanced, all became silent in the forest,
save the occasional hooting of tree-frogs, or the monotonous chirping of
wood-crickets and grasshoppers.
We made but little progress on the 20th and two following days, on account
of the unsteadiness of the wind. The dry season had been of very brief
duration this year; it generally lasts in this part of the Amazons from July to
January, with a short interval of showery weather in November. The river
ought to sink thirty or thirty-five feet below its highest point; this year it
had declined only about twenty-five feet, and the November rains
threatened to be continuous. The drier the weather the stronger blows the
east wind; it now failed us altogether, or blew gently for a few hours merely
in the afternoons. I had hitherto seen the great river only in its sunniest
aspect; I was now about to witness what it could furnish in the way of
storms.
On the night of the 22nd the moon appeared with a misty halo. As we went
to rest, a fresh watery wind was blowing, and a dark pile of clouds gathered
up river in a direction opposite to that of the wind. I thought this betokened
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nothing more than a heavy rain which would send us all in a hurry to our
cabins. The men moored the vessel to a tree alongside a hard clayey bank,
and after supper, all were soon fast asleep, scattered about the raised deck.
About eleven o'clock I was awakened by a horrible uproar, as a hurricane
of wind suddenly swept over from the opposite shore. The cuberta was
hurled with force against the clayey bank; Penna shouted out, as he started
to his legs, that a trovoada de cima, or a squall from up-river, was upon us.
We took down our hammocks, and then all hands were required to save the
vessel from being dashed to pieces. The moon set, and a black pall of
clouds spread itself over the dark forests and river; a frightful crack of
thunder now burst over our heads, and down fell the drenching rain.
Joaquim leapt ashore through the drowning spray with a strong pole, and
tried to pass the cuberta round a small projecting point, while we on deck
aided in keeping her off and lengthened the cable. We succeeded in getting
free, and the stout-built boat fell off into the strong current farther away
from the shore, Joaquim swinging himself dexterously aboard by the
bowsprit as it passed the point. It was fortunate for us that he happened to
be on a sloping clayey bank where there was no fear of falling trees; a few
yards farther on, where the shore was perpendicular and formed of crumbly
earth, large portions of loose soil, with all their superincumbent mass of
forest, were being washed away; the uproar thus occasioned adding to the
horrors of the storm.
The violence of the wind abated in the course of an hour, but the deluge of
rain continued until about three o'clock in the morning; the sky was lighted
up by almost incessant flashes of pallid lightning, and the thunder pealing
from side to side without interruption. Our clothing, hammocks, and goods
were thoroughly soaked by the streams of water which trickled through
between the planks. In the morning all was quiet, but an opaque, leaden
mass of clouds overspread the sky, throwing a gloom over the wild
landscape that had a most dispiriting effect. These squalls from the west are
always expected about the time of the breaking up of the dry season in
these central parts of the Lower Amazons. They generally take place about
the beginning of February, so that this year they had commenced much
earlier than usual. The soil and climate are much drier in this part of the
country than in the region lying farther to the west, where the denser forests
CHAPTER VII 159
and more clayey, humid soil produce a considerably cooler atmosphere.

The storms may be, therefore, attributed to the rush of cold moist air from
up river, when the regular trade- wind coming from the sea has slackened
or ceased to blow.
On the 26th we arrived at a large sand bank connected with an island in

mid-river, in front of an inlet called Maraca-uassu. Here we anchored and
spent half a day ashore. Penna's object in stopping was simply to enjoy a
ramble on the sands with the children, and give Senora Katita an
opportunity to wash the linen. The sandbank was now fast going under
water with the rise of the river; in the middle of the dry season it is about a
mile long and half a mile in width. The canoe-men delight in these open
spaces, which are a great relief to the monotony of the forest that clothes
the land in every other part of the river. Farther westward they are much
more frequent, and of larger extent. They lie generally at the upper end of
islands; in fact, the latter originate in accretions of vegetable matter formed
by plants and trees growing on a shoal. The island was wooded chiefly with
the trumpet tree (Cecropia peltata), which has a hollow stem and smooth
pale bark. The leaves are similar in shape to those of the horse-chestnut, but
immensely larger; beneath they are white, and when the welcome
trade-wind blows they show their silvery undersides--a pleasant signal to
the weary canoe traveller. The mode of growth of this tree is curious: the
branches are emitted at nearly right angles with the stem, the branchlets in
minor whorls around these, and so forth, the leaves growing at their
extremities, so that the total appearance is that of a huge candelabrum.
Cecropiae of different species are characteristic of Brazilian forest scenery;
the kind of which I am speaking grows in great numbers everywhere on the
banks of the Amazons where the land is low. In the same places the curious
Monguba tree (Bombax ceiba) is also plentiful; the dark green bark of its
huge tapering trunk, scored with grey, forming a conspicuous object. The
principal palm tree on the lowlands is the Jauari (Astrvocaryum Jauari),
whose stem, surrounded by whorls of spines, shoots up to a great height.
On the borders of the island were large tracts of arrow-grass (Gynerium
saccharoides), which bears elegant plumes of flowers, like those of the
reed, and grows to a height of twenty feet, the leaves arranged in a
fan-shaped figure near the middle of the stem. I was surprised to find on the
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higher parts of the sandbank the familiar foliage of a willow (Salix

Humboldtiana). It is a dwarf species, and grows in patches resembling beds
of osiers; as in the English willows, the leaves were peopled by small
chrysomelideous beetles.
In wandering about, many features reminded me of the seashore. Flocks of

white gulls were flying overhead, uttering their well- known cry, and
sandpipers coursed along the edge of the water. Here and there lonely
wading-birds were stalking about; one of these, the Curiaca (Ibis
melanopis), flew up with a low cackling noise, and was soon joined by a
unicorn bird (Palamedea cornuta), which I startled up from amidst the
bushes, whose harsh screams, resembling the bray of a jackass, but shriller,
disturbed unpleasantly the solitude of the place. Amongst the willow
bushes were flocks of a handsome bird belonging to the Icteridae or
troupial family, adorned with a rich plumage of black and saffron-yellow. I
spent some time watching an assemblage of a species of bird called by the
natives Tumburi-para, on the Cecropia trees. It is the Monasa nigrifrons of
ornithologists, and has a plain slate-coloured plumage with the beak of an
orange hue. It belongs to the family of Barbets, most of whose members are
remarkable for their dull, inactive temperament. Those species which are
arranged by ornithologists under the genus Bucco are called by the Indians,
in the Tupi language, Tai-assu uira, or pig-birds. They remain seated
sometimes for hours together on low branches in the shade, and are
stimulated to exertion only when attracted by passing insects. This flock of
Tamburi-para were the reverse of dull; they were gambolling and chasing
each other amongst the branches. As they sported about, each emitted a few
short tuneful notes, which altogether produced a ringing, musical chorus
that quite surprised me.
On the 27th we reached an elevated wooded promontory, called Parentins,

which now forms the boundary between the provinces of Para and the
Amazons. Here we met a small canoe descending to Santarem. The owner
was a free negro named Lima, who, with his wife, was going down the
river to exchange his year's crop of tobacco for European merchandise. The
long shallow canoe was laden nearly to the water level. He resided on the
banks of the Abacaxi, a river which discharges its waters into the Canoma,
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a broad interior channel which extends from the river Madeira to the
Parentins, a distance of 180 miles. Penna offered him advantageous terms,
so a bargain was struck, and the man saved his long journey. The negro
seemed a frank, straightforward fellow; he was a native of Pernambuco, but
had settled many years ago in this part of the country. He had with him a
little Indian girl belonging to the Mauhes tribe, whose native seat is the
district of country lying in the rear of the Canoma, between the Madeira
and the Tapajos. The Mauhes are considered, I think with truth, to be a
branch of the great Mundurucu nation, having segregated from them at a
remote period, and by long isolation acquired different customs and a
totally different language, in a manner which seems to have been general
with the Brazilian aborigines. The Mundurucus seem to have retained more
of the general characteristics of the original Tupi stock than the Mauhes.
Senor Lima told me, what I afterwards found to be correct, that there were
scarcely two words alike in the languages of the two peoples, although
there are words closely allied to Tupi in both.
The little girl had not the slightest trace of the savage in her appearance.
Her features were finely shaped, the cheekbones not at all prominent, the
lips thin, and the expression of her countenance frank and smiling. She had
been brought only a few weeks previously from a remote settlement of her
tribe on the banks of the Abacaxi, and did not yet know five words of
Portuguese. The Indians, as a general rule, are very manageable when they
are young, but it is a general complaint that when they reach the age of
puberty they become restless and discontented. The rooted impatience of all
restraint then shows itself, and the kindest treatment will not prevent them
running away from their masters; they do not return to the malocas of their
tribes, but join parties who go out to collect the produce of the forests and
rivers, and lead a wandering semi-savage kind of life.
We remained under the Serra dos Parentins all night. Early the next
morning a light mist hung about the tree-tops, and the forest resounded with
the yelping of Whaiapu-sai monkeys. I went ashore with my gun and got a
glimpse of the flock, but did not succeed in obtaining a specimen. They
were of small size and covered with long fur of a uniform grey colour. I
think the species was the Callithrix donacophilus. The rock composing the
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elevated ridge of the Parentins is the same coarse iron-cemented

conglomerate which I have often spoken of as occurring near Para and in
several other places. Many loose blocks were scattered about. The forest
was extremely varied, and inextricable coils of woody climbers stretched
from tree to tree. Throngs of cacti were spread over the rocks and
tree-trunks. The variety of small, beautifully-shaped ferns, lichens, and
boleti, made the place quite a museum of cryptogamic plants. I found here
two exquisite species of Longicorn beetles, and a large kind of grasshopper
(Pterochroza) whose broad fore-wings resembled the leaf of a plant,
providing the insect with a perfect disguise when they were closed; while
the hind wings were decorated with gaily- coloured eye-like spots.
The negro left us and turned up a narrow channel, the Parana- mirim dos
Ramos (the little river of the branches, i.e., having many ramifications), on
the road to his home, 130 miles distant. We then continued our voyage, and
in the evening arrived at Villa Nova, a straggling village containing about
seventy houses, many of which scarcely deserve the name, being mere
mud-huts roofed with palm-leaves. We stayed here four days. The village is
built on a rocky bank, composed of the same coarse conglomerate as that
already so often mentioned. In some places a bed of Tabatinga clay rests on
the conglomerate. The soil in the neighbourhood is sandy, and the forest,
most of which appears to be of second growth, is traversed by broad alleys
which terminate to the south and east on the banks of pools and lakes, a
chain of which extends through the interior of the land. As soon as we
anchored I set off with Luco to explore the district. We walked about a mile
along the marly shore, on which was a thick carpet of flowering shrubs,
enlivened by a great variety of lovely little butterflies, and then entered the
forest by a dry watercourse.
About a furlong inland this opened on a broad placid pool, whose banks,
clothed with grass of the softest green hue, sloped gently from the water's
edge to the compact wall of forest which encompassed the whole. The pool
swarmed with water-fowl; snowy egrets, dark-coloured striped herons, and
storks of various species standing in rows around its margins. Small flocks
of macaws were stirring about the topmost branches of the trees.
Long-legged piosocas (Perra Jacana) stalked over the water plants on the
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surface of the pool, and in the bushes on its margin were great numbers of a
kind of canary (Sycalis brasiliensis) of a greenish-yellow colour, which has
a short and not very melodious song. We had advanced but a few steps
when we startled a pair of the Jaburu-moleque (Mycteria americana), a
powerful bird of the stork family, four and a half feet in height, which flew
up and alarmed the rest, so that I got only one bird out of the tumultuous
flocks which passed over our heads. Passing towards the farther end of the
pool I saw, resting on the surface of the water, a number of large round
leaves turned up at their edges; they belonged to the Victoria water-lily.
The leaves were just beginning to expand (December 3rd), some were still
under water, and the largest of those which had reached the surface
measured not quite three feet in diameter. We found a montaria with a
paddle in it, drawn up on the bank, which I took leave to borrow of the
unknown owner, and Luco paddled me amongst the noble plants to search
for flowers-- meeting, however, with no success. I learned afterwards that
the plant is common in nearly all the lakes of this neighbourhood. The
natives call it the furno do Piosoca, or oven of the Jacana, the shape of the
leaves being like that of the ovens on which Mandioca meal is roasted.
We saw many kinds of hawks and eagles, one of which, a black species, the
Caracara-i (Milvago nudicollis), sat on the top of a tall naked stump,
uttering its hypocritical whining notes. This eagle is considered a bird of ill
omen by the Indians: it often perches on the tops of trees in the
neighbourhood of their huts, and is then said to bring a warning of death to
some member of the household. Others say that its whining cry is intended
to attract other defenseless birds within its reach. The little courageous
flycatcher Bemti-vi (Saurophagus sulphuratus) assembles in companies of
four or five, and attacks it boldly, driving it from the perch where it would
otherwise sit for hours. I shot three hawks of as many different species; and
these, with a Magoary stork, two beautiful gilded-green jacamars (Galbula
chalcocephala), and half-a-dozen leaves of the water-lily, made a heavy
load, with which we trudged off back to the canoe.
A few years after this visit, namely, in 1854-5, I passed eight months at
Villa Nova. The district of which it is the chief town is very extensive, for it
has about forty miles of linear extent along the banks of the river; but, the
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whole does not contain more than 4000 inhabitants. More than half of these
are pureblood Indians who live in a semi-civilised condition on the banks
of the numerous channels and lakes. The trade of the place is chiefly in
India-rubber, balsam of Copaiba (which are collected on the banks of the
Madeira and the numerous rivers that enter the Canoma channel), and salt
fish, prepared in the dry season, nearer home. These articles are sent to Para
in exchange for European goods. The few Indian and half-breed families
who reside in the town are many shades inferior in personal qualities and
social condition to those I lived amongst near Para and Cameta. They live
in wretched dilapidated mud-hovels; the women cultivate small patches of
mandioca; the men spend most of their time in fishing, selling what they do
not require themselves and getting drunk with the most exemplary
regularity on cashaca, purchased with the proceeds.
I made, in this second visit to Villa Nova, an extensive collection of the

natural productions of the neighbourhood. A few remarks on some of the
more interesting of these must suffice. The forests are very different in their
general character from those of Para, and in fact those of humid districts
generally throughout the Amazons. The same scarcity of large-leaved
Musaceous and Marantaceous plants was noticeable here as at Obydos. The
low-lying areas of forest or Ygapos, which alternate everywhere with the
more elevated districts, did not furnish the same luxuriant vegetation as
they do in the Delta region of the Amazons. They are flooded during three
or four months in the year, and when the waters retire, the soil--to which
the very thin coating of alluvial deposit imparts little fertility-- remains
bare, or covered with a matted bed of dead leaves until the next flood
season. These tracts have then a barren appearance; the trunks and lower
branches of the trees are coated with dried slime, and disfigured by rounded
masses of fresh-water sponges, whose long horny spiculae and dingy
colours give them the appearance of hedgehogs.
Dense bushes of a harsh, cutting grass, called Tiririca, form almost the only
fresh vegetation in the dry season. Perhaps the dense shade, the long period
during which the land remains under water, and the excessively rapid
desiccation when the waters retire, all contribute to the barrenness of these
Ygapos. The higher and drier land is everywhere sandy, and tall coarse
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grasses line the borders of the broad alleys which have been cut through the
second-growth woods. These places swarm with carapatos, ugly ticks
belonging to the genus Ixodes, which mount to the tips of blades of grass,
and attach themselves to the clothes of passers-by. They are a great
annoyance. It occupied me a full hour daily to pick them off my flesh after
my diurnal ramble. There are two species; both are much flattened in shape,
have four pairs of legs, a thick short proboscis and a horny integument.
Their habit is to attach themselves to the skin by plunging their proboscides
into it, and then suck the blood until their flat bodies are distended into a
globular form. The whole proceeding, however, is very slow, and it takes
them several days to pump their fill. No pain or itching is felt, but serious
sores are caused if care is not taken in removing them, as the proboscis is
liable to break off and remain in the wound. A little tobacco juice is
generally applied to make them loosen their hold. They do not cling firmly
to the skin by their legs, although each of these has a pair of sharp and fine
claws connected with the tips of the member by means of a flexible pedicle.
When they mount to the summits of slender blades of grass, or the tips of
leaves, they hold on by their forelegs only, the other three pairs being
stretched out so as to fasten onto any animal which comes their way. The
smaller of the two species is of a yellowish colour; it is the most abundant,
and sometimes falls upon one by scores. When distended, it is about the
size of a No. 8 shot; the larger kind, which fortunately comes only singly to
the work, swells to the size of a pea.
In some parts of the interior, the soil is composed of very coarse sand and
small fragments of quartz; in these places no trees grow. I visited, in
company with the priest, Padre Torquato, one of these treeless spaces or
campos, as they are called, situated five miles from the village. The road
thither led through a varied and beautiful forest, containing many gigantic
trees. I missed the Assai, Mirti, Paxiuba, and other palms which are all
found only on rich moist soils, but the noble Bacaba was not uncommon,
and there was a great diversity of dwarf species of Maraja palms (Bactris),
one of which, called the Peuririma, was very elegant, growing to a height of
twelve or fifteen feet, with a stem no thicker than a man's finger. On
arriving at the campo, all this beautiful forest abruptly ceased, and we saw
before us an oval tract of land three or four miles in circumference,
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destitute even of the smallest bush. The only vegetation was a crop of
coarse hairy grass growing in patches. The forest formed a hedge all round
the isolated field, and its borders were composed in great part of trees
which do not grow in the dense virgin forest, such as a great variety of
bushy Melastomas, low Byrsomina trees, myrtles, and Lacre-trees, whose
berries exude globules of wax resembling gamboge. On the margins of the
campo wild pineapples also grew in great quantity. The fruit was of the
same shape as our cultivated kind, but much smaller, the size being that of
a moderately large apple. We gathered several quite ripe ones; they were
pleasant to the taste, of the true pineapple flavour, but had an abundance of
fully developed seeds, and only a small quantity of eatable pulp. There was
no path beyond this campo; in fact, all beyond is terra incognita to the
inhabitants of Villa Nova.
The only interesting Mammalian animal which I saw at Villa Nova was a
monkey of a species new to me; it was not, however, a native of the district,
having been brought by a trader from the river Madeira, a few miles above
Borba. It was a howler, probably the Mycetes stramineus of Geoffroy St.
Hilaire. The howlers are the only kinds of monkey which the natives have
not succeeded in taming. They are often caught, but they do not survive
captivity many weeks. The one of which I am speaking was not quite full
grown. It measured sixteen inches in length, exclusive of the tail-- the
whole body was covered with rather long and shining dingy-white hair, the
whiskers and beard only being of a tawny hue. It was kept in a house,
together with a Coaita and a Caiarara monkey (Cebus albifrons). Both these
lively members of the monkey order seemed rather to court attention, but
the Mycetes slunk away when anyone approached it. When it first arrived,
it occasionally made a gruff subdued howling noise early in the morning.
The deep volume of sound in the voice of the howling monkeys, as is well
known, is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the larynx. It was
curious to watch the animal while venting its hollow cavernous roar, and
observe how small was the muscular exertion employed. When howlers are
seen in the forest, there are generally three or four of them mounted on the
topmost branches of a tree. It does not appear that their harrowing roar is
emitted from sudden alarm; at least, it was not so in captive individuals. It
is probable, however, that the noise serves to intimidate their enemies. I did
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not meet with the Mycetes stramineus in any other part of the Amazons
region; in the neighbourhood of Para a reddish-coloured species prevails
(M. Belzebuth); in the narrow channels near Breves I shot a large, entirely
black kind; another yellow-handed species, according to the report of the
natives, inhabits the island of Macajo, which is probably the M. flavimanus
of Kuhl; some distance up the Tapajos the only howler found is a
brownish-black species; and on the Upper Amazons, the sole species seen
was the Mycetes ursinus, whose fur is of a shining yellowish-red colour.
In the dry forests of Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time. I was
returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering
noise close to me. Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily
weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the noise was a warning that it
was about to fall. The wind lulled for a few moments, and then there was
no doubt that the noise proceeded from the ground. On turning my head in
that direction, a sudden plunge startled me, and a heavy gliding motion
betrayed a large serpent making off almost from beneath my feet. The
ground is always so encumbered with rotting leaves and branches that one
only discovers snakes when they are in the act of moving away. The
residents of Villa Nova would not believe that I had seen a rattlesnake in
their neighbourhood; in fact, it is not known to occur in the forests at all, its
place being the open campos, where, near Santarem, I killed several. On my
second visit to Villa Nova I saw another. I had then a favourite little dog,
named Diamante, who used to accompany me in my rambles. One day he
rushed into the thicket, and made a dead set at a large snake, whose head I
saw raised above the herbage. The foolish little brute approached quite
close, and then the serpent reared its tail slightly in a horizontal position
and shook its terrible rattle. It was many minutes before I could get the dog
away; and this incident, as well as the one already related, shows how slow
the reptile is to make the fatal spring.
I was much annoyed, and at the same time amused, with the Urubu
vultures. The Portuguese call them corvos or crows; in colour and general
appearance they somewhat resemble rooks, but they are much larger, and
have naked, black, wrinkled skin about their face and throat. They assemble
in great numbers in the villages about the end of the wet season, and are
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then ravenous with hunger. My cook could not leave the kitchen open at the
back of the house for a moment while the dinner was cooking, on account
of their thievish propensities. Some of them were always loitering about,
watching their opportunity, and the instant the kitchen was left unguarded,
the bold marauders marched in and lifted the lids off the saucepans with
their beaks to rob them of their contents. The boys of the village lie in wait,
and shoot them with bow and arrow; and vultures have consequently
acquired such a dread of these weapons, that they may be often kept off by
hanging a bow from the rafters of the kitchen. As the dry season advances,
the hosts of Urubus follow the fishermen to the lakes, where they gorge
themselves with the offal of the fisheries. Towards February, they return to
the villages, and are then not nearly so ravenous as before their summer
trips.
The insects of Villa Nova are, to a great extent, the same as those of
Santarem and the Tapajos. A few species of all orders, however, are found
here, which occurred nowhere else on the Amazons, besides several others
which are properly considered local varieties or races of others found at
Para, on the Northern shore of the Amazons, or in other parts of Tropical
America. The Hymenoptera were especially numerous, as they always are
in districts which possess a sandy soil; but the many interesting facts which
I gleaned relative to their habits will be more conveniently introduced when
I treat of the same or similar species found in the localities above-named.
In the broad alleys of the forest several species of Morpho were common.
One of these is a sister form to the Morpho Hecuba, which I have
mentioned as occurring at Obydos. The Villa Nova kind differs from
Hecuba sufficiently to be considered a distinct species, and has been
described under the name of M. Cisseis; but it is clearly only a local variety
of it, the range of the two being limited by the barrier of the broad
Amazons. It is a grand sight to see these colossal butterflies by twos and
threes floating at a great height in the still air of a tropical morning. They
flap their wings only at long intervals, for I have noticed them to sail a very
considerable distance without a stroke. Their wing-muscles and the thorax
to which they are attached are very feeble in comparison with the wide
extent and weight of the wings; but the large expanse of these members
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doubtless assists the insects in maintaining their aerial course. Morphos are
among the most conspicuous of the insect denizens of Tropical American
forests, and the broad glades of the Villa Nova woods seemed especially
suited to them, for I noticed here six species. The largest specimens of
Morpho Cisseis measure seven inches and a half in expanse. Another
smaller kind, which I could not capture, was of a pale silvery-blue colour,
and the polished surface of its wings flashed like a silver speculum as the
insect flapped its wings at a great elevation in the sunlight.
To resume our voyage-- We left Villa Nova on the 4th of December. A

light wind on the 5th carried us across to the opposite shore and past the
mouth of the Parana-mirim do arco, or the little river of the bow, so-called
on account of its being a short arm of the main river, of a curved shape, and
rejoining the Amazons a little below Villa Nova. On the 6th, after passing a
large island in mid-river, we arrived at a place where a line of perpendicular
clay cliffs, called the Barreiros de Cararaucu, diverts slightly the course of
the main stream, as at Obydos. A little below these cliffs were a few
settlers' houses; here Penna remained ten days to trade, a delay which I
turned to good account in augmenting very considerably my collections.
At the first house a festival was going forward. We anchored at some

distance from the shore, on account of the water being shoaly, and early in
the morning three canoes put off, laden with salt fish, oil of manatee, fowls
and bananas-- wares which the owners wished to exchange for different
articles required for the festa. Soon after I went ashore. The head man was a
tall, well- made, civilised Tapuyo, named Marcellino, who, with his wife, a
thin, active, wiry old squaw, did the honours of their house, I thought,
admirably. The company consisted of fifty or sixty Indians and Mamelucos;
some of them knew Portuguese, but the Tupi language was the only one
used amongst themselves. The festival was in honour of our Lady of
Conception; and, when the people learnt that Penna had on board an image
of the saint handsomer than their own, they put off in their canoes to
borrow it; Marcellino taking charge of the doll, covering it carefully with a
neatly-bordered white towel. On landing with the image, a procession was
formed from the port to the house, and salutes fired from a couple of
lazarino guns, the saint being afterwards carefully deposited in the family
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oratorio. After a litany and hymn were sung in the evening, all assembled to
supper around a large mat spread on a smooth terrace-like space in front of
the house. The meal consisted of a large boiled Pirarucu, which had been
harpooned for the purpose in the morning, stewed and roasted turtle, piles
of mandioca-meal and bananas. The old lady, with two young girls, showed
the greatest activity in waiting on the guests, Marcellino standing gravely
by, observing what was wanted and giving the necessary orders to his wife.
When all was done, hard drinking began, and soon after there was a dance,
to which Penna and I were invited. The liquor served was chiefly a spirit
distilled by the people themselves from mandioca cakes. The dances were
all of the same class, namely, different varieties of the "Landum," an erotic
dance similar to the fandango, originally learned from the Portuguese. The
music was supplied by a couple of wire-stringed guitars, played alternately
by the young men. All passed off very quietly considering the amount of
strong liquor drunk, and the ball was kept up until sunrise the next morning.
We visited all the houses one after the other. One of them was situated in a
charming spot, with a broad sandy beach before it, at the entrance to the
Parana-mirim do Mucambo, a channel leading to an interior lake, peopled
by savages of the Mura tribe. This seemed to be the abode of an industrious
family, but all the men were absent, salting Pirarucu on the lakes. The
house, like its neighbours, was simply a framework of poles thatched with
palm- leaves, the walls roughly latticed and plastered with mud; but it was
larger, and much cleaner inside than the others. It was full of women and
children, who were busy all day with their various employments; some
weaving hammocks in a large clumsy frame, which held the warp while the
shuttle was passed by the hand slowly across the six foot breadth of web;
others were spinning cotton, and others again scraping, pressing, and
roasting mandioca. The family had cleared and cultivated a large piece of
ground; the soil was of extraordinary richness, the perpendicular banks of
the river, near the house, revealing a depth of many feet of crumbling
vegetable mould. There was a large plantation of tobacco, besides the usual
patches of Indian-corn, sugar-cane, and mandioca; and a grove of cotton,
cacao, coffee, and fruit- trees surrounded the house. We passed two nights
at anchor in shoaly water off the beach. The weather was most beautiful,
and scores of Dolphins rolled and snorted about the canoe all night.
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We crossed the river at this point, and entered a narrow channel which
penetrates the interior of the island of Tupinambarana, and leads to a chain
of lakes called the Lagos de Cararaucu. A furious current swept along the
coast, eating into the crumbling earthy banks, and strewing the river with
debris of the forest. The mouth of the channel lies about twenty-five miles
from Villa Nova; the entrance is only about forty yards broad, but it
expands, a short distance inland, into a large sheet of water. We suffered
terribly from insect pests during the twenty-four hours we remained here.
At night it was quite impossible to sleep for mosquitoes; they fell upon us
by myriads, and without much piping came straight at our faces as thick as
raindrops in a shower. The men crowded into the cabins, and then tried to
expel the pests by the smoke from burnt rags, but it was of little avail,
although we were half suffocated during the operation. In the daytime, the
Motuca, a much larger and more formidable fly than the mosquito, insisted
upon levying his tax of blood. We had been tormented by it for many days
past, but this place seemed to be its metropolis. The species has been
described by Perty, the author of the Entomological portion of Spix, and
Martius' travels, under the name of Hadrus lepidotus. It is a member of the
Tabanidae family, and indeed is closely related to the Haematopota
pluvialis, a brown fly which haunts the borders of woods in summer time in
England. The Motuca is of a bronzed-black colour; its proboscis is formed
of a bundle of horny lancets, which are shorter and broader than is usually
the case in the family to which it belongs. Its puncture does not produce
much pain, but it makes such a large gash in the flesh that the blood trickles
forth in little streams. Many scores of them were flying about the canoe all
day, and sometimes eight or ten would settle on one's ankles at the same
time. It is sluggish in its motions, and may be easily killed with the fingers
when it settles. Penna went forward in the montaria to the Pirarucu fishing
stations, on a lake lying further inland; but he did not succeed in reaching
them on account of the length and intricacy of the channels; so after
wasting a day, during which, however, I had a profitable ramble in the
forest, we again crossed the river, and on the 16th continued our voyage
along the northern shore.
The clay cliffs of Cararaucu are several miles in length. The hard pink and
red coloured beds are here extremely thick, and in some places present a
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compact, stony texture. The total height of the cliff is from thirty to sixty
feet above the mean level of the river, and the clay rests on strata of the
same coarse iron- cemented conglomerate which has already been so often
mentioned. Large blocks of this latter have been detached and rolled by the
force of currents up parts of the cliff where they are seen resting on terraces
of the clay. On the top of all lies a bed of sand and vegetable mold, which
supports a lofty forest, growing up to the very brink of the precipice. After
passing these barreiros we continued our way along a low uninhabited
coast, clothed, wherever it was elevated above high-water mark, with the
usual vividly-coloured forests of the higher Ygapo lands, to which the
broad and regular fronds of the Murumuru palm, here extremely abundant,
served as a great decoration. Wherever the land was lower than the flood
height of the Amazons, Cecropia trees prevailed, sometimes scattered over
meadows of tall broad- leaved grasses, which surrounded shallow pools
swarming with water-fowl. Alligators were common on most parts of the
coast; in some places we also saw small herds of Capybaras (a large Rodent
animal, like a colossal Guinea-pig) among the rank herbage on muddy
banks, and now and then flocks of the graceful squirrel monkey
(Chrysothrix sciureus), while the vivacious Caiarara (Cebus albifrons) were
seen taking flying leaps from tree to tree. On the 22nd, we passed the
mouth of the most easterly of the numerous channels which lead to the
large interior lake of Saraca, and on the 23rd ,threaded a series of passages
between islands, where we again saw human habitations, ninety miles
distant from the last house at Cararaucu. On the 24th we arrived at Serpa.
Serpa is a small village, consisting of about eighty houses, built on a bank

elevated twenty-five feet above the level of the river. The beds of Tabatinga
clay, which are here intermingled with scoria-looking conglomerate, are in
some parts of the declivity prettily variegated in colour; the name of the
town in the Tupi language, Ita-coatiara, takes its origin from this
circumstance, signifying striped or painted rock. It is an old settlement, and
was once the seat of the district government, which had authority over the
Barra of the Rio Negro. It was in 1849 a wretched-looking village, but it
has since revived, on account of having been chosen by the Steamboat
Company of the Amazons as a station for steam saw-mills and tile
manufactories. We arrived on Christmas Eve, when the village presented an
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animated appearance from the number of people congregated for the

holidays. The port was full of canoes, large and small, from the montaria,
with its arched awning of woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the
two-masted cuberta of the peddling trader, who had resorted to the place in
the hope of trafficking with settlers coming from remote sitios to attend the
festival. We anchored close to an igarite, whose owner was an old Juri
Indian, disfigured by a large black tatooed patch in the middle of his face,
and by his hair being close cropped, except a fringe in front of the head.
In the afternoon we went ashore. The population seemed to consist chiefly

of semi-civilised Indians, living as usual in half- finished mud hovels. The
streets were irregularly laid out, and overrun with weeds and bushes
swarming with "mocuim," a very minute scarlet acarus, which sweeps off
to one's clothes in passing, and attaching itself in great numbers to the skin
causes a most disagreeable itching. The few whites and better class of
mameluco residents live in more substantial dwellings, whitewashed and
tiled. All, both men and women, seemed to me much more cordial, and at
the same time more brusque in their manners, than any Brazilians I had yet
met with. One of them, Captain Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time
afterwards; a lively, intelligent, and thoroughly good-hearted man, who had
quite a reputation throughout the interior of the country for generosity, and
for being a firm friend of foreign residents and stray travellers. Some of
these excellent people were men of substance, being owners of trading
vessels, slaves, and extensive plantations of cacao and tobacco.
We stayed at Serpa five days. Some of the ceremonies observed at

Christmas were interesting, inasmuch as they were the same, with little
modification, as those taught by the Jesuit missionaries more than a century
ago to the aboriginal tribes whom they had induced to settle on this spot. In
the morning, all the women and girls, dressed in white gauze chemises and
showy calico print petticoats, went in procession to church, first going the
round of the town to take up the different "mordomos," or stewards, whose
office is to assist the Juiz of the festa. These stewards carried each a long
white reed, decorated with coloured ribbons; several children also
accompanied, grotesquely decked with finery. Three old squaws went in
front, holding the "saire," a large semi-circular frame, clothed with cotton
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and studded with ornaments, bits of looking-glass, and so forth. This they
danced up and down, singing all the time a monotonous whining hymn in
the Tupi language, and at frequent intervals turning round to face the
followers, who then all stopped for a few moments. I was told that this saire
was a device adopted by the Jesuits to attract the savages to church, for
these everywhere followed the mirrors, in which they saw as it were
magically reflected their own persons.
In the evening good-humoured revelry prevailed on all sides. The negroes,

who had a saint of their own colour--St. Benedito--had their holiday apart
from the rest, and spent the whole night singing and dancing to the music of
a long drum (gamba) and the caracasha. The drum was a hollow log, having
one end covered with skin, and was played by the performer sitting astride
upon it, and drumming with his knuckles. The caracasha is a notched
bamboo tube, which produces a harsh rattling noise by passing a hard stick
over the notches. Nothing could exceed in dreary monotony this music and
the singing and dancing, which were kept up with unflagging vigour all
night long. The Indians did not get up a dance--for the whites and
mamelucos had monopolised all the pretty coloured girls for their own ball,
and the older squaws preferred looking on to taking a part themselves.
Some of their husbands joined the negroes, and got drunk very quickly. It
was amusing to notice how voluble the usually taciturn redskins became
under the influence of liquor. The negroes and Indians excused their own
intemperance by saying the whites were getting drunk at the other end of
the town, which was quite true.
We left Serpa on the 29th of December, in company of an old planter

named Senor Joao (John) Trinidade, at whose sitio, situated opposite the
mouth of the Madeira, Penna intended to spend a few days. Our course on
the 29th and 30th lay through narrow channels between islands. On the 31st
we passed the last of these, and then beheld to the south a sea-like expanse
of water, where the Madeira, the greatest tributary of the Amazons, after
2000 miles of course, blends its waters with those of the king of rivers. I
was hardly prepared for a junction of waters on so vast a scale as this, now
nearly 900 miles from the sea. While travelling week after week along the
somewhat monotonous stream, often hemmed in between islands, and
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becoming thoroughly familiar with it, my sense of the magnitude of this

vast water system had become gradually deadened; but this noble sight
renewed the first feelings of wonder. One is inclined, in such places as
these, to think the Paraenses do not exaggerate much when they call the
Amazons the Mediterranean of South America. Beyond the mouth of the
Madeira, the Amazons sweeps down in a majestic reach, to all appearance
not a whit less in breadth before than after this enormous addition to its
waters. The Madeira does not ebb and flow simultaneously with the
Amazons; it rises and sinks about two months earlier, so that it was now
fuller than the main river. Its current therefore, poured forth freely from its
mouth, carrying with it a long line of floating trees and patches of grass
which had been torn from its crumbly banks in the lower part of its course.
The current, however, did not reach the middle of the main stream, but
swept along nearer to the southern shore.
A few items of information which I gleaned relative to this river may find a
place here. The Madeira is navigable for about 480 miles from its mouth; a
series of cataracts and rapids then commences, which extends, with some
intervals of quiet water, about 16o miles, beyond which is another long
stretch of navigable stream. Canoes sometimes descend from Villa Bella, in
the interior province of Matto Grosso, but not so frequently as formerly,
and I could hear of very few persons who had attempted of late years to
ascend the river to that point. It was explored by the Portuguese in the early
part of the eighteenth century, the chief and now the only town on its
banks, Borba, 150 miles from its mouth, being founded in 1756. Up to the
year 1853, the lower part of the river, as far as about a hundred miles
beyond Borba, was regularly visited by traders from Villa Nova, Serpa, and
Barra, to collect sarsaparilla, copauba balsam, turtle-oil, and to trade with
the Indians, with whom their relations were generally on a friendly footing.
In that year many India-rubber collectors resorted to this region, stimulated
by the high price (2s. 6d. a pound) which the article was at that time
fetching at Para; and then the Araras, a fierce and intractable tribe of
Indians, began to be troublesome. They attacked several canoes and
massacred everyone on board, the Indian crews as well as the white traders.
Their plan was to lurk in ambush near the sandy beaches where canoes stop
for the night, and then fall upon the people while asleep. Sometimes they
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came under pretence of wishing to trade, and then as soon as they could get
the trader at a disadvantage, shot him and his crew from behind trees. Their
arms were clubs, bows, and Taquara arrows, the latter a formidable weapon
tipped with a piece of flinty bamboo shaped like a spear-head; they could
propel it with such force as to pierce a man completely through the body.
The whites of Borba made reprisals, inducing the warlike Mundurucus,
who had an old feud with the Araras, to assist them. This state of things
lasted two or three years, and made a journey up the Madeira a risky
undertaking, as the savages attacked all corners. Besides the Araras and the
Mundurucus, the latter a tribe friendly to the whites, attached to agriculture,
and inhabiting the interior of the country from the Madeira to beyond the
Tapajos, two other tribes of Indians now inhabit the lower Madeira,
namely, the Parentintins and the Muras. Of the former I did not hear much;
the Muras lead a lazy quiet life on the banks of the labyrinths of lakes and
channels which intersect the low country on both sides of the river below
Borba. The Araras are one of those tribes which do not plant mandioca; and
indeed have no settled habitations. They are very similar in stature and
other physical features to the Mundurucus, although differing from them so
widely in habits and social condition. They paint their chins red with Urucu
(Anatto), and have usually a black tattooed streak on each side of the face,
running from the corner of the mouth to the temple. They have not yet
learned the use of firearms, have no canoes, and spend their lives roaming
over the interior of the country, living on game and wild fruits. When they
wish to cross a river, they make a temporary canoe with the thick bark of
trees, which they secure in the required shape of a boat by means of lianas.
I heard it stated by a trader of Santarem, who narrowly escaped being
butchered by them in 1854, that the Araras numbered 2000 fighting men.
The number I think must be exaggerated, as it generally is with regard to
Brazilian tribes. When the Indians show a hostile disposition to the whites,
I believe it is most frequently owing to some provocation they have
received at their hands; for the first impulse of the Brazilian red-man is to
respect Europeans; they have a strong dislike to be forced into their service,
but if strangers visit them with a friendly intention they are well treated. It
is related, however, that the Indians of the Madeira were hostile to the
Portuguese from the first; it was then the tribes of Muras and Torazes who
attacked travellers. In 1855 I met with an American, an odd character
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named Kemp, who had lived for many years amongst the Indians on the
Madeira, near the abandoned settlement of Crato. He told me his
neighbours were a kindly-disposed and cheerful people, and that the
onslaught of the Araras was provoked by a trader from Bara, who wantonly
fired into a family of them, killing the parents, and carrying off their
children to be employed as domestic servants.
We remained nine days at the sitio of Senor John Trinidade. It is situated on

a tract of high Ygapo land, which is raised, however, only a few inches
above high-water mark. This skirts the northern shore for a long distance;
the soil consisting of alluvium and rich vegetable mould, and exhibiting the
most exuberant fertility. Such districts are the first to be settled on in this
country, and the whole coast for many miles was dotted with
pleasant-looking sitios like that of our friend. The establishment was a large
one, the house and out-buildings covering a large space of ground. The
industrious proprietor seemed to be Jack-of-all-trades; he was planter,
trader, fisherman, and canoe-builder, and a large igarite was now on the
stocks under a large shed. There was great pleasure in contemplating this
prosperous farm, from its being worked almost entirely by free labour; in
fact, by one family, and its dependents. John Trinidade had only one female
slave; his other workpeople were a brother and sister-in-law, two godsons,
a free negro, one or two Indians, and a family of Muras. Both he and his
wife were mamelucos; the negro children called them always father and
mother. The order, abundance, and comfort about the place showed what
industry and good management could effect in this country without
slave-labour. But the surplus produce of such small plantations is very
trifling. All we saw had been done since the disorders of 1835-6, during
which John Trinidade was a great sufferer; he was obliged to fly, and the
Mura Indians destroyed his house and plantations. There was a large, well-
weeded grove of cacao along the banks of the river, comprising about 8000
trees, and further inland considerable plantations of tobacco, mandioca,
Indian corn, fields of rice, melons, and watermelons. Near the house was a
kitchen garden, in which grew cabbages and onions, introduced from
Europe, besides a wonderful variety of tropical vegetables. It must not be
supposed that these plantations and gardens were enclosed or neatly kept,
such is never the case in this country where labour is so scarce; but it was
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an unusual thing to see vegetables grown at all, and the ground tolerably
well weeded. The space around the house was plentifully planted with
fruit-trees, some, belonging to the Anonaceous order, yielding delicious
fruits large as a child's head, and full of custardy pulp which it is necessary
to eat with a spoon--besides oranges, lemons, guavas, alligator pears, Abius
(Achras cainito), Genipapas, and bananas. In the shade of these, coffee
trees grew in great luxuriance.
The table was always well supplied with fish, which the Mura who was
attached to the household as fisherman caught every morning a few
hundred yards from the port. The chief kinds were the Surubim, Pira-peeua,
and Piramutaba, three species of Siluridae, belonging to the genus
Pimelodus. To these we used a sauce in the form of a yellow paste, quite
new to me, called Arube, which is made of the poisonous juice of the
mandioca root, boiled down before the starch or tapioca is precipitated, and
seasoned with capsicum peppers. It is kept in stone bottles several weeks
before using, and is a most appetising relish to fish. Tucupi, another sauce
made also from mandioca juice, is much more common in the interior of
the country than Arube. This is made by boiling or heating the pure liquid,
after the tapioca has been separated, daily for several days in succession,
and seasoning it with peppers and small fishes; when old, it has the taste of
essence of anchovies. It is generally made as a liquid, but the Juri and
Miranha tribes on the Japura make it up in the form of a black paste by a
mode of preparation I could not learn; it is then called Tucupi-pixuna, or
black Tucupi-- I have seen the Indians on the Tapajos, where fish is scarce,
season Tucupi with Sauba ants. It is there used chiefly as a sauce to Tacaca,
another preparation from mandioca, consisting of the starch beaten up in
boiling water.
I thoroughly enjoyed the nine days we spent at this place. Our host and
hostess took an interest in my pursuit; one of the best chambers in the
house was given up to me, and the young men took me on long rambles in
the neighbouring forests. I saw very little hard work going forward.
Everyone rose with the daw, and went down to the river to bathe; then
came the never-failing cup of rich and strong coffee, after which all
proceeded to their avocations. At this time, nothing was being done at the
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plantations; the cacao and tobacco crops were not ripe; weeding time was
over; and the only work on foot was the preparation of a little farinha by the
women. The men dawdled about-- went shooting and fishing, or did trifling
jobs about the house. The only laborious work done during the year in these
establishments is the felling of timber for new clearings; this happens at the
beginning of the dry season, namely, from July to September. Whatever
employment the people were engaged in, they did not intermit it during the
hot hours of the day. Those who went into the woods took their dinners
with them--a small bag of farinha, and a slice of salt fish. About sunset all
returned to the house; they then had their frugal suppers, and towards eight
o'clock, after coming to ask a blessing of the patriarchal head of the
household, went off to their hammocks to sleep.
There was another visitor besides ourselves, a negro, whom John Trinidade
introduced to me as his oldest and dearest friend, who had saved his life
during the revolt of 1835. I have, unfortunately, forgotten his name; he was
a freeman, and had a sitio of his own situated about a day's journey from
this. There was the same manly bearing about him that I had noticed with
pleasure in many other free negroes; but his quiet, earnest manner, and the
thoughtful and benevolent expression of his countenance, showed him to be
a superior man of his class. He told me he had been intimate with our host
for thirty years, and that a wry word had never passed between them. At the
commencement of the disorders of 1835, he got into the secret of a plot for
assassinating his friend, hatched by some villains whose only cause of
enmity was their owing him money and envying his prosperity. It was such
as these who aroused the stupid and brutal animosity of the Muras against
the whites. The negro, on obtaining this news, set off alone in a montaria on
a six hour journey in the dead of night to warn his "compadre" of the fate in
store for him, and thus gave him time to fly. It was a pleasing sight to
notice the cordiality of feeling and respect for each other shown by these
two old men; for they used to spend hours together enjoying the cool
breeze, seated under a shed which overlooked the broad river, and talking
of old times.
John Trinidade was famous for his tobacco and cigarettes, as he took great
pains in preparing the Tauari, or envelope, which is formed of the inner
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bark of a tree, separated into thin papery layers. Many trees yield it, among
them the Courataria Guianensis and the Sapucaya nut-tree, both belonging
to the same natural order. The bark is cut into long strips, of a breadth
suitable for folding the tobacco; the inner portion is then separated, boiled,
hammered with a wooden mallet, and exposed to the air for a few hours.
Some kinds have a reddish colour and an astringent taste, but the sort
prepared by our host was of a beautiful satiny-white hue, and perfectly
tasteless. He obtained sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred layers from
the same strip of bark. The best tobacco in Brazil is grown in the
neighbourhood of Borba, on the Madeira, where the soil is a rich black
loam; but tobacco of very good quality was grown by John Trinidade and
his neighbours along this coast, on similar soil. It is made up into slender
rolls, an inch and a half in diameter and six feet in length, tapering at each
end. When the leaves are gathered and partially dried, layers of them, after
the mid-ribs are plucked out, are placed on a mat and rolled up into the
required shape. This is done by the women and children, who also manage
the planting, weeding, and gathering of the tobacco. The process of
tightening the rolls is a long and heavy task, and can be done only by men.
The cords used for this purpose are of very great strength. They are made of
the inner bark of a peculiar light- wooded and slender tree, called Uaissima,
which yields, when beaten out, a great quantity of most beautiful silky
fibre, many feet in length. I think this might be turned to some use by
English manufacturers, if they could obtain it in large quantity. The tree is
abundant on light soils on the southern side of the Lower Amazons, and
grows very rapidly. When the rolls are sufficiently well pressed, they are
bound round with narrow thongs of remarkable toughness, cut from the
bark of the climbing Jacitara palm tree (Desmoncus macracanthus), and are
then ready for sale or use.
It was very pleasant to roam in our host's cacaoal. The ground was clear of
underwood, the trees were about thirty feet in height, and formed a dense
shade. Two species of monkey frequented the trees, and I was told
committed great depredations when the fruit was ripe. One of these, the
macaco prego (Cebus cirrhifer?), is a most impudent thief; it destroys more
than it eats by its random, hasty way of plucking and breaking the fruits,
and when about to return to the forest, carries away all it can in its hands or
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under its arms. The other species, the pretty little Chrysothrix sciureus,
contents itself with devouring what it can on the spot. A variety of beautiful
insects basked on the foliage where stray gleams of sunlight glanced
through the canopy of broad soft-green leaves, and numbers of an elegant,
long-legged tiger beetle (Odontocheila egregia) ran and flew about over the
herbage.
We left this place on the 8th of January, and on the afternoon of the 9th,
arrived at Matari, a miserable little settlement of Mura Indians. Here we
again anchored and went ashore. The place consisted of about twenty
slightly-built mud-hovels, and had a most forlorn appearance,
notwithstanding the luxuriant forest in its rear. A horde of these Indians
settled here many years ago, on the site of an abandoned missionary station;
and the government had lately placed a resident director over them, with
the intention of bringing the hitherto intractable savages under authority.
This, however, seemed to promise no other result than that of driving them
to their old solitary haunts on the banks of the interior waters, for many
families had already withdrawn themselves. The absence of the usual
cultivated trees and plants gave the place a naked and poverty-stricken
aspect. I entered one of the hovels where several women were employed
cooking a meal. Portions of a large fish were roasting over a fire made in
the middle of the low chamber, and the entrails were scattered about the
floor, on which the women with their children were squatted. These had a
timid, distrustful expression of countenance, and their bodies were
begrimed with black mud, which is smeared over the skin as a protection
against mosquitoes. The children were naked, the women wore petticoats of
coarse cloth, ragged round the edges, and stained in blotches with murixi, a
dye made from the bark of a tree. One of them wore a necklace of monkey's
teeth. There were scarcely any household utensils; the place was bare with
the exception of two dirty grass hammocks hung in the corners. I missed
the usual mandioca sheds behind the house, with their surrounding cotton,
cacao, coffee, and lemon trees. Two or three young men of the tribe were
lounging about the low open doorway. They were stoutly-built fellows, but
less well- proportioned than the semi-civilised Indians of the Lower
Amazons generally are. Their breadth of chest was remarkable, and their
arms were wonderfully thick and muscular. The legs appeared short in
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proportion to the trunk; the expression of their countenances was

unmistakably more sullen and brutal, and the skin of a darker hue than is
common in the Brazilian red man. Before we left the hut, an old couple
came in; the husband carrying his paddle, bow, arrows, and harpoon, the
woman bent beneath the weight of a large basket filled with palm fruits.
The man was of low stature and had a wild appearance from the long coarse
hair which hung over his forehead. Both his lips were pierced with holes, as
is usual with the older Muras seen on the river. They used formerly to wear
tusks of the wild hog in these holes whenever they went out to encounter
strangers or their enemies in war. The gloomy savagery, filth, and poverty
of the people in this place made me feel quite melancholy, and I was glad
to return to the canoe. They offered us no civilities; they did not even pass
the ordinary salutes, which all the semi-civilised and many savage Indians
proffer on a first meeting. The men persecuted Penna for cashaca, which
they seemed to consider the only good thing the white man brings with
him. As they had nothing whatever to give in exchange, Penna declined to
supply them. They followed us as we descended to the port, becoming very
troublesome when about a dozen had collected together. They brought their
empty bottles with them and promised fish and turtle, if we would only
trust them first with the coveted aguardente, or cau-im, as they called it.
Penna was inexorable; he ordered the crew to weigh anchor, and the
disappointed savages remained hooting after us with all their might from
the top of the bank as we glided away.
The Muras have a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the
semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers.
Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel. They
have a greater repugnance than any other class of Indians to settled habits,
regular labour, and the service of the whites; their distaste, in fact, to any
approximation towards civilised life is invincible. Yet most of these faults
are only an exaggeration of the fundamental defects of character in the
Brazilian red man. There is nothing, I think, to show that the Muras had a
different origin from the nobler agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi
nation, to some of whom they are close neighbours, although the very
striking contrast in their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion
that their origin had been different, in the same way as the Semangs of
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Malacca, for instance, with regard to the Malays. They are merely an
offshoot from them, a number of segregated hordes becoming degraded by
a residence most likely of very many centuries in Ygapo lands, confined to
a fish diet, and obliged to wander constantly in search of food. Those tribes
which are supposed to be more nearly related to the Tupis are distinguished
by their settled agricultural habits, their living in well-constructed houses,
their practice of many arts, such as the manufacture of painted earthenware,
weaving, and their general custom of tattooing, social organisation,
obedience to chiefs, and so forth. The Muras have become a nation of
nomade fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts practised by
their neighbours. They do not build substantial and fixed dwellings, but live
in separate families or small hordes, wandering from place to place along
the margins of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish and turtle.
At each resting- place they construct temporary huts at the edge of the
stream, shifting them higher or lower on the banks, as the waters advance
or recede. Their canoes originally were made simply of the thick bark of
trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape by means of woody lianas;
these are now rarely seen, as most families possess montarias, which they
have contrived to steal from the settlers from time to time. Their food is
chiefly fish and turtle, which they are very expert in capturing. It is said by
their neighbours that they dive after turtles, and succeed in catching them
by the legs, which I believe is true in the shallow lakes where turtles are
imprisoned in the dry season. They shoot fish with bow and arrow, and
have no notion of any other method of cooking it than by roasting.
It is not quite clear whether the whole tribe were originally quite ignorant
of agriculture; as some families on the banks of the streams behind Villa
Nova, who could scarcely have acquired the art in recent times, plant
mandioca, but, as a general rule, the only vegetable food used by the Muras
is bananas and wild fruits. The original home of this tribe was the banks of
the Lower Madeira. It appears they were hostile to the European settlers
from the beginning-- plundering their sitios, waylaying their canoes, and
massacring all who fell into their power. About fifty years ago, the
Portuguese succeeded in turning the warlike propensities of the
Mundurucus against them and these, in the course of many years'
persecution, greatly weakened the power of the tribe, and drove a great part
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of them from their seats on the banks of the Madeira. The Muras are now
scattered in single hordes and families over a wide extent of country
bordering the main river from Villa Nova to Catua, near Ega, a distance of
800 miles. Since the disorders of 1835-6, when they committed great havoc
amongst the peaceable settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and
were pursued and slaughtered in great numbers by the Mundurucus in
alliance with the Brazilians, they have given no serious trouble.
There is one curious custom of the Muras which requires noticing before
concluding this digression; this is the practice of snuff- taking with peculiar
ceremonies. The snuff is called Parica, and is a highly stimulating powder
made from the seeds of a species of Inga, belonging to the Leguminous
order of plants. The seeds are dried in the sun, pounded in wooden mortars,
and kept in bamboo tubes. When they are ripe, and the snuff-making season
sets in, they have a fuddling-bout, lasting many days, which the Brazilians
call a Quarentena, and which forms a kind of festival of a semi-religious
character. They begin by drinking large quantities of caysuma and cashiri,
fermented drinks made of various fruits and mandioca, but they prefer
cashaca, or rum, when they can get it. In a short time they drink themselves
into a soddened semi-intoxicated state, and then commence taking the
Parica. For this purpose they pair off, and each of the partners, taking a reed
containing a quantity of the snuff, after going through a deal of
unintelligible mummery, blows the contents with all his force into the
nostrils of his companion. The effect on the usually dull and taciturn
savages is wonderful; they become exceedingly talkative, sing, shout, and
leap about in the wildest excitement. A reaction soon follows; more
drinking is then necessary to rouse them from their stupor, and thus they
carry on for many days in succession.
The Mauhes also use the Parica, although it is not known among their
neighbours the Mundurucus. Their manner of taking it is very different
from that of the swinish Muras, it being kept in the form of a paste, and
employed chiefly as a preventive against ague in the months between the
dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a
small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the
powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills
CHAPTER VII 185
secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early
travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived
on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the
Mauhes and Muras. This community of habits is one of those facts which
support the view of the common origin and near relationship of the
Amazonian Indians.
After leaving Matari, we continued our voyage along the northern shore.
The banks of the river were of moderate elevation during several days'
journey; the terra firma lying far in the interior, and the coast being either
lowland or masked with islands of alluvial formation. On the 14th we
passed the upper mouth of the Parana-mirim de Eva, an arm of the river of
small breadth, formed by a straggling island some ten miles in length, lying
parallel to the northern bank. On passing the western end of this, the main
land again appeared; a rather high rocky coast, clothed with a magnificent
forest of rounded outline, which continues hence for twenty miles to the
mouth of the Rio Negro, and forms the eastern shore of that river. Many
houses of settlers, built at a considerable elevation on the wooded heights,
now enlivened the riverbanks. One of the first objects which greeted us
here was a beautiful bird we had not hitherto met with, namely, the scarlet
and black tanager (Ramphoccelus nigrogularis), flocks of which were seen
sporting about the trees on the edge of the water, their flame-coloured
liveries lighting up the masses of dark- green foliage.
The weather, from the 14th to the i8th, was wretched; it rained sometimes
for twelve hours in succession, not heavily, but in a steady drizzle, such as
we are familiar with in our English climate. We landed at several places on
the coast, Penna to trade as usual, and I to ramble in the forest in search of
birds and insects. In one spot the wooded slope enclosed a very picturesque
scene: a brook, flowing through a ravine in the high bank, fell in many little
cascades to the broad river beneath, its margins decked out with an infinite
variety of beautiful plants. Wild bananas arched over the watercourse, and
the trunks of the trees in its vicinity were clothed with ferns, large-leaved
species belonging to the genus Lygodium, which, like Osmunda, have their
spore-cases collected together on contracted leaves. On the 18th, we arrived
at a large fazenda (plantation and cattle farm), called Jatuarana. A rocky
CHAPTER VII 186
point here projects into the stream, and as we found it impossible to stem
the strong current which whirled around it, we crossed over to the southern
shore. Canoes, in approaching the Rio Negro, generally prefer the southern
side on account of the slackness of the current near the banks. Our progress,
however, was most tediously slow, for the regular east wind had now
entirely ceased, and the vento de cima or wind from up river, having taken
its place, blew daily for a few hours dead against us. The weather was
oppressively close, and every afternoon a squall arose, which, however, as
it came from the right quarter and blew for an hour or two, was very
welcome. We made acquaintance on this coast with a new insect pest, the
Pium, a minute fly, two thirds of a line in length, which here commences its
reign, and continues henceforward as a terrible scourge along the upper
river, or Solimoens, to the end of the navigation on the Amazons. It comes
forth only by day, relieving the mosquito at sunrise with the greatest
punctuality, and occurs only near the muddy shores of the stream, not one
ever being found in the shade of the forest. In places where it is abundant, it
accompanies canoes in such dense swarms as to resemble thin clouds of
smoke. It made its appearance in this way the first day after we crossed the
river. Before I was aware of the presence of flies, I felt a slight itching on
my neck, wrist, and ankles, and, on looking for the cause, saw a number of
tiny objects having a disgusting resemblance to lice, adhering to the skin.
This was my introduction to the much-talked-of Pium. On close
examination, they are seen to be minute two-winged insects, with dark
coloured body and pale legs and wings, the latter closed lengthwise over
the back. They alight imperceptibly, and squatting close, fall at once to
work; stretching forward their long front legs, which are in constant motion
and seem to act as feelers, and then applying their short, broad snouts to the
skin. Their abdomens soon become distended and red with blood, and then,
their thirst satisfied, they slowly move off, sometimes so stupefied with
their potations that they can scarcely fly. No pain is felt while they are at
work, but they each leave a small circular raised spot on the skin and a
disagreeable irritation. The latter may be avoided in great measure by
pressing out the blood which remains in the spot; but this is a troublesome
task when one has several hundred punctures in the course of a day. I took
the trouble to dissect specimens to ascertain the way in which the little
pests operate. The mouth consists of a pair of thick fleshy lips, and two
CHAPTER VII 187
triangular horny lancets, answering to the upper lip and tongue of other
insects. This is applied closely to the skin, a puncture is made with the
lancets, and the blood then sucked through between these into the
oesophagus, the circular spot which results coinciding with the shape of the
lips. In the course of a few days the red spots dry up, and the skin in time
becomes blackened with the endless number of discoloured punctures that
are crowded together. The irritation they produce is more acutely felt by
some persons than others. I once travelled with a middle-aged Portuguese,
who was laid up for three weeks from the attacks of Pium; his legs being
swelled to an enormous size, and the punctures aggravated into spreading
sores.
A brisk wind from the east sprang tip early in the morning of the 22nd-- we
then hoisted all sail, and made for the mouth of the Rio Negro. This noble
stream at its junction with the Amazons, seems, from its position, to be a
direct continuation of the main river, while the Solimoens which joins at an
angle and is somewhat narrower than its tributary, appears to be a branch
instead of the main trunk of the vast water system. One sees at
once,therefore,how the early explorers came to give a separate name to this
upper part of the Amazons. The Brazilians have lately taken to applying the
convenient term Alto Amazonas (High or Upper Amazons) to the
Solimoens, and it is probable that this will gradually prevail over the old
name. The Rio Negro broadens considerably from its mouth upwards, and
presents the appearance of a great lake; its black-dyed waters having no
current, and seeming to be dammed up by the impetuous flow of the
yellow, turbid Solimoens, which here belches forth a continuous line of
uprooted trees and patches of grass, and forms a striking contrast with its
tributary. In crossing, we passed the line, a little more than halfway over,
where the waters of the two rivers meet and are sharply demarcated from
each other. On reaching the opposite shore, we found a remarkable change.
All our insect pests had disappeared, as if by magic, even from the hold of
the canoe; the turmoil of an agitated, swiftly flowing river, and its torn,
perpendicular, earthy banks, had given place to tranquil water and a coast
indented with snug little bays fringed with sloping, sandy beaches. The low
shore and vivid light-green, endlessly-varied foliage, which prevailed on
the south side of the Amazons, were exchanged for a hilly country, clothed
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with a sombre, rounded, and monotonous forest. Our tedious voyage now
approached its termination; a light wind carried us gently along the coast to
the city of Barra, which lies about seven or eight miles within the mouth of
the river. We stopped for an hour in a clean little bay, to bathe and dress,
before showing ourselves again among civilised people. The bottom was
visible at a depth of six feet, the white sand taking a brownish tinge from
the stained but clear water. In the evening I went ashore, and was kindly
received by Senor Henriques Antony, a warm-hearted Italian, established
here in a high position as merchant, who was the never-failing friend of
stray travellers. He placed a couple of rooms at my disposal, and in a few
hours I was comfortably settled in my new quarters, sixty-four days after
leaving Obydos.
The town of Barra is built on a tract of elevated, but very uneven land, on
the left bank of the Rio Negro, and contained, in 1850, about 3000
inhabitants. There was originally a small fort here, erected by the
Portuguese, to protect their slave-hunting expeditions amongst the
numerous tribes of Indians which peopled the banks of the river. The most
distinguished and warlike of these were the Manaos, who were continually
at war with the neighbouring tribes, and had the custom of enslaving the
prisoners made during their predatory expeditions. The Portuguese
disguised their slave-dealing motives under the pretext of ransoming
(resgatando) these captives; indeed, the term resgatar (to ransom) is still
applied by the traders on the Upper Amazons to the very general, but
illegal, practice of purchasing Indian children of the wild tribes. The older
inhabitants of the place remember the time when many hundreds of these
captives were brought down by a single expedition. In 1809, Barra became
the chief town of the Rio Negro district; many Portuguese and Brazilians
from other provinces then settled here; spacious houses were built, and it
grew, in the course of thirty or forty years, to be, next to Santarem, the
principal settlement on the banks of the Amazons. At the time of my visit it
was on the decline, in consequence of the growing distrust, or increased
cunning, of the Indians, who once formed a numerous and the sole
labouring class, but having got to know that the laws protected them against
forced servitude, were rapidly withdrawing themselves from the place.
When the new province of the Amazons was established, in 1852, Barra
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was chosen as the capital, and was then invested with the appropriate name
of the city of Manaos.
The situation of the town has many advantages; the climate is healthy; there
are no insect pests; the soil is fertile and capable of growing all kinds of
tropical produce (the coffee of the Rio Negro, especially, being of very
superior quality), and it is near the fork of two great navigable rivers. The
imagination becomes excited when one reflects on the possible future of
this place, situated near the centre of the equatorial part of South America,
in the midst of a region almost as large as Europe, every inch of whose soil
is of the most exuberant fertility, and having water communication on one
side with the Atlantic, and on the other with the Spanish republics of
Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Barra is now the
principal station for the lines of steamers which were established in 1853,
and passengers and goods are transhipped here for the Solimoens and Peru.
A steamer runs once a fortnight between Para and Barra, and a bi-monthly
one plies between this place and Nauta in the Peruvian territory. The
steam-boat company is supported by a large annual grant, about 50,000
sterling, from the imperial government. Barra was formerly a pleasant place
of residence, but it is now in a most wretched plight, suffering from a
chronic scarcity of the most necessary articles of food. The attention of the
settlers was formerly devoted almost entirely to the collection of the
spontaneous produce of the forests and rivers; agriculture was consequently
neglected, and now the neighbourhood does not produce even
mandioca-meal sufficient for its own consumption. Many of the most
necessary articles of food, besides all luxuries, come from Portugal,
England, and North America. A few bullocks are brought now and then
from Obydos, 500 miles off, the nearest place where cattle are reared in any
numbers, and these furnish at long intervals a supply of fresh beef, but this
is generally monopolised by the families of government officials. Fowls,
eggs, fresh fish, turtles, vegetables, and fruit were excessively scarce and
dear in 1859, when I again visited the place; for instance, six or seven
shillings were asked for a poor lean fowl, and eggs were
twopence-halfpenny a piece. In fact, the neighbourhood produces scarcely
anything; the provincial government is supplied with the greater part of its
funds from the treasury of Para; its revenue, which amounts to about fifty
CHAPTER VII 190
contos of reis (5600), derived from export taxes on the produce of the
entire province, not sufficing for more than about one-fifth of its
expenditure.
The population of the province of the Amazons, according to a census

taken in 1858, is 55,000 souls; the municipal district of Barra, which
comprises a large area around the capital, containing only 4500 inhabitants.
For the government, however, of this small number of people, an immense
staff of officials is gathered together in the capital, and, notwithstanding the
endless number of trivial formalities which Brazilians employ in every
small detail of administration, these have nothing to do the greater part of
their time. None of the people who flocked to Barra on the establishment of
the new government seemed to care about the cultivation of the soil and the
raising of food, although these would have been most profitable
speculations. The class of Portuguese who emigrate to Brazil seem to prefer
petty trading to the honourable pursuit of agriculture. If the English are a
nation of shopkeepers, what are we to say of the Portuguese? I counted in
Barra one store for every five dwelling- houses. These stores, or tavernas,
have often not more than fifty pounds' worth of goods for their whole stock,
and the Portuguese owners, big lusty fellows, stand all day behind their
dirty counters for the sake of selling a few coppers' worth of liquors, or
small wares. These men all give the same excuse for not applying
themselves to agriculture, namely, that no hands can be obtained to work
on the soil. Nothing can be done with Indians; indeed, they are fast leaving
the neighbourhood altogether, and the importation of negro slaves, in the
present praiseworthy temper of the Brazilian mind, is out of the question.
The problem, how to obtain a labouring class for a new and tropical
country, without slavery, has to be solved before this glorious region can
become what its delightful climate and exuberant fertility fit it for--the
abode of a numerous, civilised, and happy people.
I found at Barra my companion, Mr. Wallace, who, since our joint

Tocantins expedition, had been exploring, partly with his brother, lately
arrived from England, the northeastern coast of Marajo, the river Capim (a
branch of the Guama, near Para), Monte Alegre, and Santarem. He had
passed us by night below Serpa, on his way to Barra, and so had arrived
CHAPTER VII 191
about three weeks before me. Besides ourselves, there were half-a-dozen
other foreigners here congregated--Englishmen, Germans, and Americans;
one of them a Natural History collector, the rest traders on the rivers. In the
pleasant society of these, and of the family of Senor Henriques, we passed a
delightful time; the miseries of our long river voyages were soon forgotten,
and in two or three weeks we began to talk of further explorations.
Meantime we had almost daily rambles in the neighbouring forest. The

whole surface of the land down to the water's edge is covered by the
uniform dark-green rolling forest, the caa-apoam (convex woods) of the
Indians, characteristic of the Rio Negro. This clothes also the extensive
areas of lowland, which are flooded by the river in the rainy season. The
olive-brown tinge of the water seems to be derived from the saturation in it
of the dark green foliage during these annual inundations. The great
contrast in form and colour between the forest of the Rio Negro and those
of the Amazons arises from the predominance in each of different families
of plants. On the main river, palms of twenty or thirty different species
form a great proportion of the mass of trees, while on the Rio Negro, they
play a very subordinate part. The characteristic kind in the latter region is
the Jara (Leopoldinia pulchra), a species not found on the margins of the
Amazons, which has a scanty head of fronds with narrow leaflets of the
same dark green hue as the rest of the forest. The stem is smooth, and about
two inches in diameter; its height is not more than twelve to fifteen feet; it
does not, therefore, rise amongst the masses of foliage of the exogenous
trees, so as to form a feature in the landscape, like the broad-leaved
Murumuru and Urucuri, the slender Assai, the tall Jauari, and the
fan-leaved Muriti of the banks of the Amazons.
On the shores of the main river the mass of the forest is composed, besides
palms, of Leguminosae, or trees of the bean family, in endless variety as to
height, shape of foliage, flowers, and fruit; of silk-cotton trees, colossal
nut-trees (Lecythideae), and Cecropiae; the underwood and water-frontage
consisting in great part of broad-leaved Musaceae, Marantaceae, and
succulent grasses-- all of which are of light shades of green. The forests of
the Rio Negro are almost destitute of these large-leaved plants and grasses,
which give so rich an appearance to the vegetation wherever they grow; the
CHAPTER VII 192
margins of the stream being clothed with bushes or low trees, having the
same gloomy monotonous aspect as the mangroves of the shores of creeks
near the Atlantic. The uniformly small but elegantly-leaved exogenous
trees, which constitute the mass of the forest, consist in great part of
members of the Laurel, Myrtle, Bignoniaceous, and Rubiaceous orders. The
soil is generally a stiff loam, whose chief component part is the Tabatinga
clay, which also forms low cliffs on the coast in some places, where it
overlies strata of coarse sandstone. This kind of soil and the same
geological formation prevail, as we have seen, in many places on the banks
of the Amazons, so that the great contrast in the forest-clothing of the two
rivers cannot arise from this cause.
The forest was very pleasant for rambling. In some directions broad
pathways led down gentle slopes, through what one might fancy were
interminable shrubberies of evergreens, to moist hollows where springs of
water bubbled up, or shallowbrooks ran over their beds of clean white sand.
But the most beautiful road was one that ran through the heart of the forest
to a waterfall, which the citizens of Barra consider as the chief natural
curiosity of their neighbourhood. The waters of one of the larger rivulets
which traverse the gloomy wilderness, here fall over a ledge of rock about
ten feet high. It is not the cascade itself, but the noiseless solitude, and the
marvellous diversity and richness of trees, foliage, and flowers encircling
the water basin that form the attraction of the place. Families make picnic
excursions to this spot; and the gentlemen--it is said the ladies also--spend
the sultry hours of midday bathing in the cold and bracing waters. The
place is classic ground to the Naturalist from having been a favourite spot
with the celebrated travellers Spix and Martius, during their stay at Barra in
1820. Von Martins was so much impressed by its magical beauty that he
commemorated the visit by making a sketch of the scenery serve as
background in one of the plates of his great work on the palms.
Birds and insects, however, were scarce amidst these charming sylvan
scenes. I have often traversed the whole distance from Barra to the
waterfall, about two miles by the forest road, without seeing or hearing a
bird, or meeting with so many as a score of Lepidopterous and
Coleopterous insects. In the thinner woods near the borders of the forest
CHAPTER VII 193
many pretty little blue and green creepers of the Dacnidae group, were
daily seen feeding on berries; and a few very handsome birds occurred in
the forest. But the latter were so rare that we could obtain them only by
employing a native hunter, who used to spend a whole day, and go a great
distance to obtain two or three specimens. In this way I obtained, amongst
others, specimens of the Trogon pavoninus (the Suruqua grande of the
natives), a most beautiful creature, having soft golden green plumage, red
breast, and an orange-coloured beak; also the Ampelis Pompadoura, a rich
glossy-purple chatterer with wings of a snowy-white hue.
After we had rested some weeks in Barra, we arranged our plans for further
explorations in the interior of the country. Mr. Wallace chose the Rio
Negro for his next trip, and I agreed to take the Solimoens. My colleague
has already given to the world an account of his journey on the Rio Negro,
and his adventurous ascent of its great tributary the Uapes. I left Barra for
Ega, the first town of any importance on the Solimoens, on the 26th of
March, 1850. The distance is nearly 400 miles, which we accomplished in a
small cuberta, manned by ten stout Cucama Indians, in thirty-five days. On
this occasion, I spent twelve months in the upper region of the Amazons;
circumstances then compelled me to return to Para. I revisited the same
country in 1855, and devoted three years and a half to a fuller exploration
of its natural productions. The results of both journeys will be given
together in subsequent chapters of this work; in the meantime, I will
proceed to give an account of Santarem and the river Tapajos, whose
neighbourhoods I investigated in the years 1851-4.
A few words on my visit to Para in 1851 may be here introduced. I

descended the river from Ega, to the capital, a distance of 1400 miles, in a
heavily-laden schooner belonging to a trader of the former place. The
voyage occupied no less than twenty-nine days, although we were favoured
by the powerful currents of the rainy season. The hold of the vessel was
filled with turtle oil contained in large jars, the cabin was crammed with
Brazil nuts, and a great pile of sarsaparilla, covered with a thatch of palm
leaves, occupied the middle of the deck. We had, therefore, (the master and
two passengers) but rough accommodation, having to sleep on deck,
exposed to the wet and stormy weather, under little toldos or arched
CHAPTER VII 194
shelters, arranged with mats of woven lianas and maranta leaves. I awoke
many a morning with clothes and bedding soaked through with the rain.
With the exception, however, of a slight cold at the commencement, I never
enjoyed better health than during this journey. When the wind blew from
up river or off the land, we sped away at a great rate; but it was often
squally from those quarters, and then it was not safe to hoist the sails. The
weather was generally calm, a motionless mass of leaden clouds covering
the sky, and the broad expanse of waters flowing smoothly down with no
other motion than the ripple of the current. When the wind came from
below, we tacked down the stream; sometimes it blew very strong, and then
the schooner, having the wind abeam, laboured through the waves, shipping
often heavy seas which washed everything that was loose from one side of
the deck to the other.
On arriving at Para, I found the once cheerful and healthy city desolated by
two terrible epidemics. The yellow fever, which visited the place the
previous year (1850) for the first time since the discovery of the country,
still lingered after having carried off nearly 5 percent of the population. The
number of persons who were attacked, namely, three-fourths of the entire
population, showed how general the onslaught is of an epidemic on its first
appearance in a place. At the heels of this plague came the smallpox. The
yellow fever had fallen most severely on the whites and mamelucos, the
negroes wholly escaping; but the smallpox attacked more especially the
Indians, negroes, and people of mixed colour, sparing the whites almost
entirely, and taking off about a twentieth part of the population in the
course of the four months of its stay. I heard many strange accounts of the
yellow fever. I believe Para was the second port in Brazil attacked by it.
The news of its ravages in Bahia, where the epidemic first appeared, arrived
some few days before the disease broke out. The government took all the
sanitary precautions that could be thought of; amongst the rest was the
singular one of firing cannon at the street corners, to purify the air. Mr.
Norris, the American consul, told me the first cases of fever occurred near
the port and that it spread rapidly and regularly from house to house, along
the streets which run from the waterside to the suburbs, taking about
twenty-four hours to reach the end. Some persons related that for several
successive evenings before the fever broke out the atmosphere was thick,
CHAPTER VII 195
and that a body of murky vapour, accompanied by a strong stench, travelled

from street to street. This moving vapour was called the "Mai da peste"
("the mother or spirit of the plague"); and it was useless to attempt to
reason them out of the belief that this was the forerunner of the pestilence.
The progress of the disease was very rapid. It commenced in April, in the
middle of the wet season. In a few days, thousands of persons lay sick,
dying or dead. The state of the city during the time the fever lasted may be
easily imagined. Towards the end of June it abated, and very few cases
occurred during the dry season from July to December.
As I said before, the yellow fever still lingered in the place when I arrived
from the interior in April. I was in hopes I should escape it, but was not so
fortunate; it seemed to spare no newcomer. At the time I fell ill, every
medical man in the place was worked to the utmost in attending the victims
of the other epidemic; it was quite useless to think of obtaining their aid, so
I was obliged to be my own doctor, as I had been in many former smart
attacks of fever. I was seized with shivering and vomit at nine o'clock in the
morning. While the people of the house went down to the town for the
medicines I ordered, I wrapped myself in a blanket and walked sharply to
and fro along the veranda, drinking at intervals a cup of warm tea, made of
a bitter herb in use amongst the natives, called Pajemarioba, a leguminous
plant growing in all waste places. About an hour afterwards, I took a good
draught of a decoction of elder blossoms as a sudorific, and soon after fell
insensible into my hammock. Mr. Philipps, an English resident with whom
I was then lodging, came home in the afternoon and found me sound asleep
and perspiring famously. I did not wake until almost midnight, when I felt
very weak and aching in every bone of my body. I then took as a purgative,
a small dose of Epsom salts and manna. In forty- eight hours the fever left
me, and in eight days from the first attack, I was able to get about my work.
Little else happened during my stay, which need be recorded here. I
shipped off all my collections to England, and received thence a fresh
supply of funds. It took me several weeks to prepare for my second and
longest journey into the interior. My plan now was first to make Santarem
headquarters for some time, and ascend from that place the river Tapajos as
far as practicable. Afterwards I intended to revisit the marvellous country of
the Upper Amazons, and work well its natural history at various stations I
CHAPTER VIII 196
had fixed upon, from Ega to the foot of the Andes.
CHAPTER VIII
SANTAREM
Situation of Santarem--Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants--

Climate--Grassy Campos and Woods--Excursions to Mapiri, Mahica, and
Irura, with Sketches of their Natural History-- Palms, Wild Fruit Trees,
Mining Wasps, Mason Wasps, Bees, and Sloths
I have already given a short account of the size, situation, and general
appearance of Santarem. Although containing not more than 2500
inhabitants, it is the most civilised and important settlement on the banks of
the main river from Peru to the Atlantic. The pretty little town, or city as it
is called, with its rows of tolerably uniform, white-washed and red-tiled
houses surrounded by green gardens and woods, stands on gently sloping
ground on the eastern side of the Tapajos, close to its point of junction with
the Amazons. A small eminence on which a fort has been erected, but
which is now in a dilapidated condition, overlooks the streets, and forms
the eastern limit of the mouth of the tributary. The Tapajos at Santarem is
contracted to a breadth of about a mile and a half by an accretion of low
alluvial land, which forms a kind of delta on the western side; fifteen miles
further up the river is seen at its full width of from ten to a dozen miles, and
the magnificent hilly country, through which it flows from the south, is
then visible on both shores. This high land, which appears to be a
continuation of the central table-lands of Brazil, stretches almost without
interruption on the eastern side of the river down to its mouth at Santarem.
The scenery as well as the soil, vegetation, and animal tenants of this
region, are widely different from those of the flat and uniform country
which borders the Amazons along most part of its course. After travelling
week after week on the main river, the aspect of Santarem with its broad
white sandy beach, limpid dark-green waters, and line of picturesque hills
rising behind over the fringe of green forest, affords an agreeable surprise.
On the main Amazons, the prospect is monotonous unless the vessel runs
CHAPTER VIII 197
near the shore, when the wonderful diversity and beauty of the vegetation
afford constant entertainment. Otherwise, the unvaried, broad yellow
stream, and the long low line of forest, which dwindles away in a broken
line of trees on the sea-like horizon and is renewed, reach after reach, as the
voyages advances, weary by their uniformity.
I arrived at Santarem on my second journey into the interior, in November,

1851, and made it my headquarters for a period, as it turned out, of three
years and a half. During this time I made, in pursuance of the plan I had
framed, many excursions up the Tapajos, and to other places of interest in
the surrounding region. On landing, I found no difficulty in hiring a
suitable house on the outskirts of the place. It was pleasantly situated near
the beach, going towards the aldeia or Indian part of the town. The ground
sloped from the back premises down to the waterside and my little raised
veranda overlooked a beautiful flower garden, a great rarity in this country,
which belonged to the neighbours. The house contained only three rooms,
one with brick and two with boarded floors. It was substantially built, like
all the better sort of houses in Santarem, and had a stuccoed front. The
kitchen, as is usual, formed an outhouse placed a few yards distant from the
other rooms. The rent was 12,000 reis, or about twenty-seven shillings a
month. In this country, a tenant has no extra payments to make; the owners
of house property pay a dizimo or tithe, to the "collectoria general," or
general treasury, but with this the occupier of course has nothing to do. In
engaging servants, I had the good fortune to meet with a free mulatto, an
industrious and trustworthy young fellow, named Jose, willing to arrange
with me; the people of his family cooked for us, while he assisted me in
collecting; he proved of the greatest service in the different excursions we
subsequently made. Servants of any kind were almost impossible to be
obtained at Santarem, free people being too proud to hire themselves, and
slaves too few and valuable to their masters to be let out to others. These
matters arranged, the house put in order, and a rude table, with a few chairs,
bought or borrowed to furnish the house with, I was ready in three or four
days to commence my Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood.
I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from the other settlements
on the Amazons. At Cameta, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living
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Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there,
as on the RioNegro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well
with the aborigines. In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I
believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending
of the two races has not been here on a large scale. I did not find the
inhabitants the pleasant, easygoing, and blunt-spoken country folk that are
met with in other small towns of the interior. The whites, Portuguese and
Brazilians, are a relatively more numerous class here than in other
settlements, and make great pretensions to civilisation; they are the
merchants and shopkeepers of the place; owners of slaves, cattle estates,
and cacao plantations. Amongst the principal residents must also be
mentioned the civil and military authorities, who are generally well-bred
and intelligent people from other provinces. Few Indians live in the place; it
is too civilised for them, and the lower class is made up (besides the few
slaves) of half-breeds, in whose composition negro blood predominates.
Coloured people also exercise the different handicrafts; the town supports
two goldsmiths, who are mulattoes, and have each several apprentices; the
blacksmiths are chiefly Indians, as is the case generally throughout the
province. The manners of the upper class (copied from those of Para) are
very stiff and formal, and the absence of the hearty hospitality met with in
other places, produces a disagreeable impression at first. Much ceremony is
observed in the intercourse of the principal people with each other, and
with strangers. The best room in each house is set apart for receptions, and
visitors are expected to present themselves in black dress coats, regardless
of the furious heat which rages in the sandy streets of Santarem towards
midday, the hour when visits are generally made. In the room a
cane-bottomed sofa and chairs, all lacquered and gilded, are arranged in
quadrangular form, and here the visitors are invited to seat themselves,
while the compliments are passed, or the business arranged. In taking leave,
the host backs out his guests with repeated bows, finishing at the front door.
Smoking is not in vogue amongst this class, but snuff- taking is largely
indulged in, and great luxury is displayed in gold and silver snuff-boxes.
All the gentlemen, and indeed most of the ladies also, wear gold watches
and guard chains. Social parties are not very frequent; the principal men
being fully occupied with their business and families, and the rest spending
their leisure in billiard and gambling rooms, leaving wives and daughters
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shut up at home. Occasionally, however, one of the principal citizens gives

a ball. In the first that I attended, the gentlemen were seated all the evening
on one side of the room, and the ladies on the other, and partners were
allotted by means of numbered cards, distributed by a master of the
ceremonies. But the customs changed rapidly in these matters after
steamers began to run on the Amazons (in 1853), bringing a flood of new
ideas and fashions into the country. The old, bigoted, Portuguese system of
treating women, which stifled social intercourse and wrought endless evils
in the private life of the Brazilians, is now being gradually, although
slowly, abandoned.
The religious festivals were not so numerous here as in other towns, and
when they did take place, were very poor and ill attended. There is a
handsome church, but the vicar showed remarkably little zeal for religion,
except for a few days now and then when the Bishop came from Para on his
rounds through the diocese. The people are as fond of holiday-making here
as in other parts of the province; but it seemed to be a growing fashion to
substitute rational amusements for the processions and mummeries of the
saints' days. The young folks are very musical, the principal instruments in
use being the flute, violin, Spanish guitar, and a small four-stringed viola,
called cavaquinho. During the early part of my stay at Santarem, a little
party of instrumentalists, led by a tall, thin, ragged mulatto, who was quite
an enthusiast in his art, used frequently to serenade their friends in the cool
and brilliant moonlit evenings of the dry season, playing French and Italian
marches and dance music with very good effect. The guitar was the
favourite instrument with both sexes, as at Para; the piano, however, is now
fast superseding it. The ballads sung to the accompaniment of the guitar
were not learned from written or printed music, but communicated orally
from one friend to another. They were never spoken of as songs, but
modinas, or "little fashions," each of which had its day, giving way to the
next favourite brought by some young fellow from the capital.
At festival times there was a great deal of masquerading, in which all the
people, old and young, white, negro, and Indian, took great delight. The
best things of this kind used to come off during the Carnival, in Easter
week, and on St. John's Eve; the negroes having a grand semi-dramatic
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display in the streets at Christmas time. The more select affairs were got up
by the young whites, and coloured men associating with whites. A party of
thirty or forty of these used to dress themselves in uniform style, and in
very good taste, as cavaliers and dames, each disguised with a peculiar kind
of light gauze mask. The troop, with a party of musicians, went the round
of their friends' houses in the evening, and treated the large and
gaily-dressed companies which were there assembled to a variety of
dances. The principal citizens, in the large rooms of whose houses these
entertainments were given, seemed quite to enjoy them; great preparations
were made at each place; and, after the dance, guests and masqueraders
were regaled with pale ale and sweetmeats. Once a year the Indians, with
whom masked dances and acting are indigenous, had their turn, and on one
occasion they gave us a great treat. They assembled from different parts of
the neighbourhood at night, on the outskirts of the town, and then marched
through the streets by torchlight towards the quarter inhabited by the
whites, to perform their hunting and devil dances before the doors of the
principal inhabitants. There were about a hundred men, women, and
children in the procession. Many of the men were dressed in the
magnificent feather crowns, tunics, and belts, manufactured by the
Mundurucus, and worn by them on festive occasions, but the women were
naked to the waist, and the children quite naked, and all were painted and
smeared red with anatto. The ringleader enacted the part of the Tushaua, or
chief, and carried a sceptre, richly decorated with the orange, red, and green
feathers of toucans and parrots. The paje or medicine-man came along,
puffing at a long tauari cigar, the instrument by which he professes to make
his wonderful cures. Others blew harsh, jarring blasts with the ture, a horn
made of long and thick bamboo, with a split reed in the mouthpiece. This is
the war trumpet of many tribes of Indians, with which the sentinels of
predatory hordes, mounted on a lofty tree, gave the signal for attack to their
comrades. Those Brazilians who are old enough to remember the times of
warfare between Indians and settlers, retain a great horror of the ture, its
loud, harsh note heard in the dead of the night having been often the
prelude to an onslaught of bloodthirsty Muras on the outlying settlements.
The rest of the men in the procession carried bows and arrows, bunches of
javelins, clubs, and paddles. The older children brought with them the
household pets; some had monkeys or coatis on their shoulders, and others
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bore tortoises on their heads. The squaws carried their babies in aturas, or
large baskets, slung on their backs, and secured with a broad belt of bast
over their foreheads. The whole thing was accurate in its representation of
Indian life, and showed more ingenuity than some people give the Brazilian
red man credit for. It was got up spontaneously by the Indians, and simply
to amuse the people of the place.
The people seem to be thoroughly alive to the advantages of education for

their children. Besides the usual primary schools, one for girls, and another
for boys, there is a third of a higher class, where Latin and French, amongst
other accomplishments, are taught by professors, who, like the common
schoolmasters, are paid by the provincial government. This is used as a
preparatory school to the Lyceum and Bishop's seminary, well-endowed
institutions at Para, whither it is the ambition of traders and planters to send
their sons to finish their studies. The rudiments of education only are taught
in the primary schools, and it is surprising how quickly and well the little
lads, both coloured and white, learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. But
the simplicity of the Portuguese language, which is written as it is
pronounced, or according to unvarying rules, and the use of the decimal
system of accounts, make these acquirements much easier than they are
with us. Students in the superior school have to pass an examination before
they can be admitted at the colleges in Para, and the managers once did me
the honour to make me one of the examiners for the year. The performances
of the youths, most of whom were under fourteen years of age, were very
creditable, especially in grammar; there was a quickness of apprehension
displayed which would have gladdened the heart of a northern
schoolmaster. The course of study followed at the colleges of Para must be
very deficient; for it is rare to meet with an educated Paraense who has the
slightest knowledge of the physical sciences, or even of geography, if he
has not travelled out of the province. The young men all become smart
rhetoricians and lawyers; any of them is ready to plead in a law case at an
hour's notice; they are also great at statistics, for the gratification of which
taste there is ample field in Brazil, where every public officer has to furnish
volumes of dry reports annually to the government; but they are woefully
ignorant on most other subjects.
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I do not recollect seeing a map of any kind at Santarem. The quick-witted

people have a suspicion of their deficiencies in this respect, and it is
difficult to draw them out on geography; but one day a man holding an
important office betrayed himself by asking me, "On what side of the river
was Paris situated? " This question did not arise, as might be supposed,
from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from
the idea, that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he
had heard of must lie on one shore or the other. The fact of the Amazons
being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning
and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have
passed their whole lives on its banks.
Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are
no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is
glorious; during six months of the year, from August to February, very little
rain falls, and the sky is cloudless for weeks together, the fresh breezes
from the sea, nearly 400 miles distant, moderating the great heat of the sun.
The wind is sometimes so strong for days together, that it is difficult to
make way against it in walking along the streets, and it enters the open
windows and doors of houses, scattering loose clothing and papers in all
directions. The place is considered healthy; but at the changes of season,
severe colds and ophthalmia are prevalent. I found three Englishmen living
here, who had resided many years in the town or its neighbourhood, and
who still retained their florid complexions; the plump and fresh appearance
of many of the middle-aged Santarem ladies also bore testimony to the
healthfulness of the climate. The streets are always clean and dry, even in
the height of the wet season; good order is always kept, and the place pretty
well supplied with provisions. None but those who have suffered from the
difficulty of obtaining the necessities of life at any price in most of the
interior settlements of South America, can appreciate the advantages of
Santarem in this respect.
Everything, however, except meat, was dear, and becoming every year
more so. Sugar, coffee, and rice, which ought to be produced in surplus in
the neighbourhood, are imported from other provinces, and are high in
price; sugar, indeed, is a little dearer here than in England. There were two
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or three butchers' shops, where excellent beef could be had daily at

twopence or twopence-halfpenny per pound. The cattle have not to be
brought from a long distance as at Para, being bred on the campos, which
border the Lago Grande, only one or two days' journey from the town.
Fresh fish could be bought in the port on most evenings, but as the supply
did not equal the demand, there was always a race amongst purchasers to
the waterside when the canoe of a fisherman hove in sight. Very good bread
was hawked round the town every morning, with milk, and a great variety
of fruits and vegetables. Amongst the fruits, there was a kind called atta,
which I did not see in any other part of the country. It belongs to the
Anonaceous order, and the tree which produces it grows apparently wild in
the neighbourhood of Santarem. It is a little larger than a good-sized
orange, and the rind, which encloses a mass of rich custardy pulp, is scaled
like the pineapple, but green when ripe, and encrusted on the inside with
sugar. To finish this account of the advantages of Santarem, the delicious
bathing in the clear waters of the Tapajos may be mentioned. There is here
no fear of alligators; when the cast wind blows, a long swell rolls in on the
clean sandy beach, and the bath is most exhilarating.
The country around Santarem is not clothed with dense and lofty forest like
the rest of the great humid river plain of the Amazons. It is a campo region;
a slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, wooded only in patches, or
with single scattered trees. A good deal of the country on the borders of the
Tapajos, which flows from the great campo area of interior Brazil, is of this
description. It is on this account that I consider the eastern side of the river,
towards its mouth,, to be a northern prolongation of the continental land,
and not a portion of the alluvial flats of the Amazons. The soil is a coarse
gritty sand; the substratum, which is visible in some places, consisting of
sandstone conglomerate probably of the same formation as that which
underlies the Tabatinga clay in other parts of the river valley. The surface is
carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit for pasture, growing to a uniform
height of about a foot. The patches of wood look like copses in the middle
of green meadows; they are called by the natives "ilhas de mato," or islands
of jungle; the name being, no doubt, suggested by their compactness of
outline, neatly demarcated in insular form from the smooth carpet of grass,
around them. They are composed of a great variety of trees loaded with
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succulent parasites, and lashed together by woody climbers like the forest
in other parts. A narrow belt of dense wood, similar in character to these
ilhas, and like them sharply limited along its borders, runs everywhere
parallel and close to the river. In crossing the campo, the path from the
town ascends a little for a mile or two, passing through this marginal strip
of wood; the grassy land then slopes gradually to a broad valley, watered
by rivulets, whose banks are clothed with lofty and luxuriant forest. Beyond
this, a range of hills extends as far as the eye can reach towards the yet
untrodden interior. Some of these hills are long ridges, wooded or bare;
others are isolated conical peaks, rising abruptly from the valley. The
highest are probably not more than a thousand feet above the level of the
river. One remarkable hill, the Serra de Muruaru, about fifteen miles from
Santarem, which terminates the prospect to the south, is of the same
truncated pyramidal form as the range of hills near Almeyrim. Complete
solitude reigns over the whole of this stretch of beautiful country. The
inhabitants of Santarem know nothing of the interior, and seem to feel little
curiosity concerning it. A few tracks from the town across the campo lead
to some small clearings four or five miles off, belonging to the poorer
inhabitants of the place; but, excepting these, there are no roads, or signs of
the proximity of a civilised settlement.
The appearance of the campos changes very much according to the season.
There is not that grand uniformity of aspect throughout the year which is
observed in the virgin forest, and which makes a deeper impression on the
naturalist the longer he remains in this country. The seasons in this part of
the Amazons region are sharply contrasted, but the difference is not so
great as in some tropical countries, where, during the dry monsoon, insects
and reptiles go into a summer sleep, and the trees simultaneously shed their
leaves. As the dry season advances (August, September), the grass on the
campos withers, and the shrubby vegetation near the town becomes a mass
of parched yellow stubble. The period, however, is not one of general
torpidity or repose for animal or vegetable life. Birds certainly are not so
numerous as in the wet season, but some kinds remain and lay their eggs at
this time--for instance, the ground doves (Chamaepelia). The trees retain
their verdure throughout, and many of them flower in the dry months.
Lizards do not become torpid, and insects are seen both in the larva and the
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perfect states, showing that the aridity of the climate has not a general
influence on the development of the species. Some kinds of butterflies,
especially the little hairstreaks (Theclae), whose caterpillars feed on the
trees, make their appearance only when the dry season is at its height. The
land molluscs of the district are the only animals which aestivate; they are
found in clusters, Bulimi and Helices, concealed in hollow trees, the
mouths of their shells closed by a film of mucus. The fine weather breaks
up often with great suddenness about the beginning of February. Violent
squalls from the west or the opposite direction to the trade-wind then occur.
They give very little warning, and the first generally catches the people
unprepared. They fall in the night, and blowing directly into the harbour,
with the first gust sweep all vessels from their anchorage; in a few minutes
a mass of canoes, large and small, including schooners of fifty tons burthen,
are clashing together, pell- mell, on the beach. I have reason to remember
these storms, for I was once caught in onemyself, while crossing the river
in an undecked boat about a day's journey from Santarem. They are
accompanied with terrific electric explosions, the sharp claps of thunder
falling almost simultaneously with the blinding flashes of lightning.
Torrents of rain follow the first outbreak; the wind then gradually abates,
and the rain subsides into a steady drizzle, which continues often for the
greater part of the succeeding day.
After a week or two of showery weather, the aspect of the country is

completely changed. The parched ground in the neighbourhood of
Santarem breaks out, so to speak, in a rash of greenery; the dusty,
languishing trees gain, without having shed their old leaves, a new clothing
of tender green foliage; a wonderful variety of quick-growing leguminous
plants springs up; and leafy creepers overrun the ground, the bushes, and
the trunks of trees. One is reminded of the sudden advent of spring after a
few warm showers in northern climates; I was the more struck by it as
nothing similar is witnessed in the virgin forests amongst which I had
passed the four years previous to my stay in this part. The grass on the
campos is renewed, and many of the campo trees, especially the myrtles,
which grow abundantly in one portion of the district, begin to flower,
attracting by the fragrance of their blossoms a great number and variety of
insects, more particularly Coleoptera. Many kinds of birds; parrots,
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toucans, and barbets, which live habitually in the forest, then visit the open
places.
A few weeks of comparatively dry weather generally intervene in March,

after a month or two of rain. The heaviest rains fall in April, May, and
June; they come in a succession of showers, with sunny, gleamy weather in
the intervals. June and July are the months when the leafy luxuriance of the
campos, and the activity of life, are at their highest. Most birds have then
completed their moulting, which extends over the period from February to
May. The flowering shrubs are then mostly in bloom, and numberless kinds
of Dipterous and Hymenopterous insects appear simultaneously with the
flowers. This season might be considered the equivalent of summer in
temperate climates, as the bursting forth of the foliage in February
represents the spring; but under the equator there is not that simultaneous
march in the annual life of animals and plants, which we see in high
latitudes; some species, it is true, are dependent upon others in their
periodical acts of life, and go hand-in-hand with them, but they are not all
simultaneously and similarly affected by the physical changes of the
seasons.
I will now give an account of some of my favourite collecting places in the

neighbourhood of Santarem, incorporating with the description a few of the
more interesting observations made on the Natural History of the localities.
To the west of the town there was a pleasant path along the beach to a little
bay, called Mapiri, about five miles within the mouth of the Tapajos. The
road was practicable only in the dry season. The river at Santarem rises on
the average about thirty feet, varying in different years about ten feet, so
that in the four months from April to July, the water comes up to the edge
of the marginal belt of wood already spoken of. This Mapiri excursion was
most pleasant and profitable in the months from January to March, before
the rains became too continuous. The sandy beach beyond the town is very
irregular, in some places forming long spits on which, when the east wind
is blowing, the waves break in a line of foam-- at others, receding to shape
out quiet little bays and pools.
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On the outskirts of the town a few scattered huts of Indians and coloured
people are passed, prettily situated on the margin of the white beach, with a
background of glorious foliage; the cabin of the pureblood Indian being
distinguished from the mud hovels of the free negroes and mulattoes by its
light construction, half of it being an open shed where the dusky tenants are
seen at all hours of the day lounging in their open-meshed grass hammocks.
About two miles on the road we come to a series of shallow pools, called
the Laguinhos, which are connected with the river in the wet season, but
separated from it by a high bank of sand topped with bushes at other times.
There is a break here in the fringe of wood, and a glimpse is obtained of the
grassy campo. When the waters have risen to the level of the pools, this
place is frequented by many kinds of wading birds. Snow-white egrets of
two species stand about the margins of the water, and dusky- striped herons
may be seen half hidden under the shade of the bushes. The pools are
covered with a small kind of waterlily, and surrounded by a dense thicket.
Amongst the birds which inhabit this spot is the rosy-breasted Troupial
(Trupialis Gulanensis), a bird resembling our starling in size and habits, and
not unlike it in colour, with the exception of the rich rosy vest. The water at
this time of the year overflows a large level tract of campo bordering the
pools, and the Troupials come to feed on the larvae of insects which then
abound in the moist soil.
Beyond the Laguinhos there succeeds a tract of level beach covered with
trees which form a beautiful grove. About the month of April, when the
water rises to this level, the trees are covered with blossom, and a
handsome orchid, an Epidendron with large white flowers, which clothes
thickly the trunks, is profusely in bloom. Several kinds of kingfisher resort
to the place. Four species may be seen within a small space-- the largest as
big as a crow, of a mottled-grey hue, and with an enormous beak; the
smallest not larger than a sparrow. The large one makes its nest in clay
cliffs, three or four miles distant from this place. None of the kingfishers
are so brilliant in colour as our English species. The blossoms on the trees
attract two or three species of hummingbirds, the most conspicuous of
which is a large swallow-tailed kind (Eupetomena macroura), with a
brilliant livery of emerald green and steel blue. I noticed that it did not
remain so long poised in the air before the flowers as the other smaller
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species; it perched more frequently, and sometimes darted after small

insects on the wing.
Emerging from the grove there is a long stretch of sandy beach; the land is
high and rocky, and the belt of wood which skirts the river banks is much
broader than it is elsewhere. At length, after rounding a projecting bluff, the
bay at Mapiri is reached. The river view is characteristic of the Tapajos; the
shores are wooded, and on the opposite side is a line of clay cliffs with hills
in the background clothed with a rolling forest. A long spit of sand extends
into mid-river, beyond which is an immense expanse of dark water, the
further shore of the Tapajos being barely visible as a thin grey line of trees
on the horizon. The transparency of air and water in the dry season when
the brisk east wind is blowing, and the sharpness of outline of hills, woods,
and sandy beaches, give a great charm to this spot.
While resting in the shade during the great heat of the early hours of
afternoon, I used to find amusement in watching the proceedings of the
sand wasps. A small pale green kind of Bembex (Bembex ciliata), was
plentiful near the bay of Mapiri. When they are at work, a number of little
jets of sand are seen shooting over the surface of the sloping bank. The
little miners excavate with their forefeet, which are strongly built and
furnished with a fringe of stiff bristles; they work with wonderful rapidity,
and the sand thrown out beneath their bodies issues in continuous streams.
They are solitary wasps, each female working on her own account. After
making a gallery two or three inches in length in a slanting direction from
the surface, the owner backs out and takes a few turns round the orifice
apparently to see whether it is well made, but in reality, I believe, to take
note of the locality, that she may find it again. This done, the busy
workwoman flies away-- but returns, after an absence varying in different
cases from a few minutes to an hour or more, with a fly in her grasp, with
which she re-enters her mine. On again emerging, the entrance is carefully
closed with sand. During this interval she has laid an egg on the body of the
fly which she had previously benumbed with her sting, and which is to
serve as food for the soft, footless grub soon to be hatched from the egg.
From what I could make out, the Bembex makes a fresh excavation for
every egg to be deposited; at least in two or three of the galleries which I
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opened there was only one fly enclosed.
I have said that the Bembex on leaving her mine took note of the locality;
this seemed to be the explanation of the short delay previous to her taking
flight; on rising in the air also the insects generally flew round over the
place before making straight off. Another nearly allied but much larger
species, the Monedula signata, whose habits I observed on the banks of the
Upper Amazons, sometimes excavates its mine solitarily on sand- banks
recently laid bare in the middle of the river, and closes the orifice before
going in search of prey. In these cases the insect has to make a journey of at
least half a mile to procure the kind of fly, the Motuca (Hadrus lepidotus),
with which it provisions its cell. I often noticed it to take a few turns in the
air round the place before starting; on its return it made without hesitation
straight for the closed mouth of the mine. I was convinced that the insects
noted the bearings of their nests and the direction they took in flying from
them. The proceeding in this and similar cases (I have read of something
analogous having been noticed in hive bees) seems to be a mental act of the
same nature as that which takes place in ourselves when recognising a
locality. The senses, however, must be immeasurably more keen and the
mental operation much more certain in them than it is in man, for to my eye
there was absolutely no landmark on the even surface of sand which could
serve as guide, and the borders of the forest were not nearer than half a
mile. The action of the wasp would be said to be instinctive; but it seems
plain that the instinct is no mysterious and unintelligible agent, but a mental
process in each individual, differing from the same in man only by its
unerring certainty. The mind of the insect appears to be so constituted that
the impression of external objects or the want felt, causes it to act with a
precision which seems to us like that of a machine constructed to move in a
certain given way. I have noticed in Indian boys a sense of locality almost
as keen as that possessed by the sand- wasp. An old Portuguese and myself,
accompanied by a young lad about ten years of age, were once lost in the
forest in a most solitary place on the banks of the main river. Our case
seemed hopeless, and it did not for some time occur to us to consult our
little companion, who had been playing with his bow and arrow all the way
while we were hunting, apparently taking no note of the route. When asked,
however, he pointed out, in a moment, the right direction of our canoe. He
CHAPTER VIII 210
could not explain how he knew; I believe he had noted the course we had
taken almost unconsciously; the sense of locality in his case seemed
instinctive.
The Monedula signata is a good friend to travellers in those parts of the

Amazons which are infested by the blood-thirsty Motuca. I first noticed its
habit of preying on this fly one day when we landed to make our fire and
dine on the borders of the forest adjoining a sand-bank. The insect is as
large as a hornet, and has a most waspish appearance. I was rather startled
when one out of the flock which was hovering about us flew straight at my
face-- it had espied a Motuca on my neck and was thus pouncing upon it. It
seizes the fly not with its jaws, but with its fore and middle feet, and carries
it off tightly held to its breast. Wherever the traveller lands on the Upper
Amazons in the neighbourhood of a sand-bank he is sure to be attended by
one or more of these useful vermin-killers.
The bay of Mapiri was the limit of my day excursions by the river-side to
the west of Santarem. A person may travel, however, on foot, as Indians
frequently do, in the dry season for fifty or sixty miles along the broad
clean sandy beaches of the Tapajos. The only obstacles are the rivulets,
most of which are fordable when the waters are low. To the east my
rambles extended to the banks of the Mahica inlet. This enters the Amazons
about three miles below Santarem, where the clear stream of the Tapajos
begins to be discoloured by the turbid waters of the main river. The Mahica
has a broad margin of rich level pasture, limited on each side by the
straight, tall hedge of forest. On the Santarem side it is skirted by high
wooded ridges. A landscape of this description always produced in me an
impression of sadness and loneliness which the luxuriant virgin forests that
closely hedge in most of the by-waters of the Amazons never created. The
pastures are destitute of flowers, and also of animal life, with the exception
of a few small plain-coloured birds and solitary Caracara eagles whining
from the topmost branches of dead trees on the forest borders. A few
settlers have built their palm- thatched and mud-walled huts on the banks of
the Mahica, and occupy themselves chiefly in tending small herds of cattle.
They seemed to be all wretchedly poor. The oxen however, though small,
were sleek and fat, and the district most promising for agricultural and
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pastoral employments. In the wet season the waters gradually rise and
cover the meadows, but there is plenty of room for the removal of the cattle
to higher ground. The lazy and ignorant people seem totally unable to profit
by these advantages. The houses have no gardens or plantations near them.
I was told it was useless to plant anything, because the cattle devoured the
young shoots. In this country, grazing and planting are very rarely carried
on together, for the people seem to have no notion of enclosing patches of
ground for cultivation. They say it is too much trouble to make enclosures.
The construction of a durable fence is certainly a difficult matter, for it is
only two or three kinds of tree which will serve the purpose in being free
from the attacks of insects, and these are scattered far and wide through the
woods.
Although the meadows were unproductive ground to a naturalist, the woods

on their borders teemed with life; the number and variety of curious insects
of all orders which occurred here was quite wonderful. The belt of forest
was intersected by numerous pathways leading from one settler's house to
another. The ground was moist, but the trees were not so lofty or their
crowns so densely packed together as in other parts; the sun's light and
heat, therefore, had freer access to the soil, and the underwood was much
more diversified than in the virgin forest. I never saw so many kinds of
dwarf palms together as here; pretty miniature species; some not more than
five feet high, and bearing little clusters of round fruit not larger than a
good bunch of currants. A few of the forest trees had the size and
strongly-branched figures of our oaks, and a similar bark. One noble palm
grew here in great abundance, and gave a distinctive character to the
district. This was the Oenocarpus distichus, one of the kinds called Bacaba
by the natives. It grows to a height of forty to fifty feet. The crown is of a
lustrous dark-green colour, and of a singularly flattened or compressed
shape, the leaves being arranged on each side in nearly the same plane.
When I first saw this tree on the campos, where the east wind blows with
great force night and day for several months, I thought the shape of the
crown was due to the leaves being prevented from radiating equally by the
constant action of the breezes. But the plane of growth is not always in the
direction of the wind, and the crown has the same shape when the tree
grows in the sheltered woods. The fruit of this fine palm ripens towards the
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end of the year, and is much esteemed by the natives, who manufacture a
pleasant drink from it similar to the assai described in a former chapter, by
rubbing off the coat of pulp from the nuts, and mixing it with water. A
bunch of fruit weighs thirty or forty pounds. The beverage has a milky
appearance, and an agreeable nutty flavour. The tree is very difficult to
climb, on account of the smoothness of its stein; consequently the natives,
whenever they want a bunch of fruit for a bowl of Bacaba, cut down and
thus destroy a tree which has taken a score or two of years to grow, in order
to get at it.
In the lower part of the Mahica woods, towards the river, there is a bed of
stiff white clay, which supplies the people of Santarem with material for the
manufacture of coarse pottery and cooking utensils: all the kettles,
saucepans, mandioca ovens, coffee-pots, washing-vessels, and so forth, of
the poorer classes, throughout the country, are made of this same plastic
clay, which occurs at short intervals over the whole surface of the,
Amazons valley, from the neighbourhood of Para to within the Peruvian
borders, and forms part of the great Tabatinga marl deposit. To enable the
vessels to stand the fire, the bark of a certain tree, called Caraipe, is burned
and mixed with the clay, which gives tenacity to the ware. Caraipe is an
article of commerce-- being sold and packed in baskets at the shops in most
of the towns. The shallow pits, excavated in the marly soil at Mahica, were
very attractive to many kinds of mason bees and wasps, who made use of
the clay to build their nests with--so we have here another example of the
curious analogy that exists between the arts of insects and those of man. I
spent many an hour watching their proceedings; a short account of the
habits of some of these busy creatures may be interesting.
The most conspicuous was a large yellow and black wasp, with a
remarkably long and narrow waist, the Pelopaeus fistularis. This species
collected the clay in little round pellets, which it carried off, after rolling
them into a convenient shape, in its mouth. It came straight to the pit with a
loud hum, and, on alighting, lost not a moment in beginning to work--
finishing the kneading of its little load in two or three minutes. The nest of
this wasp is shaped like a pouch, two inches in length, and is attached to a
branch or other projecting object. One of these restless artificers once began
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to build on the handle of a chest in the cabin of my canoe, when we were

stationary at a place for several days. It was so intent on its work that it
allowed me to inspect the movements of its mouth with a lens while it was
laying on the mortar. Every fresh pellet was brought in with a triumphant
song, which changed to a cheerful busy hum when it alighted and began to
work. The little ball of moist clay was laid on the edge of the cell, and then
spread out around the circular rim by means of the lower lip guided by the
mandibles. The insect placed itself astride over the rim to work, and, on
finishing each addition to the structure, took a turn round, patting the sides
with its feet inside and out before flying off to gather a fresh pellet. It
worked only in sunny weather, and the previous layer was sometimes not
quite dry when the new coating was added. The whole structure takes about
a week to complete. I left the place before the gay little builder had quite
finished her task; she did not accompany the canoe, although we moved
along the bank of the river very slowly. On opening closed nests of this
species, which are common in the neighbourhood of Mahica, I always
found them to be stocked with small spiders of the genus Gastracantha, in
the usual half-dead state to which the mother wasps reduce the insects
which are to serve as food for their progeny.
Besides the Pelopaeus, there were three or four kinds of Trypoxylon, a

genus also found in Europe, and which some naturalists have supposed to
be parasitic, because the legs are not furnished with the usual row of strong
bristles for digging, characteristic of the family to which it belongs. The
species of Trypoxylon, however, are all building wasps; two of them which
I observed (T. albitarse and an undescribed species) provision their nests
with spiders, a third (T. aurifrons) with small caterpillars. Their habits are
similar to those of the Pelopaeus- - namely, they carry off the clay in their
mandibles, and have a different song when they hasten away with the
burden to that which they sing whilst at work. Trypoxylon albitarse, which
is a large black kind, three-quarters of an inch in length, makes a
tremendous fuss while building its cell. It often chooses the walls or doors
of chambers for this purpose, and when two or three are at work in the same
place, their loud humming keeps the house in an uproar. The cell is a
tubular structure about three inches in length. T. aurifrons, a much smaller
species, makes a neat little nest shaped like a carafe, building rows of them
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together in the corners of verandahs.
But the most numerous and interesting of the clay artificers are the workers
of a species of social bee, the Melipona fasciculata. The Meliponae in
tropical America take the place of the true Apides, to which the European
hive-bee belongs, and which are here unknown; they are generally much
smaller insects than the hive-bees and have no sting. The M. fasciculata is
about a third shorter than the Apis mellifica: its colonies are composed of
an immense number of individuals; the workers are generally seen
collecting pollen in the same way as other bees, but great numbers are
employed gathering clay. The rapidity and precision of their movements
while thus engaged are wonderful. They first scrape the clay with their
jaws; the small portions gathered are then cleared by the anterior paws and
passed to the second pair of feet, which, in their turn, convey them to the
large foliated expansions of the hind shanks which are adapted normally in
bees, as every one knows, for the collection of pollen. The middle feet pat
the growing pellets of mortar on the hind legs to keep them in a compact
shape as the particles are successively added. The little hodsmen soon have
as much as they can carry, and they then fly off. I was for some time
puzzled to know what the bees did with the clay; but I had afterwards
plenty of opportunity for ascertaining. They construct their combs in any
suitable crevice in trunks of trees or perpendicular banks, and the clay is
required to build up a wall so as to close the gap, with the exception of a
small orifice for their own entrance and exit. Most kinds of Meliponae are
in this way masons as well as workers in wax, and pollen-gatherers. One
little species (undescribed) not more than two lines long, builds a neat
tubular gallery of clay, kneaded with some viscid substance, outside the
entrance to its hive, besides blocking up the crevice in the tree within which
it is situated. The mouth of the tube is trumpet-shaped, and at the entrance a
number of pigmy bees are always stationed, apparently acting as the
sentinels.
A hive of the Melipona fasciculata, which I saw opened, contained about

two quarts of pleasant-tasting liquid honey. The bees, as already remarked,
have no sting, but they bite furiously when their colonies are disturbed. The
Indian who plundered the hive was completely covered by them; they took
CHAPTER VIII 215
a particular fancy to the hair of his head, and fastened on it by hundreds. I

found forty-five species of these bees in different parts of the country; the
largest was half an inch in length; the smallest were extremely minute,
some kinds being not more than one-twelfth of an inch in size. These tiny
fellows are often very troublesome in the woods, on account of their
familiarity, for they settle on one's face and hands, and, in crawling about,
get into the eyes and mouth, or up the nostrils.
The broad expansion of the hind shanks of bees is applied in some species
to other uses besides the conveyance of clay and pollen. The female of the
handsome golden and black Euglossa Surinamensis has this palette of very
large size. This species builds its solitary nest also in crevices of walls or
trees-- but it closes up the chink with fragments of dried leaves and sticks
cemented together, instead of clay. It visits the caju trees, and gathers with
its hind legs a small quantity of the gum which exudes from their trunks. To
this it adds the other materials required from the neighbouring bushes, and
when laden flies off to its nest.
To the south my rambles never extended further than the banks of the Irura,
a stream which rises amongst the hills already spoken of, and running
through a broad valley, wooded along the margins of the watercourses, falls
into the Tapajos, at the head of the bay of Mapiri. All beyond, as before
remarked, is terra incognita to the inhabitants of Santarem. The Brazilian
settlers on the banks of the Amazons seem to have no taste for explorations
by land, and I could find no person willing to accompany me on an
excursion further towards the interior. Such a journey would be
exceedingly difficult in this country, even if men could be obtained willing
to undertake it. Besides, there were reports of a settlement of fierce
runaway negroes on the Serra de Mururaru, and it was considered unsafe to
go far in that direction, except with a large armed party.
I visited the banks of the Irura and the rich woods accompanying it, and
two other streams in the same neighbourhood, one called the Panema, and
the other the Urumari, once or twice a week during the whole time of my
residence in Santarem, and made large collections of their natural
productions. These forest brooks, with their clear, cold waters brawling
CHAPTER VIII 216
over their sandy or pebbly beds through wild tropical glens, always had a
great charm for me. The beauty of the moist, cool, and luxuriant glades was
heightened by the contrast they afforded to the sterile country around them.
The bare or scantily wooded hills which surround the valley are parched by
the rays of the vertical sun. One of them, the Pico do Irura, forms a nearly
perfect cone, rising from a small grassy plain to a height of 500 or 600 feet,
and its ascent is excessively fatiguing after the long walk from Santarem
over the campos. I tried it one day, but did not reach the summit. A dense
growth of coarse grasses clothed the steep sides of the hill, with here and
there a stunted tree of kinds found in the plain beneath. In bared places, a
red crumbly soil is exposed; and in one part a mass of rock, which appeared
to me, from its compact texture and the absence of stratification, to be
porphyritic; but I am not geologically sufficient to pronounce on such
questions. Mr. Wallace states that he found fragments of scoriae, and
believes the hill to be a volcanic cone. To the south and east of this isolated
peak, the elongated ridges or table-topped hills attain a somewhat greater
elevation.
The forest in the valley is limited to a tract a few hundred yards in width on
each side the different streams; in places where these run along the bases of
the hills, the hillsides facing the water are also richly wooded, although
their opposite declivities are bare or nearly so. The trees are lofty and of
great variety; amongst them are colossal examples of the Brazil nut tree
(Bertholletia excelsa), and the Pikia. This latter bears a large eatable fruit,
curious in having a hollow chamber between the pulp and the kernel, beset
with hard spines which produce serious wounds if they enter the skin. The
eatable part appeared to me not much more palatable than a raw potato; but
the inhabitants of Santarem are very fond of it, and undertake the most
toilsome journeys on foot to gather a basketful. The tree which yields the
tonka bean (Dipteryx odorata), used in Europe for scenting snuff, is also of
frequent occurrence here. It grows to an immense height, and the fruit,
which, although a legume, is of a rounded shape, and has but one seed, can
be gathered only when it falls to the ground. A considerable quantity (from
1000 to 3000 pounds) is exported annually from Santarem, the produce of
the whole region of the Tapajos. An endless diversity of trees and shrubs,
some beautiful in flower and foliage, others bearing curious fruits, grow in
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this matted wilderness. It would be tedious to enumerate many of them. I

was much struck with the variety of trees with large and diversely-shaped
fruits growing out of the trunk and branches, some within a few inches of
the ground, like the cacao. Most of them are called by the natives Cupu,
and the trees are of inconsiderable height. One of them called Cupu-ai bears
a fruit of elliptical shape and of a dingy earthen colour six or seven inches
long, the shell of which is woody and thin, and contains a small number of
seeds loosely enveloped in a juicy pulp of very pleasant flavour. The fruits
hang like clayey ants'-nests from the branches. Another kind more nearly
resembles the cacao; this is shaped something like the cucumber, and has a
green ribbed husk. It bears the name of Cacao de macaco, or monkey's
chocolate, but the seeds are smaller than those of the common cacao. I tried
once or twice to make chocolate from them. They contain plenty of oil of
similar fragrance to that of the ordinary cacao-nut, and make up very well
into paste; but the beverage has a repulsive clayey colour and an inferior
flavour.
My excursions to the Irura had always a picnic character. A few rude huts
are scattered through the valley, but they are tenanted only for a few days in
the year, when their owners come to gather and roast the mandioca of their
small clearings. We used generally to take with us two boys--one negro, the
other Indian-- to carry our provisions for the day; a few pounds of beef or
dried fish, farinha and bananas, with plates, and a kettle for cooking. Jose
carried the guns, ammunition and game-bags, and I the apparatus for
entomologising--the insect net, a large leathern bag with compartments for
corked boxes, phials, glass tubes, and so forth. It was our custom to start
soon after sunrise, when the walk over the campos was cool and pleasant,
the sky without a cloud, and the grass wet with dew. The paths are mere
faint tracks; in our early excursions it was difficult to avoid missing our
way. We were once completely lost, and wandered about for several hours
over the scorching soil without recovering the road. A fine view is obtained
of the country from the rising ground about half way across the waste.
Thence to the bottom of the valley is a long, gentle, grassy slope, bare of
trees. The strangely-shaped hills; the forest at their feet, richly varied with
palms; the bay of Mapiri on the right, with the dark waters of the Tapajos
and its white glistening shores, are all spread out before one, as if depicted
CHAPTER VIII 218
on canvas. The extreme transparency of the atmosphere gives to all parts of

the landscape such clearness of outline that the idea of distance is
destroyed, and one fancies the whole to be almost within reach of the hand.
Descending into the valley, a small brook has to be crossed, and then half a
mile of sandy plain, whose vegetation wears a peculiar aspect, owing to the
predominance of a stemless palm, the Curua (Attalea spectabilis), whose
large, beautifully pinnated, rigid leaves rise directly from the soil. The fruit
of this species is similar to the coconut, containing milk in the interior of
the kernel, but it is much inferior to it in size. Here, and indeed all along the
road, we saw, on most days in the wet season, tracks of the jaguar. We
never, however, met with the animal, although we sometimes heard his
loud "hough" in the night while lying in our hammocks at home, in
Santarem, and knew he must he lurking somewhere near us.
My best hunting ground was a part of the valley sheltered on one side by a
steep hill whose declivity, like the swampy valley beneath, was clothed
with magnificent forest. We used to make our halt in a small cleared place,
tolerably free from ants and close to the water. Here we assembled after our
toilsome morning's hunt in different directions through the woods, took our
well-earned meal on the ground--two broad leaves of the wild banana
serving us for a tablecloth--and rested for a couple of hours during the great
heat of the afternoon. The diversity of animal productions was as wonderful
as that of the vegetable forms in this rich locality. It was pleasant to lie
down during the hottest part of the day, when my people lay asleep, and
watch the movements of animals. Sometimes a troop of Anus
(Crotophaga), a glossy black- plumaged bird, which lives in small societies
in grassy places, would come in from the campos, one by one, calling to
each other as they moved from tree to tree. Or a Toucan (Rhamphastos
ariel) silently hopped or ran along and up the branches, peeping into chinks
and crevices. Notes of solitary birds resounded from a distance through the
wilderness. Occasionally a sulky Trogon would be seen, with its brilliant
green back and rose-coloured breast, perched for an hour without moving
on a low branch. A number of large, fat lizards two feet long, of a kind
called by the natives Jacuaru (Teius teguexim) were always observed in the
still hours of midday scampering with great clatter over the dead leaves,
apparently in chase of each other. The fat of this bulky lizard is much
CHAPTER VIII 219
prized by the natives, who apply it as a poultice to draw palm spines or

even grains of shot from the flesh. Other lizards of repulsive aspect, about
three feet in length when full grown, splashed about and swam in the water,
sometimes emerging to crawl into hollow trees on the banks of the stream,
where I once found a female and a nest of eggs. The lazy flapping flight of
large blue and black morpho butterflies high in the air, the hum of insects,
and many inanimate sounds, contributed their share to the total impression
this strange solitude produced. Heavy fruits from the crowns of trees which
were mingled together at a giddy height overhead, fell now and then with a
startling "plop" into the water. The breeze, not felt below, stirred in the
topmost branches, setting the twisted and looped sipos in motion, which
creaked and groaned in a great variety of notes. To these noises were added
the monotonous ripple of the brook, which had its little cascade at every
score or two yards of its course.
We frequently fell in with an old Indian woman, named Cecilia, who had a
small clearing in the woods. She had the reputation of being a witch
(feiticeira), and I found, on talking with her, that she prided herself on her
knowledge of the black art. Her slightly curled hair showed that she was
not a pureblood Indian-- I was told her father was a dark mulatto. She was
always very civil to our party, showing us the best paths, explaining the
virtues and uses of different plants, and so forth. I was much amused at the
accounts she gave of the place. Her solitary life and the gloom of the woods
seemed to have filled her with superstitious fancies. She said gold was
contained in the bed of the brook, and that the murmur of the water over the
little cascades was the voice of the "water-mother" revealing the hidden
treasure. A narrow pass between two hillsides was the portao or gate, and
all within, along the wooded banks of the stream, was enchanted ground.
The hill underneath which we were encamped was the enchanter's abode,
and she gravely told us she often had long conversations with him. These
myths were of her own invention, and in the same way an endless number
of other similar ones have originated in the childish imaginations of the
poor Indian and half-breed inhabitants of different parts of the country. It is
to be remarked, however, that the Indian men all become sceptics after a
little intercourse with the whites. The witchcraft of poor Cecilia was of a
very weak quality. It consisted of throwing pinches of powdered bark of a
CHAPTER VIII 220
certain tree, and other substances, into the fire while muttering a spell--a
prayer repeated backwards--and adding the name of the person on whom
she wished the incantation to operate. Some of the feiticeiras, however,
play more dangerous tricks than this harmless mummery. They are
acquainted with many poisonous plants, and although they seldom have the
courage to administer a fatal dose, sometimes contrive to convey to their
victim sufficient to cause serious illness. The motive by which they are
actuated is usually jealousy of other women in love matters. While I resided
in Santarem, a case of what was called witchcraft was tried by the
sub-delegado, in which a highly respectable white lady was the
complainant. It appeared that some feiticeira had sprinkled a quantity of the
acrid juice of a large arum on her linen as it was hanging out to dry, and it
was thought this had caused a serious eruption under which the lady
suffered.
I seldom met with any of the larger animals in these excursions. We never
saw a mammal of any kind on the campos; but tracks of three species were
seen occasionally besides those of the jaguar; these belonged to a small
tiger cat, a deer, and an opossum, all of which animals must have been very
rare, and probably nocturnal in their habits, with the exception of the deer. I
saw in the woods, on one occasion, a small flock of monkeys, and once had
an opportunity of watching the movements of a sloth. The latter was of the
kind called by Cuvier Bradypus tridactylus, which is clothed with shaggy
grey hair. The natives call it, in the Tupi language, Al ybyrete (in
Portuguese, Preguica da terra firme), or sloth of the mainland, to
distinguish it from the Bradypus infuscatus, which has a long, black and
tawny stripe between the shoulders, and is called Al Ygapo (Preguica das
vargens), or sloth of the flooded lands. Some travellers in South America
have described the sloth as very nimble in its native woods, and have
disputed the justness of the name which has been bestowed upon it. The
inhabitants of the Amazons region, however, both Indians and descendants
of the Portuguese, hold to the common opinion, and consider the sloth as
the type of laziness. It is very common for one native to call another, in
reproaching him for idleness, "bicho do Embauba" (beast of the Cecropia
tree); the leaves of the Cecropia being the food of the sloth. It is a strange
sight to watch the uncouth creature, fit production of these silent shades,
CHAPTER VIII 221
lazily moving from branch to branch. Every movement betrays, not

indolence exactly, but extreme caution. He never looses his hold from one
branch without first securing himself to the next, and when he does not
immediately find a bough to grasp with the rigid hooks into which his paws
are so curiously transformed, he raises his body, supported on his hind legs,
and claws around in search of a fresh foothold. After watching the animal
for about half an hour I gave him a charge of shot. He fell with a terrific
crash, but caught a bough, in his descent, with his powerful claws, and
remained suspended. Our Indian lad tried to climb the tree, but was driven
back by swarms of stinging ants; the poor little fellow slid down in a sad
predicament, and plunged into the brook to free himself. Two days
afterwards I found the body of the sloth on the ground, the animal having
dropped on the relaxation of the muscles a few hours after death. In one of
our voyages, Mr. Wallace and I saw a sloth (B. infuscatus) swimming
across a river, at a place where it was probably 300 yards broad. I believe it
is not generally known that this animal takes to the water. Our men caught
the beast, cooked, and ate him.
In returning from these trips we were sometimes benighted on the campos.

We did not care for this on moonlit nights, when there was no danger of
losing the path. The great heat felt in the middle hours of the day is much
mitigated by four o'clock in the afternoon; a few birds then make their
appearance; small flocks of ground doves run about the stony hillocks
parrots pass over and sometimes settle in the ilhas; pretty little finches of
several species, especially one kind, streaked with olive-brown and yellow,
and somewhat resembling our yellowhammer, but I believe not belonging
to the same genus, hop about the grass, enlivening the place with a few
musical notes. The Carashue (Mimus) also then resumes its mellow,
blackbird-like song; and two or three species of hummingbird, none of
which, however, are peculiar to the district, flit about from tree to tree. On
the other hand, the little blue and yellow-striped lizards, which abound
amongst the herbage during the scorching heats of midday, retreat towards
this hour to their hiding-places, together with the day-flying insects and the
numerous campo butterflies. Some of these latter resemble greatly our
English species found in heathy places, namely, a fritillary, Argynnis
(Euptoieta) Hegesia, and two smaller kinds, which are deceptively like the
CHAPTER IX 222
little Nemeobius Lucina. After sunset, the air becomes delightfully cool and
fragrant with the aroma of fruits and flowers. The nocturnal animals then
come forth. A monstrous hairy spider, five inches in expanse, of a brown
colour with yellowish lines along its stout legs--which is very common
here, inhabiting broad tubular galleries smoothly lined with silken
web--may be then caught on the watch at the mouth of its burrow. It is only
seen at night, and I think does not wander far from its den; the gallery is
about two inches in diameter and runs in a slanting direction, about two feet
from the surface of the soil.
As soon as it is night, swarms of goatsuckers suddenly make their

appearance, wheeling about in a noiseless, ghostly manner, in chase of
night-flying insects. They sometimes descend and settle on a low branch, or
even on the pathway close to where one is walking, and then squatting
down on their heels, are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding soil.
One kind has a long forked tail. In the daytime they are concealed in the
wooded ilhas, where I very often saw them crouched and sleeping on the
ground in the dense shade. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the
bare ground. Their breeding time is in the rainy season, and fresh eggs are
found from December to June. Later in the evening, the singular notes of
the goatsuckers are heard, one species crying Quao, Quao, another
Chuck-cococao; and these are repeated at intervals far into the night in the
most monotonous manner. A great number of toads are seen on the bare
sandy pathways soon after sunset. One of them was quite a colossus, about
seven inches in length and three in height. This big fellow would never
move out of the way until we were close to him. If we jerked him out of the
path with a stick, he would slowly recover himself, and then turn round to
have a good impudent stare. I have counted as many as thirty of these
monsters within a distance of half a mile.
CHAPTER IX
VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS

CHAPTER IX 223
Preparations for Voyage-First Day's Sail--Loss of Boat--Altar de

Chao--Modes of Obtaining Fish--Difficulties with Crew--Arrival at
Aveyros--Excursions in the Neighbourhood--White Cebus, and Habits and
Dispositions of Cebi Monkeys--Tame Parrot--Missionary
Settlement--Entering the River Cupari--Adventure with Anaconda--
Smoke-dried Monkey--Boa-constrictor--Village of Mundurucu Indians, and
Incursion of a Wild Tribe--Falls of the Cupari-- Hyacinthine
Macaw--Re-emerge into the broad Tapajos--Descent of River to Santarem
June, 1852--I will now proceed to relate the incidents of my principal

excursion up the Tapajos, which I began to prepare for, after residing about
six months at Santarem.
I was obliged, this time, to travel in a vessel of my own; partly because

trading canoes large enough to accommodate a Naturalist very seldom pass
between Santarem and the thinly-peopled settlements on the river, and
partly because I wished to explore districts at my ease, far out of the
ordinary track of traders. I soon found a suitable canoe; a two-masted
cuberta, of about six tons' burthen, strongly built of Itauba or stonewood, a
timber of which all the best vessels in the Amazons country are
constructed, and said to be more durable than teak. This I hired of a
merchant at the cheap rate of 500 reis, or about one shilling and twopence
per day. I fitted up the cabin, which, as usual in canoes of this class, was a
square structure with its floor above the waterline, as my sleeping and
working apartment. My chests, filled with store-boxes and trays for
specimens, were arranged on each side, and above them were shelves and
pegs to hold my little stock of useful books, guns, and game bags, boards
and materials for skinning and preserving animals, botanical press and
papers, drying cages for insects. and birds and so forth. A rush mat was
spread on the floor, and my rolled-up hammock, to be used only when
sleeping ashore, served for a pillow. The arched covering over the hold in
the fore part of the vessel contained, besides a sleeping place for the crew,
my heavy chests, stock of salt provisions and groceries, and an assortment
of goods wherewith to pay my way amongst the half-civilised or savage
inhabitants of the interior. The goods consisted of cashaca, powder and
shot, a few pieces of coarse, checked cotton cloth and prints, fish-hooks,
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axes, large knives, harpoons, arrowheads, looking-glasses, beads, and other

small wares. Jose and myself were busy for many days arranging these
matters. We had to salt the meat and grind a supply of coffee ourselves.
Cooking utensils, crockery, water-jars, a set of useful carpenter's tools, and
many other things had to be provided. We put all the groceries and other
perishable articles in tin canisters and boxes, having found that this was the
only way of preserving them from dampness and insects in this climate.
When all was done, our canoe looked like a little floating workshop.
I could get little information about the river, except vague accounts of the
difficulty of the navigation, and the famito or hunger which reigned on its
banks. As I have before mentioned, it is about 1000 miles in length, and
flows from south to north; in magnitude it stands the sixth amongst the
tributaries of the Amazons. It is navigable, however, by sailing vessels only
for about 160 miles above Santarem. The hiring of men to navigate the
vessel was our greatest trouble. Jose was to be my helmsman, and we
thought three other hands would be the fewest with which we could
venture. But all our endeavours to procure these were fruitless. Santarem is
worse provided with Indian canoemen than any other town on the river. I
found on applying to the tradesmen to whom I had brought letters of
introduction and to the Brazilian authorities, that almost any favour would
be sooner granted than the loan of hands. A stranger, however, is obliged to
depend on them; for it is impossible to find an Indian or half-caste whom
someone or other of the head-men do not claim as owing him money or
labour. I was afraid at one time I should have been forced to abandon my
project on this account. At length, after many rebuffs and disappointments,
Jose contrived to engage one man, a mulatto, named Pinto, a native of the
mining country of Interior Brazil, who knew the river well; and with these
two I resolved to start, hoping to meet with others at the first village on the
road.
We left Santarem on the 8th of June. The waters were then at their highest
point, and my canoe had been anchored close to the back door of our house.
The morning was cool and a brisk wind blew, with which we sped rapidly
past the white-washed houses and thatched Indian huts of the suburbs. The
charming little bay of Mapiri was soon left behind; we then doubled Point
CHAPTER IX 225
Maria Josepha, a headland formed of high cliffs of Tabatinga clay, capped

with forest. This forms the limit of the river view from Santarem, and here
we had our last glimpse, at a distance of seven or eight miles, of the city, a
bright line of tiny white buildings resting on the dark water. A stretch of
wild, rocky, uninhabited coast was before us, and we were fairly within the
Tapajos.
Our course lay due west for about twenty miles. The wind increased as we
neared Point Cururu, where the river bends from its northern course. A vast
expanse of water here stretches to the west and south, and the waves, with a
strong breeze, run very high. As we were doubling the Point, the cable
which held our montaria in tow astern, parted, and in endeavouring to
recover the boat, without which we knew it would be difficult to get ashore
on many parts of the coast, we were very near capsizing. We tried to tack
down the river; a vain attempt with a strong breeze and no current. Our
ropes snapped, the sails flew to rags, and the vessel, which we now found
was deficient in ballast, heeled over frightfully. Contrary to Jose's advice, I
ran the cuberta into a little bay, thinking to cast anchor there and wait for
the boat coming up with the wind; but the anchor dragged on the smooth
sandy bottom, and the vessel went broadside on to the rocky beach. With a
little dexterous management, but not until after we had sustained some
severe bumps, we managed to get out of this difficulty, clearing the rocky
point at a close shave with our jib-sail. Soon after, we drifted into the
smooth water of a sheltered bay which leads to the charmingly situated
village of Altar do Chao; and we were obliged to give up our attempt to
recover the montaria.
The little settlement, Altar de Chao (altar of the ground, or Earth altar),
owes its singular name to the existence at the entrance to the harbour of one
of those strange flat-topped hills which are so common in this part of the
Amazons country, shaped like the high altar in Roman Catholic churches. It
is an isolated one, and much lower in height than the similarly truncated
hills and ridges near Almeyrim, being elevated probably not more than 300
feet above the level of the river. It is bare of trees, but covered in places
with a species of fern. At the head of the bay is an inner harbour, which
communicates by a channel with a series of lakes lying in the valleys
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between hills, and stretching far into the interior of the land. The village is
peopled almost entirely by semi-civilised Indians, to the number of sixty or
seventy families; and the scattered houses are arranged in broad streets on a
strip of greensward, at the foot of a high, gloriously-wooded ridge.
I was so much pleased with the situation of this settlement, and the number
of rare birds and insects which tenanted the forest, that I revisited it in the
following year, and spent four months making collections. The village itself
is a neglected, poverty- stricken place-- the governor (Captain of
Trabalhadores, or Indian workmen) being an old, apathetic, half-breed, who
had spent all his life here. The priest was a most profligate character; I
seldom saw him sober; he was a white, however, and a man of good ability.
I may as well mention here, that a moral and zealous priest is a great rarity
in this province-- the only ministers of religion in the whole country who
appeared sincere in their calling being the Bishop of Para and the Vicars of
Ega on the Upper Amazons and Obydos. The houses in the village
swarmed with vermin; bats in the thatch, fire-ants (formiga de fogo) under
the floors; cockroaches and spiders on the walls. Very few of them had
wooden doors and locks.
Altar de Chao was originally a settlement of the aborigines, and was called
Burari. The Indians were always hostile to the Portuguese, and during the
disorders of 1835-6 joined the rebels in their attack on Santarem. Few of
them escaped the subsequent slaughter, and for this reason there is now
scarcely an old or middle-aged man in the place. As in all the semi-civilised
villages, where the original orderly and industrious habits of the Indian
have been lost without anything being learned from the whites to make
amends, the inhabitants live in the greatest poverty. The scarcity of fish in
the clear waters and rocky bays of the neighbourhood is no doubt partly the
cause of the poverty and perennial hunger which reign here. When we
arrived in the port, our canoe was crowded with the half-naked
villagers--men, women, and children-- who came to beg each a piece of salt
pirarucu "for the love of God." They are not quite so badly off in the dry
season. The shallow lakes and bays then contain plenty of fish, and the
boys and women go out at night to spear them by torchlight-- the torches
being made of thin strips of green bark from the leaf-stalks of palms, tied in
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bundles. Many excellent kinds of fish are thus obtained; amongst them the
Pescada, whose white and flaky flesh, when boiled, has the appearance and
flavour of cod-fish; and the Tucunare (Cichla temensis), a handsome
species, with a large prettily-coloured, eye-like spot on its tail. Many small
Salmonidae are also met with, and a kind of sole, called Aramassa, which
moves along the clear sandy bottom of the bay. At these times a species of
sting-ray is common on the sloping beach, and bathers are frequently stung
most severely by it. The weapon of this fish is a strong blade with jagged
edges, about three inches long, growing from the side of the long fleshy
tail. I once saw a woman wounded by it whilse bathing; she shrieked
frightfully, and was obliged to be carried to her hammock, where she lay
for a week in great pain; I have known strong men to be lamed for many
months by the sting.
There was a mode of taking fish here which I had not before seen
employed, but found afterwards to be very common on the Tapajos. This is
by using a poisonous liana called Timbo (Paullinia pinnata). It will act only
in the still waters of creeks and pools. A few rods, a yard in length, are
mashed and soaked in the water, which quickly becomes discoloured with
the milky deleterious juice of the plant. In about half an hour all the smaller
fishes over a rather wide space around the spot, rise to the surface floating
on their sides, and with the gills wide open. Evidently,the poison acts by
suffocating the fishes--it spreads slowly in the water, and a very slight
mixture seems sufficient to stupefy them. I was surprised, upon beating the
water in places where no fishes were visible in the clear depths for many
yards round, to find, sooner or later, sometimes twenty- four hours
afterwards, a considerable number floating dead on the surface.
The people occupy themselves the greater part of the year with their small
plantations of mandioca. All the heavy work, such as felling and burning
the timber, planting and weeding, is done in the plantation of each family
by a congregation of neighbours, which they call a "pucherum"--a similar
custom to the "bee" in the backwood settlements of North America. They
make quite a holiday of each pucherum. When the invitation is issued, the
family prepares a great quantity of fermented drink, called in this part
Taroba, made from soaked mandioca cakes, and porridge of Manicueira.
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This latter is a kind of sweet mandioca, very different from the Yuca of the
Peruvians and Macasheira of the Brazilians (Manihot Aypi), having oblong
juicy roots, which become very sweet a few days after they are gathered.
With these simple provisions they regale their helpers. The work is
certainly done, but after a very rude fashion; all become soddened with
Taroba, and the day finishes often in a drunken brawl.
The climate is rather more humid than that of Santarem. I suppose this is to
be attributed to the neighbouring country being densely wooded instead of
an open campo. In no part of the country did I enjoy more the moonlit
nights than here, in the dry season. After the day's work was done, I used to
go down to the shores of the bay, and lie at full length on the cool sand for
two or three hours before bedtime. The soft pale light, resting on broad
sandy beaches and palm-thatched huts, reproduced the effect of a
mid-winter scene in the cold north when a coating of snow lies on the
landscape. A heavy shower falls about once a week, and the shrubby
vegetation never becomes parched as at Santarem. Between the rains, the
heat and dryness increase from day to day-- the weather on the first day
after the rain is gleamy, with intervals of melting sunshine and passing
clouds; the next day is rather drier, and the east wind begins to blow; then
follow days of cloudless sky, with gradually increasing strength of breeze.
When this has continued about a week, a light mistiness begins to gather
about the horizon; clouds are formed; grumbling thunder is heard; and then,
generally in the night- time, down falls the refreshing rain. The sudden chill
caused by the rains produces colds, which are accompanied by the same
symptoms as in our own climate; with this exception, the place is very
healthy.
June 17th--The two young men returned without meeting with my

montaria, and I found it impossible here to buy a new one. Captain Thomas
could find me only one hand. This was a blunt- spoken but willing young
Indian, named Manoel. He came on board this morning at eight o'clock, and
we then got up our anchor and resumed our voyage.
The wind was light and variable all day, and we made only about fifteen
miles by seven o'clock in the evening. The coast formed a succession of
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long, shallow bays with sandy beaches, upon which the waves broke in a
long line of surf. Ten miles above Altar de Chao is a conspicuous headland,
called Point Cajetuba. During a lull of the wind, towards midday, we ran
the cuberta aground in shallow water and waded ashore; but the woods
were scarcely penetrable, and not a bird was to be seen. The only thing
observed worthy of note was the quantity of drowned winged ants along the
beach; they were all of one species, the terrible formiga de fogo (Myrmica
saevis sima); the dead, or half-dead bodies of which were heaped up in a
line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing without
interruption for miles at the edge of the water. The countless thousands had
been doubtless cast into the river while flying during a sudden squall the
night before, and afterwards, cast ashore by the waves. We found ourselves
at seven o'clock near the mouth of a creek leading to a small lake, called
Aramana-i, and the wind having died away, we anchored, guided by the
lights ashore, near the house of a settler named Jeronymo, whom I knew,
and who, soon after, showed us a snug little harbour where we could
remain in safety for the night. The river here cannot be less than ten miles
broad; it is quite clear of islands and free from shoals at this season of the
year. The opposite coast appeared in the daytime as a long thin line of
forest, with dim grey hills in the background.
Today (19th) we had a good wind, which carried us to the mouth of a creek,
culled Paquiatuba, where the "inspector" of the district lived, Senor
Cypriano, for whom I had brought an order from Captain Thomas to supply
me with another hand. We had great difficulty in finding a place to land.
The coast in this part was a tract of level, densely-wooded country, through
which flowed the winding rivulet, or creek, which gives its name to a small
scattered settlement hidden in the wilderness; the hills here receding two or
three miles towards the interior. A large portion of the forest was flooded,
the trunks of the very high trees near the mouth of the creek standing
eighteen feet deep in water. We lost two hours working our way with poles
through the inundated woods in search of the port. Every inlet we tried
ended in a labyrinth choked up with bushes, but we were at length guided
to the right place by the crowing of cocks. On shouting for a montaria, an
Indian boy made his appearance, guiding one through the gloomy thickets;
but he was so alarmed, I suppose at the apparition of a strange-looking
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white man in spectacles bawling from the brow of the vessel, that he shot
back quickly into the bushes. He returned when Manoel spoke, and we
went ashore, the montaria winding along a gloomy overshadowed
water-path made by cutting away the lower branches and underwood. The
foot-road to the houses was a narrow, sandy alley, bordered by trees of
stupendous height, overrun with creepers, and having an unusual number of
long air-roots dangling from the epiphytes on their branches.
After passing one low smoky little hut half-buried in foliage, the path
branched off in various directions, and the boy having left us, we took the
wrong turn. We were brought to a stand soon after by the barking of dogs;
and on shouting, as is customary on approaching a dwelling, "O da casa!"
(Oh of the house!) a dark- skinned native, a Cafuzo, with a most unpleasant
expression of countenance, came forth through the tangled maze of bushes,
armed with a long knife, with which he pretended to be whittling a stick.
He directed us to the house of Cypriano, which was about a mile distant
along another forest road. The circumstance of the Cafuzo coming out
armed to receive visitors very much astonished my companions, who talked
it over at every place we visited for several days afterwards, the freest and
most unsuspecting welcome in these retired places being always counted
upon by strangers. But, as Manoel remarked, the fellow may have been one
of the unpardoned rebel leaders who had settled here after the recapture of
Santarem in 1836, and lived in fear of being inquired for by the authorities
of Santarem. After all our troubles we found Cypriano absent from home.
His house was a large one, and full of people, old and young, women and
children, all of whom were Indians or mamelucos. Several smaller huts
surrounded the large dwelling, besides extensive open sheds containing
mandioca ovens and rude wooden mills for grinding sugar-cane to make
molasses. All the buildings were embosomed in trees: it would be scarcely
possible to find a more retired nook, and an air of contentment was spread
over the whole establishment. Cypriano's wife, a good- looking mameluco
girl, was superintending the packing of farina. Two or three old women,
seated on mats, were making baskets with narrow strips of bark from the
leafstalks of palms, while others were occupied lining them with the broad
leaves of a species of maranta, and filling them afterwards with farina,
which was previously measured in a rude square vessel. It appeared that
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Senor Cypriano was a large producer of the article, selling 300 baskets
(sixty pounds' weight each) annually to Santarem traders. I was sorry we
were unable to see him, but it was useless waiting, as we were told all the
men were at present occupied in "pucherums," and he would be unable to
give me the assistance I required. We returned to the canoe in the evening,
and, after moving out into the river, anchored and slept.
June 20th.--We had a light, baffling wind off shore all day on the 20th, and
made but fourteen or fifteen miles by six p.m. when, the wind failing us, we
anchored at the mouth of a narrow channel, called Tapaiuna, which runs
between a large island and the mainland. About three o'clock we passed in
front of Boim, a village on the opposite (western) coast. The breadth of the
river here is six or seven miles-- a confused patch of white on the high land
opposite was all we saw of the village, the separate houses being
undistinguishable on account of the distance. The coast along which we
sailed today is a continuation of the low and flooded land of Paquiatuba.
June 21st-The next morning we sailed along the Tapaiuna channel, which is
from 400 to 600 yards in breadth. We advanced but slowly, as the wind was
generally dead against us, and stopped frequently to ramble ashore.
Wherever the landing-place was sandy, it was impossible to walk about on
account of the swarms of the terrible fire-ant, whose sting is likened by the
Brazilians to the puncture of a red-hot needle. There was scarcely a square
inch of ground free from them. About three p.m. we glided into a quiet,
shady creek, on whose banks an industrious white settler had located
himself. I resolved to pass the rest of the day and night here, and endeavour
to obtain a fresh supply of provisions, our stock of salt beef being now
nearly exhausted. The situation of the house was beautiful; the little
harbour being gay with water plants, Pontederiae, now full of purple
blossom, from which flocks of stilt-legged water-fowl started up screaming
as we entered. The owner sent a boy with my men to show them the best
place for fish up the creek, and in the course of the evening sold me a
number of fowls, besides baskets of beans and farina. The result of the
fishing was a good supply of Jandia, a handsome spotted Siluride fish, and
Piranha, a kind of Salmon. Piranhas are of several kinds, many of which
abound in the waters of the Tapajos. They are caught with almost any kind
CHAPTER IX 232
of bait, for their taste is indiscriminate and their appetite most ravenous.
They often attack the legs of bathers near the shore, inflicting severe
wounds with their strong triangular teeth. At Paquiatuba and this place, I
added about twenty species of small fishes to my collection-- caught by
hook and line, or with the hand in shallow pools under the shade of the
forest.
My men slept ashore, and upon the coming aboard in the morning, Pinto
was drunk and insolent. According to Jose, who had kept himself sober,
and was alarmed at the other's violent conduct, the owner of the house and
Pinto had spent the greater part of the night together, drinking aguardente
de beiju,--a spirit distilled from the mandioca root. We knew nothing of the
antecedents of this man, who was a tall, strong, self-willed fellow, and it
began to dawn on us that this was not a very safe travelling companion in a
wild country like this. I thought it better now to make the best of our way to
the next settlement, Aveyros, and get rid of him.
Our course today lay along a high rocky coast, which extended without a
break for about eight miles. The height of the perpendicular rocks was from
100 to 150 feet; ferns and flowering shrubs grew in the crevices, and the
summit supported a luxuriant growth of forest, like the rest of the river
banks. The waves beat with a loud roar at the foot of these inhospitable
barriers. At two p.m. we passed the mouth of a small picturesque harbour,
formed by a gap in the precipitous coast. Several families have here settled;
the place is called Ita-puama, or "standing rock," from a remarkable
isolated cliff, which stands erect at the entrance to the little haven. A short
distance beyond Itapuama we found ourselves opposite to the village of
Pinhel, which is perched, like Boim, on high ground, on the western side of
the river. The stream is here from six to seven miles wide. A line of low
islets extends in front of Pinhel, and a little further to the south is a larger
island, called Capitari, which lies nearly in the middle of the river.
June 23rd.--The wind freshened at ten o'clock in the morning of the 23rd. A
thick black cloud then began to spread itself over the sky a long way down
the river; the storm which it portended, however, did not reach us, as the
dark threatening mass crossed from east to west, and the only effect it had
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was to impel a column of cold air up river, creating a breeze with which we
bounded rapidly forward. The wind in the afternoon strengthened to a gale.
We carried on with one foresail only, two of the men holding on to the
boom to prevent the whole thing from flying to pieces. The rocky coast
continued for about twelve miles above Ita-puama, then succeeded a tract
of low marshy land, which had evidently been once an island whose
channel of separation from the mainland had become silted up. The island
of Capitari and another group of islets succeeding it, called Jacare, on the
opposite side, helped also to contract at this point the breadth of the river,
which was now not more than about three miles. The little cuberta almost
flew along this coast, there being no perceptible current, past extensive
swamps, margined with thick floating grasses. At length, on rounding a low
point, higher land again appeared on the right bank of the river, and the
village of Aveyros hove in sight, in the port of which we cast anchor late in
the afternoon.
Aveyros is a small settlement, containing only fourteen or fifteen houses

besides the church; but it is the place of residence of the authorities of a
large district-- the priest, Juiz de Paz, the subdelegado of police, and the
Captain of the Trabalhadores. The district includes Pinhel, which we passed
about twenty miles lower down on the left bank of the river. Five miles
beyond Aveyros, and also on the left bank, is the missionary village of
Santa Cruz, comprising thirty or forty families of baptised Mundurucu
Indians, who are at present under the management of a Capuchin Friar, and
are independent of the Captain of Trabalhadores of Aveyros. The river view
from this point towards the south was very grand; the stream is from two to
three miles broad, with green islets resting on its surface, and on each side a
chain of hills stretches away in long perspective. I resolved to stay here for
a few weeks to make collections. On landing, my first care was to obtain a
house or room, that I might live ashore. This was soon arranged; the head
man of the place, Captain Antonio, having received notice of my coming,
so that before night all the chests and apparatus I required were housed and
put in order for working.
I here dismissed Pinto, who again got drunk and quarrelsome a few hours
after he came ashore. He left the next day, to my great relief, in a small
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trading canoe that touched at the place on its way to Santarem. The Indian
Manoel took his leave at the same time, having engaged to accompany me
only as far as Aveyros; I was then dependent on Captain Antonio for fresh
hands. The captains of Trabalhadores are appointed by the Brazilian
Government to embody the scattered Indian labourers and canoe-men of
their respective districts, to the end that they may supply passing travellers
with men when required. A semi-military organisation is given to the
bodies--some of the steadiest amongst the Indians themselves being
nominated as sergeants, and all the members mustered at the principal
village of their district twice each year. The captains, however, universally
abuse their authority, monopolising the service of the men for their own
purposes, so that it is only by favour that the loan of a canoe-hand can be
wrung from them. I was treated by Captain Antonio with great
consideration, and promised two good Indians when I should be ready to
continue my voyage.
Little happened worth narrating during my forty days' stay at Aveyros. The
time was spent in the quiet, regular pursuit of Natural History: every
morning I had my long ramble in the forest, which extended to the
back-doors of the houses, and the afternoons were occupied in preserving
and studying the objects collected. The priest was a lively old man, but
rather a bore from being able to talk of scarcely anything except
homoeopathy, having been smitten with the mania during a recent visit to
Santarem. He had a Portuguese Homoeopathic Dictionary, and a little
leather case containing glass tubes filled with globules, with which he was
doctoring the whole village.
A bitter enmity seemed to exist between the female members of the priest's
family, and those of the captain's-- the only white women in the settlement.
It was amusing to notice how they flaunted past each other, when going to
church on Sundays, in their starched muslin dresses. I found an intelligent
young man living here, a native of the province of Goyaz, who was
exploring the neighbourhood for gold and diamonds. He had made one
journey up a branch river, and declared to me that he had found one
diamond, but was unable to continue his researches, because the Indians
who accompanied him refused to remain any longer; he was now waiting
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for Captain Antonio to assist him with fresh men, having offered him in
return a share in the results of the enterprise. There appeared to be no doubt
that gold is occasionally found within two or three days' journey of
Aveyros; but all lengthened search is made impossible by the scarcity of
food and the impatience of the Indians, who see no value in the precious
metal, and abhor the tediousness of the gold-searcher's occupation. It is
impossible to do without them, as they are required to paddle the canoes.
The weather, during the month of July, was uninterruptedly fine; not a drop
of rain fell, and the river sank rapidly. The mornings, for two hours after
sunrise, were very cold; we were glad to wrap ourselves in blankets on
turning out of our hammocks, and walk about at a quick pace in the early
sunshine. But in the afternoons, the heat was sickening, for the glowing sun
then shone full on the front of the row of whitewashed houses, and there
was seldom any wind to moderate its effects. I began now to understand
why the branch rivers of the Amazons were so unhealthy, while the main
stream was pretty nearly free from diseases arising from malaria. The cause
lies, without doubt, in the slack currents of the tributaries in the dry season,
and the absence of the cooling Amazonian trade wind, which purifies the
air along the banks of the main river. The trade wind does not deviate from
its nearly straight westerly course, so that the branch streams, which run
generally at right angles to the Amazons, and, have a slack current for a
long distance from their mouths, are left to the horrors of nearly stagnant
air and water.
Aveyros may be called the headquarters of the fire-ant, which might be

fittingly termed the scourge of this fine river. The Tapajos is nearly free
from the insect pests of other parts, mosquitoes, sand-flies, Motucas and
piums; but the formiga de fogo is perhaps a greater plague than all the
others put together. It is found only on sandy soils in open places, and
seems to thrive most in the neighbourhood of houses and weedy villages,
such as Aveyros; it does not occur at all in the shades of the forest. I
noticed it in most places on the banks of the Amazons but the species is not
very common on the main river, and its presence is there scarcely noticed,
because it does not attack man, and the sting is not so virulent as it is in the
same species on the banks of the Tapajos. Aveyros was deserted a few
CHAPTER IX 236
years before my visit on account of this little tormentor, and the inhabitants
had only recently returned to their houses, thinking its numbers had
decreased. It is a small species, of a shining reddish colour not greatly
differing from the common red stinging ant of our own country (Myrmica
rubra), except that the pain and irritation caused by its sting are much
greater. The soil of the whole village is undermined by it; the ground is
perforated with the entrances to their subterranean galleries, and a little
sandy dome occurs here and there, where the insects bring their young to
receive warmth near the surface. The houses are overrun with them; they
dispute every fragment of food with the inhabitants, and destroy clothing
for the sake of the starch. All eatables are obliged to be suspended in
baskets from the rafters, and the cords well soaked with copauba balsam,
which is the only means known of preventing them from climbing. They
seem to attack persons out of sheer malice; if we stood for a few moments
in the street, even at a distance from their nests, we were sure to be overrun
and severely punished, for the moment an ant touched the flesh, he secured
himself with his jaws, doubled in his tail, and stung with all his might.
When we were seated on chairs in the evenings in front of the house to
enjoy a chat with our neighbours, we had stools to support our feet, the legs
of which, as well as those of the chairs, were well anointed with the balsam.
The cords of hammocks are obliged to be smeared in the same way to
prevent the ants from paying sleepers a visit.
The inhabitants declare that the fire-ant was unknown on the Tapajos
before the disorders of 1835-6, and believe that the hosts sprang up from
the blood of the slaughtered Cabanas or rebels. They have doubtless
increased since that time, but the cause lies in the depopulation of the
villages and the rank growth of weeds in the previously cleared, well-kept
spaces. I have already described the line of sediment formed on the sandy
shores lower down the river by the dead bodies of the winged individuals of
this species. The exodus from their nests of the males and females takes
place at the end of the rainy season (June), when the swarms are blown into
the river by squalls of wind, and subsequently cast ashore by the waves; I
was told that this wholesale destruction of ant-life takes place annually, and
that the same compact heap of dead bodies which I saw only in part,
extends along the banks of the river for twelve or fifteen miles.
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The forest behind Aveyros yielded me little except insects, but in these it
was very rich. It is not too dense, and broad sunny paths skirted by
luxuriant beds of Lycopodiums, which form attractive sporting places for
insects, extend from the village to a swampy hollow or ygapo, which lies
about a mile inland. Of butterflies alone I enumerated fully 300 species,
captured or seen in the course of forty days within a half-hour's walk of the
village. This is a greater number than is found in the whole of Europe. The
only monkey I observed was the Callithrix moloch--one of the kinds called
by the Indians "Whaiapu-sai". It is a moderate-sized species, clothed with
long brown hair, and having hands of a whitish hue. Although nearly allied
to the Cebi, it has none of their restless vivacity, but is a dull listless
animal. It goes in small flocks of five or six individuals, running along the
main boughs of the trees. One of the specimens which I obtained here was
caught on a low fruit-tree at the back of our house at sunrise one morning.
This was the only instance of a monkey being captured in such a position
that I ever heard of. As the tree was isolated, it must have descended to the
ground from the neighbouring forest and walked some distance to get at it.
The species is sometimes kept in a tame state by the natives-- it does not
make a very amusing pet, and survives captivity only a short time.
I heard that the white Cebus, the Caiarara branca, a kind of monkey I had
not yet seen, and wished very much to obtain, inhabited the forests on the
opposite side of the river; so one day, on an opportunity being afforded by
our host going over in a large boat, I crossed to go in search of it. We were
about twenty persons in all, and the boat was an old rickety affair with the
gaping seams rudely stuffed with tow and pitch. In addition to the human
freight we took three sheep with us, which Captain Antonio had just
received from Santarem and was going to add to his new cattle farm on the
other side. Ten Indian paddlers carried us quickly across. The breadth of the
river could not be less than three miles, and the current was scarcely
perceptible. When a boat has to cross the main Amazons, it is obliged to
ascend along the banks for half a mile or more to allow for drifting by the
current; in this lower part of the Tapajos this is not necessary. When about
halfway, the sheep, in moving about, kicked a hole in the bottom of the
boat. The passengers took the matter very coolly, although the water
spouted up alarmingly, and I thought we should inevitably be swamped.
CHAPTER IX 238
Captain Antonio took off his socks to stop the leak, inviting me and the Juiz
de Paz, who was one of the party, to do the same, while two Indians baled
out the water with large cuyas. We thus managed to keep afloat until we
reached our destination, when the men patched up the leak for our return
journey.
The landing-place lay a short distance within the mouth of a shady inlet,up
on whose banks, hidden amongst the dense woods, were the houses of a
few Indian and mameluco settlers. The path to the cattle farm led first
through a tract of swampy forest; it then ascended a slope and emerged on a
fine sweep of prairie, varied with patches of timber. The wooded portion
occupied the hollows where the soil was of a rich chocolate-brown colour,
and of a peaty nature. The higher grassy, undulating parts of the campo had
a lighter and more sandy soil. Leaving our friends, Jose and I took our guns
and dived into the woods in search of the monkeys. As we walked rapidly
along I was very near treading on a rattlesnake, which lay stretched out
nearly in a straight line on the bare sandy pathway. It made no movement to
get out of the way, and I escaped the danger by a timely and sudden leap,
being unable to check my steps in the hurried walk. We tried to excite the
sluggish reptile by throwing handfulls of sand and sticks at it, but the only
notice it took was to raise its ugly horny tail and shake its rattle. At length it
began to move rather nimbly,when we despatched it by a blow on the head
with a pole, not wishing to fire on account of alarming our game.
We saw nothing of the white Caiarara; we met, however, with a flock of the
common light-brown allied species (Cebus albifrons?), and killed one as a
specimen. A resident on this side of the river told us that the white kind was
found further to the south, beyond Santa Cruz. The light-brown Caiarara is
pretty generally distributed over the forests of the level country. I saw it
very frequently on the banks of the Upper Amazons, where it was always a
treat to watch a flock leaping amongst the trees, for it is the most wonderful
performer in this line of the whole tribe. The troops consist of thirty or
more individuals, which travel in single file. When the foremost of the
flock reaches the outermost branch of an unusually lofty tree, he springs
forth into the air without a moment's hesitation and alights on the dome of
yielding foliage belonging to the neighbouring tree, maybe fifty feet
CHAPTER IX 239
beneath-- all the rest following the example. They grasp, upon falling, with
hands and tail, right themselves in a moment, and then away they go along
branch and bough to the next tree.
The Caiarara owes its name in the Tupi language, macaw or large- headed
(Acain, head and Arara macaw), to the disproportionate size of the head
compared with the rest of the body. It is very frequently kept as a pet in
houses of natives. I kept one myself for about a year, which accompanied
me in my voyages and became very familiar, coming to me always on wet
nights to share my blanket. It is a most restless creature, but is not playful
like most of the American monkeys; the restlessness of its disposition
seeming to arise from great nervous irritability and discontent. The anxious,
painful, and changeable expression of its countenance, and the want of
purpose in its movements, betray this. Its actions are like those of a
wayward child; it does not seem happy even when it has plenty of its
favourite food, bananas; but will leave its own meal to snatch the morsels
out of the hands of its companions. It differs in these mental traits from its
nearest kindred, for another common Cebus, found in the same parts of the
forest, the Prego monkey (Cebus cirrhifer?), is a much quieter and
better-tempered animal; it is full of tricks, but these are generally of a
playful character.
The Caiarara keeps the house in a perpetual uproar where it is kept-- when
alarmed, or hungry, or excited by envy, it screams piteously; it is always,
however, making some noise or other, often screwing up its mouth and
uttering a succession of loud notes resembling a whistle. My little pet,
when loose, used to run after me, supporting itself for some distance on its
hind legs, without, however, having been taught to do it. He offended me
greatly one day, by killing, in one of his jealous fits, another and much
choicer pet--the nocturnal owl-faced monkey (Nyctipithecus trivirgatus).
Someone had given this a fruit, which the other coveted, so the two got to
quarrelling. The Nyctipithecus fought only with its paws, clawing out and
hissing like a cat; the other soon obtained the mastery, and before I could
interfere, finished his rival by cracking its skull with his teeth. Upon this, I
got rid of him.
CHAPTER IX 240
On recrossing the river to Aveyros in the evening, a pretty little parrot fell
from a great height headlong into the water near the boat, having dropped
from a flock which seemed to be fighting in the air. One of the Indians
secured it for me, and I was surprised to find the bird uninjured. There had
probably been a quarrel about mates, resulting in our little stranger being
temporarily stunned by a blow on the head from the beak of a jealous
comrade. The species was the Conurus guianensis, called by the natives
Maracana-- the plumage green, with a patch of scarlet under the wings. I
wished to keep the bird alive and tame it, but all our efforts to reconcile it
to captivity were vain; it refused food, bit everyone who went near it, and
damaged its plumage in its exertions to free itself. My friends in Aveyros
said that this kind of parrot never became domesticated. After trying nearly
a week I was recommended to lend the intractable creature to an old Indian
woman, living in the village, who was said to be a skillful bird-tamer. In
two days she brought it back almost as tame as the familiar love-birds of
our aviaries. I kept my little pet for upwards of two years; it learned to talk
pretty well, and was considered quite a wonder as being a bird usually so
difficult of domestication. I do not know what arts the old woman used--
Captain Antonio said she fed it with her saliva. The chief reason why
almost all animals become so wonderfully tame in the houses of the natives
is, I believe, their being treated with uniform gentleness, and allowed to run
at large about the rooms. Our Maracana used to accompany us sometimes
in our rambles, one of the lads carrying it on his head. One day, in the
middle of a long forest road, it was missed, having clung probably to an
overhanging bough and escaped into the thicket without the boy perceiving
it. Three hours afterwards, on our return by the same path, a voice greeted
using a colloquial tone as we passed-- "Maracana!" We looked about for
some time, but could not see anything, until the word was repeated with
emphasis-- "Maracana- a!" When we espied the little truant half concealed
in the foliage of a tree, he came down and delivered himself up, evidently
as much rejoiced at the meeting as we were.
After I had obtained the two men promised, stout young Indians, seventeen
or eighteen years of age, one named Ricardo and the other Alberto, I paid a
second visit to the western side of the river in my own canoe; being
determined, if possible, to obtain specimens of the White Cebus. We
CHAPTER IX 241
crossed over first to the mission village, Santa Cruz, which consists of
thirty or forty wretched-looking mud huts, closely built together in three
straight ugly rows on a high gravelly bank. The place was deserted, with
the exception of two or three old men and women and a few children. A
narrow belt of wood runs behind the village; beyond this is an elevated,
barren campo with a clayey and gravelly soil. To the south, the coast
country is of a similar description; a succession of scantily-wooded hills,
bare grassy spaces, and richly-timbered hollows. We traversed forest and
campo in various directions during three days without meeting with
monkeys, or indeed with anything that repaid us the time and trouble. The
soil of the district appeared too dry; at this season of the year I had noticed,
in other parts of the country, that mammals and birds resorted to the more
humid areas of forest; we therefore proceeded to explore carefully the low
and partly swampy tract along the coast to the north of Santa Cruz.
We spent two days in this way landing at many places, and penetrating a
good distance in the interior. Although unsuccessful with regard to the
White Cebus, the time was not wholly lost, as I added several small birds of
species new to my collection. On the second evening we surprised a large
flock, composed of about fifty individuals, of a curious eagle with a very
long and slender hooked beak, the Rostrhamus hamatus. They were
perched on the bushes which surrounded a shallow lagoon, separated from
the river by a belt of floating grass; my men said they fed on toads and
lizards found at the margins of pools. They formed a beautiful sight as they
flew up and wheeled about at a great height in the air. We obtained only
one specimen.
Before returning to Aveyros, we paid another visit to the Jacare inlet--

leading to Captain Antonio's cattle farm, for the sake of securing further
specimens of the many rare and handsome insects found there-- landing at
the port of one of the settlers. The owner of the house was not at home, and
the wife, a buxom young woman, a dark mameluca, with clear though dark
complexion and fine rosy cheeks, was preparing, in company with another
stout- built Amazon, her rod and lines to go out fishing for the day's dinner.
It was now the season for Tucunares, and Senora Joaquina showed us the
fly baits used to take this kind of fish, which she had made with her own
CHAPTER IX 242
hands of parrots' feathers. The rods used are slender bamboos, and the lines
made from the fibres of pineapple leaves. It is not very common for the
Indian and half-caste women to provide for themselves in the way these
spirited dames were doing, although they are all expert paddlers, and very
frequently cross wide rivers in their frail boats without the aid of men. It is
possible that parties of Indian women, seen travelling alone in this manner,
may have given rise to the fable of a nation of Amazons, invented by the
first Spanish explorers of the country.
Senora Joaquina invited me and Jose to a Tucunare dinner for the

afternoon, and then shouldering their paddles and tucking up their skirts,
the two dusky fisherwomen marched down to their canoe. We sent the two
Indians into the woods to cut palm-leaves to mend the thatch of our
cuberta, while Jose and I rambled through the woods which skirted the
campo. On our return, we found a most bountiful spread in the house of our
hostess. A spotless white cloth was laid on the mat, with a plate for each
guest and a pile of fragrant, newly-made farinha by the side of it. The
boiled Tucunares were soon taken from the kettles and set before us. I
thought the men must be happy husbands who owned such wives as these.
The Indian and mameluco women certainly do make excellent managers;
they are more industrious than the men, and most of them manufacture
farinha for sale on their own account, their credit always standing higher
with the traders on the river than that of their male connections. I was quite
surprised at the quantity of fish they had taken there being sufficient for the
whole party-- which included several children, two old men from a
neighbouring hut, and my Indians. I made our good-natured entertainers a
small present of needles and sewing- cotton, articles very much prized, and
soon after we reembarked, and again crossed the river to Aveyros.
August 2nd--Left Aveyros, having resolved to ascend a branch river, the

Cupari, which enters the Tapajos about eight miles above this village,
instead of going forward along the main stream. I should have liked to visit
the settlements of the Mundurucu tribe which lie beyond the first cataract
of the Tapajos, if it had been compatible with the other objects I had in
view. But to perform this journey a lighter canoe than mine would have
been necessary, and six or eight Indian paddlers, which in my case it was
CHAPTER IX 243
utterly impossible to obtain. There would be, however, an opportunity of

seeing this fine race of people on the Cupari, as a horde was located
towards the head waters of this stream. The distance from Aveyros to the
last civilised settlement on the Tapajos, Itaituba, is about forty miles. The
falls commence a short distance beyond this place. Ten formidable
cataracts or rapids then succeed each other at intervals of a few miles, the
chief of which are the Coaita, the Bubure, the Salto Grande (about thirty
feet high), and the Montanha. The canoes of Cuyaba tradesmen which
descend annually to Santarem are obliged to be unloaded at each of these,
and the cargoes carried by land on the backs of Indians, while the empty
vessels are dragged by ropes over the obstruction. The Cupari was
described to me as flowing through a rich, moist clayey valley covered with
forests and abounding in game; while the banks of the Tapajos beyond
Aveyros were barren sandy campos, with ranges of naked or
scantily-wooded hills, forming a kind of country which I had always found
very unproductive in Natural History objects in the dry season, which had
now set in.
We entered the mouth of the Cupari on the evening of the following day
(August 3rd). It was not more than a hundred yards wide, but very deep: we
found no bottom in the middle with a line of eight fathoms. The banks were
gloriously wooded, the familiar foliage of the cacao growing abundantly
amongst the mass of other trees, reminding me of the forests of the main
Amazons. We rowed for five or six miles, generally in a south-easterly
direction, although the river had many abrupt bends, and stopped for the
night at a settler's house, situated on a high bank, accessible only by a flight
of rude wooden steps fixed in the clayey slope. The owners were two
brothers, half-breeds, who, with their families, shared the large roomy
dwelling; one of them was a blacksmith, and we found him working with
two Indian lads at his forge in an open shed under the shade of mango trees.
They were the sons of a Portuguese immigrant who had settled here forty
years previously, and married a Mundurucu woman. He must have been a
far more industrious man than the majority of his countrymen who emigrate
to Brazil nowadays, for there were signs of former extensive cultivation at
the back of the house in groves of orange, lemon, and coffee trees, and a
large plantation of cacao occupied the lower grounds.
CHAPTER IX 244
The next morning one of the brothers brought me a beautiful opossum,

which had been caught in the fowl-house a little before sunrise. It was not
so large as a rat, and had soft brown fur, paler beneath and on the face, with
a black stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I
had so far obtained-- but the number of these animals is very considerable
in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice
and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being
entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums
is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their
habits, sleeping during the day in hollow trees, and coming forth at night to
prey on birds in their roosting places. It is very difficult to rear poultry in
this country on account of these small opossums, scarcely a night passing,
in some parts, in which the fowls are not attacked by them.
August 5th.--The river reminds me of some parts of the Jaburu channel,

being hemmed in by two walls of forest rising to the height of at least a
hundred feet, and the outlines of the trees being concealed throughout by a
dense curtain of leafy creepers. The impression of vegetable profusion and
overwhelming luxuriance increases at every step. The deep and narrow
valley of the Cupari has a moister climate than the banks of the Tapajos.
We have now frequent showers, whereas we left everything parched up by
the sun at Aveyros.
After leaving the last sitio we advanced about eight miles, and then stopped
at the house of Senor Antonio Malagueita, a mameluco settler, whom we
had been recommended to visit. His house and outbuildings were extensive,
the grounds well weeded, and the whole wore an air of comfort and
well-being which is very uncommon in this country. A bank of indurated
white clay sloped gently up from the tree-shaded port to the house, and
beds of kitchen herbs extended on each side, with (rare sight!) rose and
jasmine trees in full bloom. Senor Antonio, a rather tall middle- aged man,
with a countenance beaming with good nature, came down to the port as
soon as we anchored. I was quite a stranger to him, but he had heard of my
coming, and seemed to have made preparations. I never met with a heartier
welcome. On entering the house, the wife, who had more of the Indian tint
and features than her husband, was equally warm and frank in her greeting.
CHAPTER IX 245
Senor Antonio had spent his younger days at Para, and had acquired a
profound respect for Englishmen. I stayed here two days. My host
accompanied me in my excursions; in fact, his attentions, with those of his
wife, and the host of relatives of all degrees who constituted his household,
were quite troublesome, as they left me not a moment's privacy from
morning till night.
We had, together, several long and successful rambles along a narrow

pathway which extended several miles into the forest. I here met with a
new insect pest, one which the natives may be thankful is not spread more
widely over the country: it was a large brown fly of the Tabanidae family
(genus Pangonia), with a proboscis half an inch long and sharper than the
finest needle. It settled on our backs by twos and threes at a time, and
pricked us through our thick cotton shirts, making us start and cry out with
the sudden pain. I secured a dozen or two as specimens. As an instance of
the extremely confined ranges of certain species, it may be mentioned that I
did not find this insect in any other part of the country except along half a
mile or so of this gloomy forest road.
We were amused at the excessive and almost absurd tameness of a fine

Mutum or Curassow turkey, that ran about the house. It was a large
glossy-black species (the Mitu tuberosa), having an orange- coloured beak,
surmounted by a bean-shaped excrescence of the same hue. It seemed to
consider itself as one of the family: attending all the meals, passing from
one person to another round the mat to be fed, and rubbing the sides of its
head in a coaxing way against their cheeks or shoulders. At night it went to
roost on a chest in a sleeping-room beside the hammock of one of the little
girls to whom it seemed particularly attached (regularlyfollowing her
wherever she went about the grounds). I found this kind of Curassow bird
was very common in the forest of the Cupari; but it is rare on the Upper
Amazons, where an allied species, which has a round instead of a
bean-shaped waxen excrescence on the beak (Crax globicera), is the
prevailing kind. These birds in their natural state never descend from the
tops of the loftiest trees, where they live in small flocks and build their
nests. The Mitu tuberosa lays two rough-shelled, white eggs; it is fully as
large a bird as the common turkey, but the flesh when cooked is drier and
CHAPTER IX 246
not so well flavoured. It is difficult to find the reason why these superb
birds have not been reduced to domestication by the Indians, seeing that
they so readily become tame. The obstacle offered by their not breeding in
confinement, which is probably owing to their arboreal habits, might
perhaps be overcome by repeated experiment; but for this the Indians
probably had not sufficient patience or intelligence. The reason cannot lie
in their insensibility to the value of such birds, for the common turkey,
which has been introduced into the country, is much prized by them.
We had an unwelcome visitor while at anchor in the port of Antonio

Malagueita. I was awakened a little after midnight, as I lay in my little
cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head,
which was succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging into the
water. I got up; but all was again quiet, except the cackle of fowls in our
hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel about three feet from the
cabin door. I could find no explanation of the circumstance, and, my men
being all ashore, I turned in again and slept until morning. I then found my
poultry loose about the canoe, and a large rent in the bottom of the
hen-coop, which was about two feet from the surface of the water-- a
couple of fowls were missing. Senor Antonio said the depredator was a
Sucuruju (the Indian name for the Anaconda, or great water
serpent--Eunectes murinus), which had for months past been haunting this
part of the river, and had carried off many ducks and fowls from the ports
of various houses. I was inclined to doubt the fact of a serpent striking at its
prey from the water, and thought an alligator more likely to be the culprit,
although we had not yet met with alligators in the river.
Some days afterwards, the young men belonging to the different sitios
agreed together to go in search of the serpent. They began in a
systematicmanner, forming two parties, each embarked in three or four
canoes, and starting from points several miles apart, whence they gradually
approximated, searching all the little inlets on both sides the river. The
reptile was found at last, sunning itself on a log at the mouth of a muddy
rivulet, and despatched with harpoons. I saw it the day after it was killed; it
was not a very large specimen, measuring only eighteen feet nine inches in
length, and sixteen inches in circumference at the widest part of the body. I
CHAPTER IX 247
measured skins of the Anaconda afterwards, twenty-one feet in length and

two feet in girth. The reptile has a most hideous appearance, owing to its
being very broad in the middle and tapering abruptly at both ends. It is very
abundant in some parts of the country; nowhere more so than in the Lago
Grande, near Santarem, where it is often seen coiled up in the corners of
farmyards, and is detested for its habit of carrying off poultry, young
calves, or whatever animal it can get within reach of.
At Ega, a large Anaconda was once near making a meal of a young lad
about ten years of age, belonging to one of my neighbours. The father and
his son went, as was their custom, a few miles up the Teffe to gather wild
fruit, landing on a sloping sandy shore, where the boy was left to mind the
canoe while the man entered the forest. The beaches of the Teffe form
groves of wild guava and myrtle trees, and during most months of the year
are partly overflown by the river. While the boy was playing in the water
under the shade of these trees, a huge reptile of this species stealthily
wound its coils around him, unperceived until it was too late to escape. His
cries brought the father quickly to the rescue, who rushed forward, and
seizing the Anaconda boldly by the head, tore his jaws asunder. There
appears to be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous
bulk, and lives to a great age, for I heard of specimens having been killed
which measured forty-two feet in length, or double the size of the largest I
had an opportunity to examine. The natives of the Amazons country
universally believe in the existence of a monster water-serpent, said to be
many score fathoms in length and which appears successively in different
parts of the river. They call it the Mai d'agoa--the mother, or spirit, of the
water. This fable, which was doubtless suggested by the occasional
appearance of Sucurujus of unusually large size, takes a great variety of
forms, and the wild legends form the subject of conversation amongst old
and young, over the wood fires in lonely settlements.
August 6th and 7th--On leaving the sitio of Antonio Malagueita we

continued our way along the windings of the river, generally in a southeast
and south-southeast direction, but sometimes due north, for about fifteen
miles, when we stopped at the house of one Paulo Christo, a mameluco
whose acquaintance I had made at Aveyros. Here we spent the night and
CHAPTER IX 248
part of the next day, doing in the morning a good five hours' work in the
forest, accompanied by the owner of the place. In the afternoon of the 7th,
we were again under way; the river makes a bend to the east-northeast for a
short distance above Paulo Christo's establishment, and then turns abruptly
to the southwest, running from that direction about four miles. The hilly
country of the interior then commences, the first token of it being a
magnificently-wooded bluff, rising nearly straight from the water to a
height of about 250 feet. The breadth of the stream hereabout was not more
than sixty yards, and the forest assumed a new appearance from the
abundance of the Urucuri palm, a species which has a noble crown of broad
fronds with symmetrical rigid leaflets.
We reached, in the evening, the house of the last civilised settler on the
river, Senor Joao (John) Aracu, a wiry, active fellow and capital hunter,
whom I wished to make a friend of and persuade to accompany me to the
Mundurucu village and the falls of the Cupari, some forty miles further up
the river.I stayed at the sitio of John Aracu until the 19th, and again, in
descending, spent fourteen days at the same place. The situation was most
favourable for collecting the natural products of the district. The forest was
not crowded with underwood, and pathways led through it for many miles
and in various directions. I could make no use here of our two men as
hunters, so, to keep them employed 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.
CHAPTER IX 249
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
CHAPTER IX 250
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.
CHAPTER IX 251
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.
CHAPTER IX 252
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
CHAPTER IX 253
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,
CHAPTER IX 254
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
CHAPTER IX 255
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!
CHAPTER IX 256
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.
CHAPTER IX 257
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.
CHAPTER IX 258
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
CHAPTER IX 259
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
CHAPTER IX 260
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
CHAPTER IX 261
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
CHAPTER IX 267
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
CHAPTER X 273
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
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
CHAPTER X 285
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
CHAPTER X 286
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
CHAPTER X 287
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
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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,
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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
CHAPTER X 295
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
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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 myself bear exposure to the sun or unusually hot weather
quite as well as the Indians, although not well-fitted by nature for a hot
climate. Their skin is always hot to the touch, and they perspire little. No
Indian resident of Ega can be induced to stay in the village (where the heat
is felt more than in the forest or on the river), for many days together. They
bathe many times a day, but do not plunge in the water, taking merely a
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sitz-bath, as dogs may be seen doing in hot climates, to cool the lower parts
of the body. The women and children, who often remain at home, while the
men are out for many days together fishing, generally find some excuse for
trooping off to the shades of the forest in the hot hours of the afternoons.
They are restless and discontented in fine dry weather, but cheerful in cool
days, when the rain is pouring down on their naked backs. When suffering
under fever, nothing but strict watching can prevent them from going down
to bathe in the river, or eating immoderate quantities of juicy fruits,
although these indulgences are frequently the cause of death. They are very
subject to disorders of the liver, dysentery, and other diseases of hot
climates, and when any epidemic is about, they fall ill quicker, and suffer
more than negroes or even whites. How different all this is with the negro,
the true child of tropical climes! The impression gradually forced itself on
my mind that the red Indian lives as a stranger, or immigrant in these hot
regions, and that his constitution was not originally adapted, and has not
since become perfectly adapted, to the climate.
The Indian element is very prominent in the amusements of the Ega people.
All the Roman Catholic holidays are kept up with great spirit; rude Indian
sports being mingled with the ceremonies introduced by the Portuguese.
Besides these, the aborigines celebrate their own ruder festivals; the people
of different tribes combining-- for, in most of their features, the merry-
makings were originally alike in all the tribes. The Indian idea of a holiday
is bonfires, processions, masquerading, especially the mimicry of different
kinds of animals, plenty of confused drumming and fifing, monotonous
dancing, kept up hour after hour without intermission, and, the most
important point of all, getting gradually and completely drunk. But he
attaches a kind of superstitious significance to these acts, and thinks that the
amusements appended to the Roman Catholic holidays as celebrated by the
descendants of the Portuguese, are also an essential part of the religious
ceremonies. But in this respect, the uneducated whites and half-breeds are
not a bit more enlightened than the poor, dull-souled Indian. All look upon
a religious holiday as an amusement, in which the priest takes the part of
director or chief actor.
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Almost every unusual event, independent of saints' days, is made the

occasion of a holiday by the sociable, easy-going people of the white and
Mameluco classes-- funerals, christenings, weddings, the arrival of
strangers, and so forth. The custom of "waking" the dead is also kept up. A
few days after I arrived, I was awoke in the middle of a dark, moist night
by Cardozo, to sit up with a neighbour whose wife had just died. I found
the body laid out on a table, with crucifix and lighted wax-candles at the
head, and the room full of women and girls squatted on stools or on their
haunches. The men were seated round the open door, smoking, drinking
coffee, and telling stories, the bereaved husband exerting himself much to
keep the people merry during the remainder of the night. The Ega people
seem to like an excuse for turning night into day; it is so cool and pleasant,
and they can sit about during these hours in the open air, clad as usual in
simple shirt and trousers, without streaming with perspiration.
The patron saint is Santa Theresa, the festival at whose anniversary lasts,
like most of the others, ten days. It begins very quietly with evening litanies
sung in the church, which are attended by the greater part of the population,
all clean and gaily dressed in calicos and muslins; the girls wearing
jasmines and other natural flowers in their hair, no other headdress being
worn by females of any class. The evenings pass pleasantly; the church is
lighted up with wax candles, and illuminated on the outside by a great
number of little oil lamps, rude clay cups, or halves of the thick rind of the
bitter orange, which are fixed all over the front. The congregation seem
very attentive, and the responses to the litany of Our Lady, sung by a
couple of hundred fresh female voices, ring agreeably through the still
village. Towards the end of the festival the fun commences. The managers
of the feast keep open houses, and dancing, drumming, tinkling of wire
guitars, and unbridled drinking by both sexes, old and young, are kept up
for a couple of days and a night with little intermission. The ways of the
people at these merry-makings, of which there are many in the course of the
year, always struck me as being not greatly different from those seen at an
old- fashioned village wake in retired parts of England. The old folks look
on and get very talkative over their cups; the children are allowed a little
extra indulgence in sitting up; the dull, reserved fellows become
loquacious, shake one another by the hand or slap each other on the back,
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discovering, all at once, what capital friends they are. The cantankerous
individual gets quarrelsome, and the amorous unusually loving. The Indian,
ordinarily so taciturn, finds the use of his tongue, and gives the minutest
details of some little dispute which he had with his master years ago, and
which everyone else had forgotten-- just as I have known lumpish
labouring men in England do, when half- fuddled. One cannot help
reflecting, when witnessing these traits of manners, on the similarity of
human nature everywhere, when classes are compared whose state of
culture and conditions of life are pretty nearly the same.
The Indians play a conspicuous part in the amusements at St. John's eve,
and at one or two other holidays which happen about that time of the
year--the end of June. In some of the sports the Portuguese element is
visible, in others the Indian, but it must be recollected that masquerading,
recitative singing, and so forth, are common originally to both peoples. A
large number of men and boys disguise themselves to represent different
grotesque figures, animals, or persons. Two or three dress themselves up as
giants, with the help of a tall framework. One enacts the part of the Caypor,
a kind of sylvan deity similar to the Curupira which I have before
mentioned. The belief in this being seems to be common to all the tribes of
the Tupi stock. According to the figure they dressed up at Ega, he is a
bulky, misshapen monster, with red skin and long shaggy red hair hanging
half way down his back. They believe that he has subterranean campos and
hunting grounds in the forest, well stocked with pacas and deer. He is not at
all an object of worship nor of fear, except to children, being considered
merely as a kind of hobgoblin. Most of the masquers make themselves up
as animals--bulls, deer, magoary storks, jaguars, and so forth, with the aid
of light frameworks, covered with old cloth dyed or painted and shaped
according to the object represented. Some of the imitations which I saw
were capital. One ingenious fellow arranged an old piece of canvas in the
form of a tapir, placed himself under it, and crawled about on all fours. He
constructed an elastic nose to resemble that of the tapir, and made, before
the doors of the principal residents, such a good imitation of the beast
grazing, that peals of laughter greeted him wherever he went. Another man
walked about solitarily, masked as a jabiru crane (a large animal standing
about four feet high), and mimicked the gait and habits of the bird
CHAPTER X 300
uncommonly well. One year an Indian lad imitated me, to the infinite
amusement of the townsfolk. He came the previous day to borrow of me an
old blouse and straw hat. I felt rather taken in when I saw him, on the night
of the performance, rigged out as an entomologist, with an insect net,
hunting bag, and pincushion. To make the imitation complete, he had
borrowed the frame of an old pair of spectacles, and went about with it
straddled over his nose. The jaguar now and then made a raid amongst the
crowd of boys who were dressed as deer, goats, and so forth. The masquers
kept generally together, moving from house to house, and the performances
were directed by an old musician, who sang the orders and explained to the
spectators what was going forward in a kind of recitative, accompanying
himself on a wire guitar. The mixture of Portuguese and Indian customs is
partly owing to the European immigrants in these parts having been
uneducated men, who, instead of introducing European civilisation, have
descended almost to the level of the Indians, and adopted some of their
practices. The performances take place in the evening, and occupy five or
six hours; bonfires are lighted along the grassy streets, and the families of
the better class are seated at their doors, enjoying the wild but
good-humoured fun.
We lived at Ega, during most part of the year, on turtle. The great
freshwater turtle of the Amazons grows on the upper river to an immense
size, a full-grown one measuring nearly three feet in length by two in
breadth, and is a load for the strongest Indian. Every house has a little pond,
called a curral (pen), in the backyard to hold a stock of the animals through
the season of dearth--the wet months; those who have a number of Indians
in their employ send them out for a month when the waters are low, to
collect a stock, and those who have not, purchasing their supply-- with
some difficulty, however, as they are rarely offered for sale. The price of
turtles, like that of all other articles of food, has risen greatly with the
introduction of steam-vessels. When I arrived in 1850, a middle-sized one
could be bought pretty readily for ninepence, but when I left in 1859, they
were with difficulty obtained at eight and nine shillings each. The
abundance of turtles, or rather the facility with which they can be found and
caught, varies with the amount of annual subsidence of the waters. When
the river sinks less than the average, they are scarce; but when more, they
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can be caught in plenty, the bays and shallow lagoons in the forest having
then only a small depth of water. The flesh is very tender, palatable, and
wholesome; but it is very cloying-- every one ends, sooner or later, by
becoming thoroughly surfeited. I became so sick of turtle in the course of
two years that I could not bear the smell of it, although at the same time
nothing else was to be had, and I was suffering actual hunger. The native
women cook it in various ways. The entrails are chopped up and made into
a delicious soup called sarapatel, which is generally boiled in the concave
upper shell of the animal used as a kettle. The tender flesh of the breast is
partially minced with farinha, and the breast shell then roasted over the fire,
making a very pleasant dish. Steaks cut from the breast and cooked with the
fat form another palatable dish. Large sausages are made of the thick-
coated stomach, which is filled with minced meat and boiled. The quarters
cooked in a kettle of Tucupi sauce form another variety of food. When
surfeited with turtle in all other shapes, pieces of the lean part roasted on a
spit and moistened only with vinegar make an agreeable change. The
smaller kind of turtle, the tracaja, which makes its appearance in the main
river, and lays its eggs a month earlier than the large species, is of less
utility to the inhabitants although its flesh is superior, on account of the
difficulty of keeping it alive; it survives captivity but a very few days,
although placed in the same ponds in which the large turtle keeps well for
two or three years.
Those who cannot hunt and fish for themselves, and whose stomachs refuse
turtle, are in a poor way at Ega. Fish, including many kinds of large and
delicious salmonidae, is abundant in the fine season; but each family fishes
only for itself, and has no surplus for sale. An Indian fisherman remains out
just long enough to draw what he thinks sufficient for a couple of days'
consumption. Vacca marina is a great resource in the wet season. It is
caught by harpooning, which requires much skill, or by strong nets made of
very thick hammock twine, and placed across narrow inlets. Very few
Europeans are able to eat the meat of this animal. Although there is a large
quantity of cattle in the neighbourhood of the town, and pasture is abundant
all the year round, beef can be had only when a beast is killed by accident.
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The most frequent cause of death is poisoning by drinking raw Tucupi, the
juice of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the
sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but
sometimes intentionally through spite when stray oxen devastate the
plantations of the poorer people. The juice, is almost certain to be drunk if
cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a
beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef
in the town. Although every one knows it cannot be wholesome, such is the
scarcity of meat and the uncontrollable desire to eat beef, that it is eagerly
bought, at least by those residents who come from other provinces where
beef is the staple article of food. Game of all kinds is scarce in the forest
near the town, except in the months of June and July, when immense
numbers of a large and handsome bird, Cuvier's toucan (Ramphastos
Cuvieri) make their appearance. They come in well-fed condition, and are
shot in such quantities that every family has the strange treat of stewed and
roasted toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the
banks of the Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of
several days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and
nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. I have still a lively
recollection of the pleasant effects which I once experienced from a diet of
fresh tapir meat for a few days, after having been brought to a painful state
of bodily and mental depression by a month's scanty rations of fish and
farinha.
We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega made from American flour brought
from Para, but it was sold at ninepence a pound. I was once two years
without tasting wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the gradual
deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper Amazons. Mandioca
meal is a poor, weak substitute for bread; it is deficient in gluten, and
consequently cannot be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, but is obliged
to be roasted in hard grains in order to keep any length of time. Cakes are
made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in a very few hours. A
superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca
(Manihot Aypi); it is generally made with a mixture of the starch of the root
and is therefore a much more wholesome article of food than the ordinary
sort which, on the Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been
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extracted by soaking in water. When we could get neither bread nor biscuit,
I found tapioca soaked in coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom
without butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return
voyage from Para, where it is imported in considerable quantity from
Liverpool. We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a
fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at
first strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it
up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. Sometimes we had
milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from each cow was
very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, although the
pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat. Fruit of the ordinary
tropical sorts could generally be had. I was quite surprised at the variety of
the wild kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them. Many of these
are utterly unknown in the regions nearer the Atlantic, being the peculiar
productions of this highly favoured, and little known, interior country.
Some have been planted by the natives in their clearings. The best was the
Jabuti-puhe, or tortoise-foot; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous
order. It is about the size of an ordinary apple; when ripe the rind is
moderately thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of
a very rich flavour. Next to this stands the Cuma (Collophora sp.) of which
there are two species, not unlike in appearance, small round Dears-- but the
rind is rather hard, and contains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part is almost
as delicious as that of the Jabuti-puhe. The Cuma tree is of moderate height,
and grows rather plentifully in the more elevated and drier situations. A
third kind is the Pama, which is a stone fruit, similar in colour and
appearance to the cherry but of oblong shape. The tree is one of the loftiest
in the forest, and has never, I believe, been selected for cultivation. To get
at the fruit the natives are obliged to climb to the height of about a hundred
feet, and cut off the heavily laden branches. I have already mentioned the
Umari and the Wishi: both these are now cultivated. The fatty, bitter pulp
which surrounds the large stony seeds of these fruits is eaten mixed with
farinha, and is very nourishing. Another cultivated fruit is the Puruma
(Puruma cecropiaefolia, Martius), a round juicy berry, growing in large
bunches and resembling grapes in taste. Another smaller kind, called
Puruma-i, grows wild in the forest close to Ega, and has not yet been
planted. The most singular of all these fruits is the Uiki, which is of oblong
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shape, and grows apparently crosswise on the end of its stalk. When ripe,
the thick green rind opens by a natural cleft across the middle, and
discloses an oval seed the size of a damascene plum, but of a vivid crimson
colour. This bright hue belongs to a thin coating of pulp which, when the
seeds are mixed in a plate of stewed bananas, gives to the mess a pleasant
rosy tint, and a rich creamy taste and consistence. Mingua (porridge) of
bananas flavoured and coloured with Uiki is a favourite dish at Ega. The
fruit, like most of the others here mentioned, ripens in January. Many
smaller fruits such as Wajuru (probably a species of Achras), the size of a
gooseberry, which grows singly and contains a sweet gelatinous pulp,
enclosing two large, shining black seeds; Cashipari-arapaa, an oblong
scarlet berry; two kinds of Bacuri, the Bacuri-siuma and the B. curua, sour
fruits of a bright lemon colour when ripe, and a great number of others, are
of less importance as articles of food.
The celebrated "Peach palm," Pupunha of the Tupi nations (Guilielma

speciosa), is a common tree at Ega. The name, I suppose, is in allusion to
the colour of the fruit, and not to its flavour, for it is dry and mealy, and in
taste may be compared to a mixture of chestnuts and cheese. Vultures
devour it eagerly, and come in quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is
ripe. Dogs will also eat it: I do not recollect seeing cats do the same,
although they go voluntarily to the woods to eat Tucuma, another kind of
palm fruit. The tree, as it grows in clusters beside the palm-thatched huts, is
a noble ornament, being, when full grown, from fifty to sixty feet in height
and often as straight as a scaffold-pole. A bunch of fruit when ripe is a load
for a strong man, and each tree bears several of them. The Pupunha grows
wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is one of those few vegetable productions
(including three kinds of mandioca and the American species of banana)
which the Indians have cultivated from time immemorial, and brought with
them in their original migration to Brazil. It is only, however, the more
advanced tribes who have kept up the cultivation. The superiority of the
fruit on the Solimoens to that grown on the Lower Amazons and in the
neighbourhood of Para is very striking. At Ega it is generally as large as a
full-sized peach, and when boiled, almost as mealy as a potato; while at
Para it is no bigger than a walnut, and the pulp is fibrous. Bunches of sterile
or seedless fruits sometimes occur in both districts. It is one of the principal
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articles of food at Ega when in season, and is boiled and eaten with treacle
or salt. A dozen of the seedless fruits makes a good nourishing meal for a
grown-up person. It is the general belief that there is more nutriment in
Pupunha than in fish or Vacca marina.
The seasons in the Upper Amazons region offer some points of difference
from those of the lower river and the district of Para, which two sections of
the country we have already seen also differ considerably. The year at Ega
is divided according to the rises and falls of the river, with which coincide
the wet and dry periods. All the principal transactions of life of the
inhabitants are regulated by these yearly recurring phenomena. The
peculiarity of this upper region consists in there being two rises and two
falls within the year. The great annual rise commences about the end of
February and continues to the middle of June, during which the rivers and
lakes, confined during the dry periods to their ordinary beds, gradually
swell and overflow all the lower lands. The inundation progresses gently
inch by inch, and is felt everywhere, even in the interior of the forests of the
higher lands, miles away from the river; as these are traversed by numerous
gullies, forming in the fine season dry, spacious dells, which become
gradually transformed by the pressure of the flood into broad creeks
navigable, by small boats under the shade of trees. All the countless
swarms of turtle of various species then leave the main river for the inland
pools; the sand-banks go under water, and the flocks of wading birds
migrate north to the upper waters of the tributaries which flow from that
direction, or to the Orinoco, which streams during the wet period of the
Amazons are enjoying the cloudless skies of their dry season. The families
of fishermen who have been employed during the previous four or five
months in harpooning and salting pirarucu and shooting turtle in the great
lakes, now return to the towns and villages-- their temporarily constructed
fishing establishments becoming gradually submerged with the sand islets
or beaches on which they were situated. This is the season, however, in
which the Brazil nut and wild cacao ripen, and many persons go out to
gather these harvests, remaining absent generally throughout the months of
March and April. The rains during this time are not continuous; they fall
very heavily at times, but rarely last so long at a stretch as twenty-four
hours, and many days intervene of pleasant, sunny weather. The sky,
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however, is generally overcast and gloomy, and sometimes a drizzling rain

falls.
About the first week in June the flood is at its highest; the water being then
about forty-five feet above its lowest point; but it varies in different years to
the extent of about fifteen feet. The "enchente," or flow, as it is called by
the natives, who believe this great annual movement of the waters to be of
the same nature as the tide towards the mouth of the Amazons, is then
completed, and all begin to look forward to the "vasante," or ebb. The
provision made for the dearth of the wet season is by this time pretty nearly
exhausted; fish is difficult to procure and many of the less provident
inhabitants have become reduced to a diet of fruits and farinha porridge.
The fine season begins with a few days of brilliant weather-- furious, hot
sun, with passing clouds. Idle men and women, tired of the dullness and
confinement of the flood season, begin to report, on returning from their
morning bath, the cessation of the flow-- as agoas estao paradas, "the
waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of
young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages
making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy
patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations
are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the
"migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle-- that is, their descent from the
inaccessible pools in the forest to the main river. Towards the middle of
July, the sand-banks begin to reappear above the surface of the waters, and
with this change come flocks of sandpipers and gulls, which latter make
known the advent of the fine season, as the cuckoo does of the European
spring-- uttering almost incessantly their plaintive cries as they fly about
over the shallow waters of sandy shores. Most of the gaily-plumaged birds
have now finished moulting, and begin to be more active in the forest.
The fall continues to the middle of October, with the interruption of a

partial rise called "repiquet" of a few inches in the midst of very dry
weather in September, caused by the swollen contribution of some large
affluent higher up the river. The amount of subsidence also varies
considerably, but it is never so great as to interrupt navigation by large
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vessels. The greater it is the more abundant is the season. Everyone is

prosperous when the waters are low; the shallow bays and pools being then
crowded with the concentrated population of fish and turtle. All the
people-- men, women, and children-- leave the villages and spend the few
weeks of glorious weather rambling over the vast undulating expanses of
sand in the middle of the Solimoens, fishing, hunting, collecting eggs of
turtle and plovers and thoroughly enjoying themselves. The inhabitants
pray always for a "vasante grande," or great ebb.
From the middle of October to the beginning of January, the second wet
season prevails. The rise is sometimes not more than about fifteen feet, but
it is, in some years, much more extensive, laying the large sand islands
under water before the turtle eggs are hatched. In one year, while I resided
at Ega, this second annual inundation reached to within ten feet of the
highest water point as marked by the stains on the trunks of trees by the
river side.
The second dry season comes on in January, and lasts throughout February.
The river sinks sometimes to the extent of a few feet only, but one year
(1856) I saw it ebb to within about five feet of its lowest point in
September. This is called the summer of the Umari, "Verao do Umari,"
after the fruit of this name already described, which ripens at this season.
When the fall is great, this is the best time to catch turtles. In the year above
mentioned, nearly all the residents who had a canoe, and could work a
paddle, went out after them in the month of February, and about 2000 were
caught in the course of a few days. It appears that they had been arrested in
their migration towards the interior pools of the forest by the sudden drying
up of the water-courses, and so had become easy prey.
Thus the Ega year is divided into four seasons; two of dry weather and
falling waters, and two of the reverse. Besides this variety, there is, in the
month of May, a short season of very cold weather, a most surprising
circumstance in this otherwise uniformly sweltering climate. This is caused
by the continuance of a cold wind, which blows from the south over the
humid forests that extend without interruption from north of the equator to
the eighteenth parallel of latitude in Bolivia. I had, unfortunately, no
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thermometer with me at Ega-- the only one I brought with me from

England having been lost at Para. The temperature is so much lowered that
fishes die in the river Teffe, and are cast in considerable quantities on its
shores. The wind is not strong, but it brings cloudy weather, and lasts from
three to five or six days in each year. The inhabitants all suffer much from
the cold, many of them wrapping themselves up with the warmest clothing
they can get (blankets are here unknown), and shutting themselves indoors
with a charcoal fire lighted. I found, myself, the change of temperature
most delightful, and did not require extra clothing. It was a bad time,
however, for my pursuit, as birds and insects all betook themselves to
places of concealment, and remained inactive. The period during which this
wind prevails is called the "tempo da friagem," or the season of coldness.
The phenomenon, I presume, is to be accounted for by the fact that in May
it is winter in the southern temperate zone, and that the cool currents of air
travelling thence northwards towards the equator become only moderately
heated in their course, owing to the intermediate country being a vast,
partially-flooded plain covered with humid forests.
CHAPTER XI
EXCURSIONS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA
The River Teffe--Rambles through Groves on the Beach--Excursion to the

House of a Passe Chieftain--Character and Customs of the Passe
Tribe--First Excursion: Sand Islands of the Solimoens-- Habits of Great
River Turtle--Second Excursion:Turtle-fishing in the Inland Pools--Third
Excursion: Hunting-rambles with Natives in the Forest--Return to Ega
I WILL now proceed to give some account of the more interesting of my

shorter excursions in the neighbourhood of Ega. The incidents of the longer
voyages, which occupied each several months, will be narrated in a
separate chapter.
The settlement, as before described, is built on a small tract of cleared land

at the lower or eastern end of the lake, six or seven miles from the main
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Amazons, with which the lake communicates by a narrow channel. On the

opposite shore of the broad expanse stands a small village, called Nogueira,
the houses of which are not visible from Ega, except on very clear days; the
coast on the Nogueira side is high, and stretches away into the grey
distance towards the southwest. The upper part of the river Teffe is not
visited by the Ega people, on account of its extreme unhealthiness, and its
barrenness in sarsaparilla and other wares. To Europeans it would seem a
most surprising thing that the people of a civilised settlement, a hundred
and seventy years old, should still be ignorant of the course of the river on
whose banks their native place, for which they proudly claim the title of
city, is situated. It would be very difficult for a private individual to explore
it, as the necessary number of Indian paddlers could not be obtained. I
knew only one person who had ascended the Teffe to any considerable
distance, and he was not able to give me a distinct account of the river. The
only tribe known to live on its banks are the Catauishis, a people who
perforate their lips all round, and wear rows of slender sticks in the holes:
their territory lies between the Purus and the Jurua, embracing both shores
of the Teffe. A large, navigable stream, the Bararua, enters the lake from
the west, about thirty miles above Ega; the breadth of the lake is much
contracted a little below the mouth of this tributary, but it again expands
further south, and terminates abruptly where the Teffe proper, a narrow
river with a strong current, forms its head water.
The whole of the country for hundreds of miles is covered with picturesque
but pathless forests, and there are only two roads along which excursions
can be made by land from Ega. One is a narrow hunter's track, about two
miles in length, which traverses the forest in the rear of the settlement. The
other is an extremely pleasant path along the beach to the west of the town.
This is practicable only in the dry season, when a flat strip of white sandy
beach is exposed at the foot of the high wooded banks of the lake, covered
with trees, which, as there is no underwood, form a spacious shady grove. I
rambled daily, during many weeks of each successive dry season, along this
delightful road. The trees, many of which are myrtles and wild Guavas,
with smooth yellow stems, were in flower at this time; and the rippling
waters of the lake, under the cool shade, everywhere bordered the path. The
place was the resort of kingfishers, green and blue tree-creepers,
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purple-headed tanagers, and hummingbirds. Birds generally, however, were

not numerous. Every tree was tenanted by Cicadas, the reedy notes of
which produced that loud, jarring, insect music which is the general
accompaniment of a woodland ramble in a hot climate. One species was
very handsome, having wings adorned with patches of bright green and
scarlet. It was very common-- sometimes three or four tenanting a single
tree, clinging as usual to the branches. On approaching a tree thus peopled,
a number of little jets of a clear liquid would be seen squirted from aloft. I
have often received the well-directed discharge full on my face; but the
liquid is harmless, having a sweetish taste, and is ejected by the insect from
the anus, probably in self-defence, or from fear. The number and variety of
gaily-tinted butterflies, sporting about in this grove on sunny days, were so
great that the bright moving flakes of colour gave quite a character to the
physiognomy of the place. It was impossible to walk far without disturbing
flocks of them from the damp sand at the edge of the water, where they
congregated to imbibe the moisture. They were of almost all colours, sizes,
and shapes: I noticed here altogether eighty species, belonging to
twenty-two different genera. It is a singular fact that, with very few
exceptions, all the individuals of these various species thus sporting in
sunny places were of the male sex; their partners, which are much more
soberly dressed and immensely less numerous than the males, being
confined to the shades of the woods. Every afternoon, as the sun was
getting low, I used to notice these gaudy sunshine-loving swains trooping
off to the forest, where I suppose they would find their sweethearts and
wives. The most abundant, next to the very common sulphur-yellow and
orange-coloured kinds, were about a dozen species of Eunica, which are of
large size, and are conspicuous from their liveries of glossy dark-blue and
purple. A superbly-adorned creature, the Callithea Markii, having wings of
a thick texture, coloured sapphire-blue and orange, was only an occasional
visitor. On certain days, when the weather was very calm, two small gilded-
green species (Symmachia Trochilus and Colubris) literally swarmed on the
sands, their glittering wings lying wide open on the flat surface. The beach
terminates, eight miles beyond Ega, at the mouth of a rivulet; the character
of the coast then changes, the river banks being masked by a line of low
islets amid a labyrinth of channels.
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In all other directions my very numerous excursions were by water; the

most interesting of those made in the immediate neighbourhood were to the
houses of Indians on the banks of retired creeks-- an account of one of these
trips will suffice.
On the 23rd of May, 1850, I visited, in company with Antonio Cardozo, the
Delegado, a family of the Passe tribe, who live near the head waters of the
Igarape, which flows from the south into the Teffe, entering it at Ega. The
creek is more than a quarter of a mile broad near the town, but a few miles
inland it gradually contracts, until it becomes a mere rivulet flowing
through a broad dell in the forest. When the river rises it fills this dell; the
trunks of the lofty trees then stand many feet deep in the water, and small
canoes are able to travel the distance of a day's journey under the shade,
regular paths or alleys being cut through the branches and lower trees. This
is the general character of the country of the Upper Amazons; a land of
small elevation and abruptly undulated, the hollows forming narrow valleys
in the dry months, and deep navigable creeks in the wet months. In retired
nooks on the margins of these shady rivulets, a few families or small hordes
of aborigines still linger in nearly their primitive state, the relicts of their
once numerous tribes. The family we intended to visit on this trip was that
of Pedro-uassu (Peter the Great, or Tall Peter), an old chieftain or Tushaua
of the Passes.
We set out at sunrise, in a small igarite, manned by six young Indian

paddlers. After travelling about three miles along the broad portion of the
creek-- which, being surrounded by woods, had the appearance of a large
pool-- we came to a part where our course seemed to be stopped by an
impenetrable hedge of trees and bushes. We were some time before finding
the entrance, but when fairly within the shades, a remarkable scene
presented itself. It was my first introduction to these singular waterpaths. A
narrow and tolerably straight alley stretched away for a long distance
before us; on each side were the tops of bushes and young trees, forming a
kind of border to the path, and the trunks of the tall forest trees rose at
irregular intervals from the water, their crowns interlocking far over our
heads, and forming a thick shade. Slender air roots hung down in clusters,
and looping sipos dangled from the lower branches; bunches of grass,
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tillandsiae, and ferns sat in the forks of the larger boughs, and the trunks of
trees near the water had adhering to them round dried masses of freshwater
sponges. There was no current perceptible, and the water was stained of a
dark olive-brown hue, but the submerged stems could be seen through it to
a great depth. We travelled at good speed for three hours along this shady
road-- the distance of Pedro's house from Ega being about twenty miles.
When the paddlers rested for a time, the stillness and gloom of the place
became almost painful: our voices waked dull echoes as we conversed, and
the noise made by fishes occasionally whipping the surface of the water
was quite startling. A cool, moist, clammy air pervaded the sunless shade.
The breadth of the wooded valley, at the commencement, is probably more

than half a mile, and there is a tolerably clear view for a considerable
distance on each side of the water-path through the irregular colonnade of
trees; other paths also, in this part, branch off right and left from the
principal road, leading to the scattered houses of Indians on the mainland.
The dell contracts gradually towards the head of the rivulet, and the forest
then becomes denser; the waterpath also diminishes in width, and becomes
more winding, on account of the closer growth of the trees. The boughs of
some are stretched forth at no great height over one's head, and are seen to
be loaded with epiphytes; one orchid I noticed particularly, on account of
its bright yellow flowers growing at the end of flower-stems several feet
long. Some of the trunks, especially those of palms, close beneath their
crowns, were clothed with a thick mass of glossy shield-shaped Pothos
plants, mingled with ferns. Arrived at this part we were, in fact, in the heart
of the virgin forest. We heard no noises of animals in the trees, and saw
only one bird, the sky-blue chatterer, sitting alone on a high branch. For
some distance the lower vegetation was so dense that the road runs under
an arcade of foliage, the branches having been cut away only sufficiently to
admit of the passage of a small canoe. These thickets are formed chiefly of
bamboos, whose slender foliage and curving stems arrange themselves in
elegant, feathery bowers; but other social plants --slender green climbers
with tendrils so eager in aspiring to grasp the higher boughs that they seem
to be endowed almost with animal energy, and certain low trees having
large elegantly-veined leaves-- contribute also to the jungly masses.
Occasionally we came upon an uprooted tree lying across the path, its
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voluminous crown still held up by thick cables of sipo, connecting it with

standing trees; a wide circuit had to be made in these cases, and it was
sometimes difficult to find the right path again.
At length we arrived at our journey's end. We were then in a very dense and
gloomy part of the forest-- we could see, however, the dry land on both
sides of the creek, and to our right a small sunny opening appeared, the
landing place to the native dwellings. The water was deep close to the bank,
and a clean pathway ascended from the shady port to the buildings, which
were about a furlong distant. My friend Cardozo was godfather to a
grandchild of Pedro-uassu, whose daughter had married an Indian settled in
Ega. He had sent word to the old man that he intended to visit him: we were
therefore expected.
As we landed, Pedro-uassu himself came down to the port to receive us, our
arrival having been announced by the barking of dogs. He was a tall and
thin old man, with a serious, but benignant expression of countenance, and
a manner much freer from shyness and distrust than is usual with Indians.
He was clad in a shirt of coarse cotton cloth, dyed with murishi, and
trousers of the same material turned up to the knee. His features were
sharply delineated-- more so than in any Indian face I had yet seen; the lips
thin and the nose rather high and compressed. A large, square, blue-black
tattooed patch occupied the middle of his face, which, as well as the other
exposed parts of his body, was of a light reddish-tan colour, instead of the
usual coppery- brown hue. He walked with an upright, slow gait, and on
reaching us saluted Cardozo with the air of a man who wished it to be
understood that he was dealing with an equal. My friend introduced me,
and I was welcomed in the same grave, ceremonious manner. He seemed to
have many questions to ask, but they were chiefly about Senora Felippa,
Cardozo's Indian housekeeper at Ega, and were purely complimentary. This
studied politeness is quite natural to Indians of the advanced agricultural
tribes. The language used was Tupi-- I heard no other spoken all the day. It
must be borne in mind that Pedro-uassu had never had much intercourse
with whites; he was, although baptised, a primitive Indian who had always
lived in retirement, the ceremony of baptism having been gone through, as
it generally is by the aborigines, simply from a wish to stand well with the
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whites.
Arrived at the house, we were welcomed by Pedro's wife: a thin, wrinkled,

active old squaw, tattooed in precisely the same way as her husband. She
also had sharp features, but her manner was more cordial and quicker than
that of her husband: she talked much, and with great inflection of voice;
while the tones of the old man were rather drawling and querulous. Her
clothing was a long petticoat of thick cotton cloth, and a very short
chemise, not reaching to her waist. I was rather surprised to find the
grounds around the establishment in neater order than in any sitio, even of
civilised people, I had yet seen on the Upper Amazons; the stock of utensils
and household goods of all sorts was larger, and the evidences of regular
industry and plenty more numerous than one usually perceives in the farms
of civilised Indians and whites. The buildings were of the same
construction as those of the humbler settlers in all other parts of the
country. The family lived in a large, oblong, open shed built under the
shade of trees. Two smaller buildings, detached from the shed and having
mud-walls with low doorways, contained apparently the sleeping
apartments of different members of the large household. A small mill for
grinding sugar-cane, having two cylinders of hard notched wood, wooden
troughs, and kettles for boiling the guarapa (cane juice) to make treacle,
stood under a separate shed, and near it was a large enclosed mud-house for
poultry. There was another hut and shed a short distance off, inhabited by a
family dependent on Pedro, and a narrow pathway through the luxuriant
woods led to more dwellings of the same kind. There was an abundance of
fruit trees around the place, including the never-failing banana, with its
long, broad, soft green leaf- blades, and groups of full-grown Pupunhas, or
peach palms. There was also a large number of cotton and coffee trees.
Among the utensils I noticed baskets of different shapes, made of flattened
maranta stalks, and dyed various colours. The making of these is an
original art of the Passes, but I believe it is also practised by other tribes,
for I saw several in the houses of semi- civilised Indians on the Tapajos.
There were only three persons in the house besides the old couple, the rest
of the people being absent; several came in, however, in the course of the
day. One was a daughter of Pedro's, who had an oval tattooed spot over her
CHAPTER XI 315
mouth; the second was a young grandson; and the third the son-in-law from
Ega, Cardozo's compadre. The old woman was occupied, when we entered,
in distilling spirits from cara, an edible root similar to the potato, by means
of a clay still, which had been manufactured by herself. The liquor had a
reddish tint, but not a very agreeable flavour. A cup of it, warm from the
still, however, was welcome after our long journey. Cardozo liked it,
emptied his cup, and replenished it in a very short time. The old lady was
very talkative, and almost fussy in her desire to please her visitors. We sat
in tucum hammocks, suspended between the upright posts of the shed. The
young woman with the blue mouth-- who, although married, was as shy as
any young maiden of her race--soon became employed in scalding and
plucking fowls for the dinner near the fire on the ground at the other end of
the dwelling. The son-in- law, Pedro-uassu, and Cardozo now began a long
conversation on the subject of their deceased wife, daughter, and comadre.
[Co- mother; the term expressing the relationship of a mother to the
godfather of her child.] It appeared she had died of consumption- -"tisica,"
as they called it, a word adopted by the Indians from the Portuguese. The
widower repeated over and over again, in nearly the same words, his
account of her illness, Pedro chiming in like a chorus, and Cardozo
moralising and condoling. I thought the cauim (grog) had a good deal to do
with the flow of talk and warmth of feeling of all three; the widower drank
and wailed until he became maundering, and finally fell asleep.I left them
talking, and took a long ramble into the forest, Pedro sending his grandson,
a smiling well-behaved lad of about fourteen years of age, to show me the
paths, my companion taking with him his Zarabatana, or blow-gun. This
instrument is used by all the Indian tribes on the Upper Amazons. It is
generally nine or ten feet long, and is made of two separate lengths of
wood, each scooped out so as to form one-half of the tube. To do this with
the necessary accuracy requires an enormous amount of patient labour, and
considerable mechanical ability, the tools used being simply the incisor
teeth of the Paca and Cutia. The two half tubes, when finished, are secured
together by a very close and tight spirally-wound strapping, consisting of
long flat strips of Jacitara, or the wood of the climbing palm-tree; and the
whole is smeared afterwards with black wax, the production of a Melipona
bee. The pipe tapers towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouthpiece,
made of wood, is fitted in the broad end. A full- sized Zarabatana is heavy,
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and can only be used by an adult Indian who has had great practice. The
young lads learn to shoot with smaller and lighter tubes. When Mr. Wallace
and I had lessons at Barra in the use of the blow-gun, of Julio, a Juri Indian,
then in the employ of Mr. Hauxwell, an English bird- collector, we found it
very difficult to hold steadily the long tubes. The arrows are made from the
hard rind of the leaf-stalks of certain palms, thin strips being cut, and
rendered as sharp as needles by scraping the ends with a knife or the tooth
of an animal. They are winged with a little oval mass of samauma silk
(from the seed-vessels of the silk-cotton tree, Eriodendron samauma),
cotton being too heavy. The ball of samauma should fit to a nicety the bore
of the blowgun; when it does so, the arrow can be propelled with such force
by the breath that it makes a noise almost as loud as a pop-gun on flying
from the muzzle. My little companion was armed with a quiver full of these
little missiles, a small number of which, sufficient for the day's sport, were
tipped with the fatal Urari poison. The quiver was an ornamental affair, the
broad rim being made of highly-polished wood of a rich cherry-red colour
(the Moira-piranga, or redwood of the Japura). The body was formed of
neatly-plaited strips of Maranta stalks, and the belt by which it was
suspended from the shoulder was decorated with cotton fringes and tassels.
We walked about two miles along a well-trodden pathway, through high

caapoeira (second-growth forest). A large proportion of the trees were
Melastomas, which bore a hairy yellow fruit, nearly as large and as well
flavoured as our gooseberry. The season, however, was nearly over for
them. The road was bordered every inch of the way by a thick bed of
elegant Lycopodiums. An artificial arrangement of trees and bushes could
scarcely have been made to wear so finished an appearance as this naturally
decorated avenue. The path at length terminated at a plantation of
mandioca, the largest I had yet seen since I left the neighbourhood of Para.
There were probably ten acres of cleared land, and part of the ground was
planted with Indian corn, watermelons, and sugar cane. Beyond this field
there was only a faint hunter's track, leading towards the untrodden interior.
My companion told me he had never heard of there being any inhabitants in
that direction (the south). We crossed the forest from this place to another
smaller clearing, and then walked, on our road home, through about two
miles of caapoeira of various ages, the sites of old plantations. The only
CHAPTER XI 317
fruits of our ramble were a few rare insects and a Japu (Cassicus cristatus),
a handsome bird with chestnut and saffron-coloured plumage, which
wanders through the tree-tops in large flocks. My little companion brought
this down from a height which I calculated at thirty yards. The blow-gun,
however, in the hands of an expert adult Indian, can be made to propel
arrows so as to kill at a distance of fifty and sixty yards. The aim is most
certain when the tube is held vertically, or nearly so. It is a far more useful
weapon in the forest than a gun, for the report of a firearm alarms the whole
flock of birds or monkeys feeding on a tree, while the silent poisoned dart
brings the animals down one by one until the sportsman has a heap of slain
by his side. None but the stealthy Indian can use it effectively. The poison,
which must be fresh to kill speedily, is obtained only of the Indians who
live beyond the cataracts of the rivers flowing from the north, especially the
Rio Negro and the Japura. Its principal ingredient is the wood of the
Strychnos toxifera, a tree which does not grow in the humid forests of the
river plains. A most graphic account of the Urari, and of an expedition
undertaken in search of the tree in Guiana, has been given by Sir Robert
Schomburgk. [Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii. P. 411.]
When we returned to the house after mid-day, Cardozo was still sipping
cauim, and now looked exceedingly merry. It was fearfully hot; the good
fellow sat in his hammock with a cuya full of grog in his hands; his broad
honest face all of a glow, and the perspiration streaming down his
uncovered breast, the unbuttoned shirt having slipped half-way over his
broad shoulders. Pedro- uassu had not drunk much; he was noted, as I
afterwards learned, for his temperance. But he was standing up as I had left
him two hours previous, talking to Cardozo in the same monotonous tones,
the conversation apparently not having flagged all the time. I had never
heard so much talking amongst Indians. The widower was asleep; the
stirring, managing old lady with her daughter were preparing dinner. This,
which was ready soon after I entered, consisted of boiled fowls and rice,
seasoned with large green peppers and lemon juice, and piles of new,
fragrant farinha and raw bananas. It was served on plates of English
manufacture on a tupe, or large plaited rush mat, such as is made by the
natives pretty generally on the Amazons. Three or four other Indians, men
and women of middle age, now made their appearance, and joined in the
CHAPTER XI 318
meal. We all sat round on the floor: the women, according to custom, not
eating until after the men had done. Before sitting down, our host
apologised in his usual quiet, courteous manner for not having knives and
forks; Cardozo and I ate by the aid of wooden spoons, the Indians using
their fingers. The old man waited until we were all served before he himself
commenced. At the end of the meal, one of the women brought us water in
a painted clay basin of Indian manufacture, and a clean coarse cotton
napkin, that we might wash our hands.
The horde of Passes of which Pedro-uassu was Tushaua or chieftain, was at

this time reduced to a very small number of individuals. The disease
mentioned in the last chapter had for several generations made great havoc
among them; many had also entered the service of whites at Ega, and, of
late years, intermarriages with whites, half-castes, and civilised Indians had
been frequent. The old man bewailed the fate of his race to Cardozo with
tears in his eyes. "The people of my nation," he said," have always been
good friends to the Cariwas (whites), but before my grandchildren are old
like me the name of Passe will be forgotten." In so far as the Passes have
amalgamated with European immigrants or their descendants, and become
civilised Brazilian citizens, there can scarcely be ground for lamenting their
extinction as a nation; but it fills one with regret to learn how many die
prematurely of a disease which seems to arise on their simply breathing the
same air as the whites. The original territory of the tribe must have been of
large extent, for Passes are said to have been found by the early Portuguese
colonists on the Rio Negro; an ancient settlement on that river, Barcellos,
having been peopled by them when it was first established; and they
formed also part of the original population of Fonte-boa on the Solimoens.
Their hordes were therefore, spread over a region 400 miles in length from
cast to west. It is probable, however, that they have been confounded by the
colonists with other neighbouring tribes who tattoo their faces in a similar
manner. The extinct tribe of Yurimauas, or Sorimoas, from which the river
Solimoens derives its name, according to traditions extant at Ega,
resembled the Passes in their slender figures and friendly disposition. These
tribes (with others lying between them) peopled the banks of the main river
and its by- streams from the mouth of the Rio Negro to Peru. True Passes
existed in their primitive state on the banks of the Issa, 240 miles to the
CHAPTER XI 319
west of Ega, within the memory of living persons. The only large body of
them now extant are located on the Japura, at a place distant about 150
miles from Ega: the population of this horde, however, does not exceed,
from what I could learn, 300 or 400 persons. I think it probable that the
lower part of the Japura and its extensive delta lands formed the original
home of this gentle tribe of Indians.
The Passes are always spoken of in this country as the most advanced of all
the Indian nations in the Amazons region. Under what influences this tribe
has become so strongly modified in mental, social, and bodily features it is
hard to divine. The industrious habits, fidelity, and mildness of disposition
of the Passes, their docility and, it may be added, their personal beauty,
especially of the children and women, made them from the first very
attractive to the Portuguese colonists. They were, consequently, enticed in
great number from their villages and brought to Barra and other settlements
of the whites. The wives of governors and military officers from Europe
were always eager to obtain children for domestic servants; the girls being
taught to sew, cook, weave hammocks, manufacture pillow-lace, and so
forth. They have been generally treated with kindness, especially by the
educated families in the settlements. It is pleasant to have to record that I
never heard of a deed of violence perpetrated, on the one side or the other,
in the dealings between European settlers and this noble tribe of savages.
Very little is known of the original customs of the Passes. The mode of life
of our host Pedro-uassu did not differ much from that of the civilised
Mamelucos; but he and his people showed a greater industry, and were
more open, cheerful, and generous in their dealings than many half-castes.
The authority of Pedro, like that of the Tushauas, generally was exercised
in a mild manner. These chieftains appear able to command the services of
their subjects, since they furnish men to the Brazilian authorities when
requested; but none of them, even those of the most advanced tribes, appear
to make use of this authority for the accumulation of property-- the service
being exacted chiefly in time of war. Had the ambition of the chiefs of
some of these industrious tribes been turned to the acquisition of wealth,
probably we should have seen indigenous civilised nations in the heart of
South America similar to those found on the Andes of Peru and Mexico. It
CHAPTER XI 320
is very probable that the Passes adopted from the first to some extent the
manners of the whites. Ribeiro, a Portuguese official who travelled in these
regions in 1774-5, and wrote an account of his journey, relates that they
buried their dead in large earthenware vessels (a custom still observed
among other tribes on the Upper Amazons), and that, as to their marriages,
the young men earned their brides by valiant deeds in war. He also states
that they possessed a cosmogony in which the belief that the sun was a
fixed body, with the earth revolving around it, was a prominent feature. He
says, moreover, that they believed in a Creator of all things; a future state
of rewards and punishments, and so forth. These notions are so far in
advance of the ideas of all other tribes of Indians, and so little likely to have
been conceived and perfected by a people having no written language or
leisured class, that we must suppose them to have been derived by the
docile Passes from some early missionary or traveller. I never found that
the Passes had more curiosity or activity of intellect than other Indians. No
trace of a belief in a future state exists amongst Indians who have not had
much intercourse with the civilised settlers, and even amongst those who
have it is only a few of the more gifted individuals who show any curiosity
on the subject. Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the
want of a theory of the soul, and of the relations of man to the rest of
Nature or to the Creator. But is it not so with totally uneducated and
isolated people even in the most highly civilised parts of the world? The
good qualities of the Passes belong to the moral part of the character: they
lead a contented, unambitious, and friendly life, a quiet, domestic, orderly
existence, varied by occasional drinking bouts and summer excursions.
They are not so shrewd, energetic, and masterful as the Mundurucus, but
they are more easily taught, because their disposition is more yielding than
that of the Mundurucus or any other tribe.
We started on our return to Ega at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon.

Our generous entertainers loaded us with presents. There was scarcely
room for us to sit in the canoe, as they had sent down ten large bundles of
sugar-cane, four baskets of farinha, three cedar planks, a small hamper of
coffee, and two heavy bunches of bananas. After we were embarked, the
old lady came with a parting gift for me--a huge bowl of smoking hot
banana porridge. I was to eat it on the road "to keep my stomach warm."
CHAPTER XI 321
Both stood on the bank as we pushed off, and gave us their adios: "Ikudna
Tupana eirum" (Go with God)-- a form of salutation taught by the old Jesuit
missionaries. We had a most uncomfortable passage, for Cardozo was quite
tipsy, and had not attended to the loading of the boat. The cargo had been
placed too far forward, and to make matters worse, my heavy friend
obstinately insisted on sitting astride on the top of the pile, instead of taking
his place near the stern, singing from his perch a most indecent love-song,
and disregarding the inconvenience of having to bend down almost every
minute to pass under the boughs of hanging sipos as we sped rapidly along.
The canoe leaked but not, at first, alarmingly. Long before sunset, darkness
began to close in under those gloomy shades, and our steersman could not
avoid now and then running the boat into the thicket. The first time this
happened a piece was broken off the square prow (rodella); the second time
we got squeezed between two trees. A short time after this latter accident,
being seated near the stern with my feet on the bottom of the boat, I felt
rather suddenly the cold water above my ankles. A few minutes more and
we should have sunk, for a seam had been opened forward under the pile of
sugar-cane. Two of us began to bale, and by the most strenuous efforts
managed to keep afloat without throwing overboard our cargo. The Indians
were obliged to paddle with extreme slowness to avoid shipping water, as
the edge of our prow was nearly level with the surface; but Cardozo was
now persuaded to change his seat. The sun set, the quick twilight passed,
and the moon soon after began to glimmer through the thick canopy of
foliage. The prospect of being swamped in this hideous solitude was by no
means pleasant, although I calculated on the chance of swimming to a tree
and finding a nice snug place in the fork of some large bough wherein to
pass the night.
At length, after four hours' tedious progress, we suddenly emerged on the

open stream where the moonlight glittered in broad sheets on the gently
rippling waters. A little extra care was now required in paddling. The
Indians plied their strokes with the greatest nicety; the lights of Ega (the oil
lamps in the houses) soon appeared beyond the black wall of forest, and in
a short time we leapt safely ashore.
CHAPTER XI 322
A few months after the excursion just narrated, I accompanied Cardozo in

many wanderings on the Solimoens, during which he visited the praias
(sand-islands), the turtle pools in the forests, and the by-streams and lakes
of the great desert river. His object was mainly to superintend the business
of digging up turtle eggs on the sandbanks, having been elected
commandante for the year by the municipal council of Ega, of the "praia
real" (royal sand-island) of Shimuni, the one lying nearest to Ega. There are
four of these royal praias within the Ega district (a distance of 150 miles
from the town), all of which are visited annually by the Ega people for the
purpose of collecting eggs and extracting oil from their yolks Each has its
commander, whose business is to make arrangements for securing to every
inhabitant an equal chance in the egg harvest by placing sentinels to protect
the turtles whilst laying, and so forth. The pregnant turtles descend from the
interior pools to the main river in July and August, before the outlets dry
up, and then seek in countless swarms their favourite sand islands; for it is
only a few praias that are selected by them out of the great number existing.
The young animals remain in the pools throughout the dry season. These
breeding places of turtles then lie twenty to thirty or more feet above the
level of the river, and are accessible only by cutting roads through the
dense forest.
We left Ega on our first trip to visit the sentinels while the turtles were yet
laying, on the 26th of September. Our canoe was a stoutly built igarite,
arranged for ten paddlers, and having a large arched toldo at the stern under
which three persons could sleep pretty comfortably. Emerging from the
Teffe we descended rapidly on the swift current of the Solimoens to the
south- eastern or lower end of the large wooded island of Baria, which here
divides the river into two great channels. We then paddled across to
Shimuni, which lies in the middle of the northeasterly channel, reaching the
commencement of the praia an hour before sunset. The island proper is
about three miles long and half a mile broad: the forest with which it is
covered rises to an immense and uniform height, and presents all round a
compact, impervious front. Here and there a singular tree, called Pao
mulatto (mulatto wood), with polished dark-green trunk, rose
conspicuously among the mass of vegetation. The sandbank, which lies at
the upper end of the island, extends several miles and presents an irregular,
CHAPTER XI 323
and in some parts, strongly-waved surface, with deep hollows and ridges.
When upon it, one feels as though treading an almost boundless field of
sand, for towards the southeast, where no forest line terminates the view,
the white, rolling plain stretches away to the horizon. The north-easterly
channel of the river lying between the sands and the further shore of the
river is at least two miles in breadth; the middle one, between the two
islands, Shimuni and Baria, is not much less than a mile.
We found the two sentinels lodged in a corner of the praia, where it

commences at the foot of the towering forest wall of the island, having built
for themselves a little rancho with poles and palm-leaves. Great precautions
are obliged to be taken to avoid disturbing the sensitive turtles, who,
previous to crawling ashore to lay, assemble in great shoals off the
sandbank. The men, during this time, take care not to show themselves and
warn off any fishermen who wishes to pass near the place. Their fires are
made in a deep hollow near the borders of the forest, so that the smoke may
not be visible. The passage of a boat through the shallow waters where the
animals are congregated, or the sight of a man or a fire on the sandbank,
would prevent the turtles from leaving the water that night to lay their eggs,
and if the causes of alarm were repeated once or twice, they would forsake
the praia for some other quieter place. Soon after we arrived, our men were
sent with the net to catch a supply of fish for supper. In half an hour, four or
five large basketsful of Acari were brought in. The sun set soon after our
meal was cooked; we were then obliged to extinguish the fire and remove
our supper materials to the sleeping ground, a spit of sand about a mile off--
this course being necessary on account of the mosquitoes which swarm at
night on the borders of the forest.
One of the sentinels was a taciturn, morose-looking, but sober and honest
Indian, named Daniel; the other was a noted character of Ega, a little wiry
Mameluco, named Carepira (Fish-hawk)-- known for his waggery,
propensity for strong drink, and indebtedness to Ega traders. Both were
intrepid canoemen and huntsmen, and both perfectly at home anywhere in
these fearful wastes of forest and water. Carepira had his son with him-- a
quiet little lad of about nine years of age. These men in a few minutes
constructed a small shed with four upright poles and leaves of the
CHAPTER XI 324
arrow-grass, under which Cardozo and I slung our hammocks. We did not
go to sleep, however, until after midnight-- for when supper was over, we
lay about on the sand with a flask of rum in our midst and whiled away the
still hours in listening to Carepira's stories.
I rose from my hammock by daylight, shivering with cold; a praia, on

account of the great radiation of heat in the night from the sand, being
towards the dawn the coldest place that can be found in this climate.
Cardozo and the men were already up watching the turtles. The sentinels
had erected for this purpose a stage about fifty feet high, on a tall tree near
their station, the ascent to which was by a roughly-made ladder of woody
lianas. They are enabled, by observing the turtles from this watchtower, to
ascertain the date of successive deposits of eggs, and thus guide the
commandante in fixing the time for the general invitation to the Ega people.
The turtles lay their eggs by night, leaving the water when nothing disturbs
them, in vast crowds, and crawling to the central and highest part of the
praia. These places are, of course, the last to go under water when, in
unusually wet seasons, the river rises before the eggs are hatched by the
heat of the sand. One could almost believe from this that the animals used
forethought in choosing a place; but it is simply one of those many
instances in animals where unconscious habit has the same result as
conscious prevision. The hours between midnight and dawn are the busiest.
The turtles excavate with their broad, webbed paws, deep holes in the fine
sand-- the first corner, in each case, making a pit about three feet deep,
laying its eggs (about 120 in number) and covering them with sand; the
next making its deposit at the top of that of its predecessor, and so on until
every pit is full. The whole body of turtles frequenting a praia does not
finish laying in less than fourteen or fifteen days, even when there is no
interruption. When all have done, the area (called by the Brazilians
taboleiro) over which they have excavated is distinguishable from the rest
of the praia only by signs of the sand having been a little disturbed.
On rising, I went to join my friends. Few recollections of my Amazonian

rambles are more vivid and agreeable than that of my walk over the white
sea of sand on this cool morning. The sky was cloudless; the just-risen sun
was hidden behind the dark mass of woods on Shimuni, but the long line of
CHAPTER XI 325
forest to the west, on Baria, with its plumy decorations of palms, was
lighted up with his yellow, horizontal rays. A faint chorus of singing birds
reached the ears from across the water, and flocks of gulls and plovers were
drying plaintively over the swelling banks of the praia, where their eggs lay
in nests made in little hollows of the sand. Tracks of stray turtles were
visible on the smooth white surface of the praia. The animals which thus
wander from the main body are lawful prizes of the sentinels; they had
caught in this way two before sunrise, one of which we had for dinner. In
my walk I disturbed several pairs of the chocolate and drab- coloured
wild-goose (Anser jubatus) which set off to run along the edge of the water.
The enjoyment one feels in rambling over these free, open spaces, is no
doubt enhanced by the novelty of the scene, the change being very great
from the monotonous landscape of forest which everywhere else presents
itself.
On arriving at the edge of the forest I mounted the sentinel's stage, just in
time to see the turtles retreating to the water on the opposite side of the
sand-bank, after having laid their eggs. The sight was well worth the
trouble of ascending the shaky ladder. They were about a mile off, but the
surface of the sands was blackened with the multitudes which were
waddling towards the river; the margin of the praia was rather steep, and
they all seemed to tumble head first down the declivity into the water.
I spent the morning of the 27th collecting insects in the woods of Shimuni;
and assisted my friend in the afternoon to beat a large pool for Tracajas--
Cardozo wishing to obtain a supply for his table at home. The pool was
nearly a mile long, and lay on one side of the island between the forest and
the sand-bank. The sands are heaped up very curiously around the margins
of these isolated sheets of water; in the present case they formed a
steeply-inclined bank, from five to eight feet in height. What may be the
cause of this formation I cannot imagine. The pools always contain a
quantity of imprisoned fish, turtles, Tracajas, and Aiyussas. [Specimens of
this species of turtle are named in the British Museum collection,
Podocnemis expansa.] The turtles and Aiyussas crawl out voluntarily in the
course of a few days, and escape to the main river, but the Tracajas remain
and become an easy prey to the natives. The ordinary mode of obtaining
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them is to whip the water in every part with rods for several hours during
the day; this treatment having the effect of driving the animals out. They
wait, however, until the night following the beating before making their
exit. Our Indians were occupied for many hours in this work, and when
night came they and the sentinels were placed at intervals along the edge of
the water to be ready to capture the runaways. Cardozo and I, after supper,
went and took our station at one end of the pool.
We did not succeed, after all our trouble, in getting many Tracajas. This
was partly owing to the intense darkness of the night, and partly, doubtless,
to the sentinels having already nearly exhausted the pool, notwithstanding
their declarations to the contrary. In waiting for the animals, it was
necessary to keep silence-- not a pleasant way of passing the night...
speaking only in whispers, and being without fire in a place liable to be
visited by a prowling jaguar. Cardozo and I sat on a sandy slope with our
loaded guns by our side, but it was so dark we could scarcely see each
other. Towards midnight a storm began to gather around us. The faint wind
which had breathed from over the water since the sun went down, ceased.
thick clouds piled themselves up, until every star was obscured, and gleams
of watery lightning began to play in the midst of the black masses. I hinted
to Cardozo that I thought we had now had enough of watching, and
suggested a cigarette. Just then a quick pattering movement was heard on
the sands, and grasping our guns, we both started to our feet. Whatever it
might have been it seemed to pass by, and a few moments afterwards a dark
body appeared to be moving in another direction on the opposite slope of
the sandy ravine where we lay. We prepared to fire, but luckily took the
precaution of first shouting "Quem vai la?" (Who goes there?) It turned out
to be the taciturn sentinel, Daniel, who asked us mildly whether we had
heard a "raposa" pass our way. The raposa is a kind of wild dog, with very
long tapering muzzle, and black and white speckled hair. Daniel could
distinguish all kinds of animals in the dark by their footsteps. It now began
to thunder, and our position was getting very uncomfortable. Daniel had not
seen anything of the other Indians, and thought it was useless waiting any
longer for Tracajas; we therefore sent him to call in the whole party, and
made off ourselves, as quickly as we could, for the canoe. The rest of the
night was passed most miserably; as indeed were very many of my nights
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on the Solimoens. A furious squall burst upon us; the wind blew away the
cloths and mats we had fixed up at the ends of the arched awning of the
canoe to shelter ourselves, and the rain beat right through our sleeping-
place. There we lay, Cardozo and I, huddled together, and wet through,
waiting for the morning.
A cup of strong and hot coffee put us to rights at sunrise, but the rain was
still coming down, having changed to a steady drizzle. Our men were all
returned from the pool, having taken only four Tracajas. The business
which had brought Cardozo hither being now finished, we set out to return
to Ega, leaving the sentinels once more to their solitude on the sands. Our
return route was by the rarely frequented north-easterly channel of the
Solimoens, through which flows part of the waters of its great tributary
stream, the Japura. We travelled for five hours along the desolate, broken,
timber-strewn shore of Baria. The channel is of immense breadth, the
opposite coast being visible only as a long, low line of forest. At three
o'clock in the afternoon we doubled the upper end of the island, and then
crossed towards the mouth of the Teffe by a broad transverse channel
running between Baria and another island called Quanaru. There is a small
sand- bank at the north-westerly point of Baria, called Jacare; we stayed
here to dine and afterwards fished with the net. A fine rain was still falling,
and we had capital sport-- in three hauls taking more fish than our canoe
would conveniently hold. They were of two kinds only, the Surubim and
the Piraepieua (species of Pimelodus), very handsome fishes, four feet in
length, with flat spoon-shaped heads, and prettily-spotted and striped skins.
On our way from Jacare to the mouth of the Teffe we had a little adventure
with a black tiger or jaguar. We were paddling rapidly past a long beach of
dried mud, when the Indians became suddenly excited, shouting "Ecui
Jauarete; Jauaripixuna!" (Behold the jaguar, the black jaguar!) Looking
ahead we saw the animal quietly drinking at the water's edge. Cardozo
ordered the steersman at once to put us ashore. By the time we were landed
the tiger had seen us, and was retracing his steps towards the forest. On the
spur of the moment, and without thinking of what we were doing, we took
our guns (mine was a double-barrel, with one charge of B B and one of
dust-shot) and gave chase. The animal increased his speed, and reaching the
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forest border, dived into the dense mass of broad-leaved grass which
formed its frontage. We peeped through the gap he had made, but, our
courage being by this time cooled, we did not think it wise to go into the
thicket after him. The black tiger appears to be more abundant than the
spotted form of jaguar in the neighbourhood of Ega. The most certain
method of finding it is to hunt assisted by a string of Indians shouting and
driving the game before them in the narrow restingas or strips of dry land in
the forest, which are isolated by the flooding of their neighbourhood in the
wet season. We reached Ega by eight o'clock that night.
On the 6th of October we left Ega on a second excursion; the principal

object of Cardozo being, this time, to search certain pools in the forest for
young turtles. The exact situation of these hidden sheets of water is known
only to a few practised huntsmen; we took one of these men with us from
Ega, a Mameluco named Pedro, and on our way called at Shimuni for
Daniel to serve as an additional guide. We started from the praia at sunrise
on the 7th in two canoes containing twenty-three persons, nineteen of
whom were Indians. The morning was cloudy and cool, and a fresh wind
blew from down river, against which we had to struggle with all the force
of our paddles, aided by the current; the boats were tossed about most
disagreeably, and shipped a great deal of water. On passing the lower end
of Shimuni, a long reach of the river was before us, undivided by islands--
a magnificent expanse of water stretching away to the southeast. The
country on the left bank is not, however, terra firma, but a portion of the
alluvial land which forms the extensive and complex delta region of the
Japura. It is flooded every year at the time of high water, and is traversed
by many narrow and deep channels which serve as outlets to the Japura, or
at least, are connected with that river by means of the interior water-system
of the Cupiyo. This inhospitable tract of country extends for several
hundred miles, and contains in its midst an endless number of pools and
lakes tenanted by multitudes of turtles, fishes, alligators, and water
serpents. Our destination was a point on this coast situated about twenty
miles below Shimuni, and a short distance from the mouth of the Anana,
one of the channels just alluded to as connected with the Japura. After
travelling for three hours in midstream we steered for the land, and brought
to under a steeply-inclined bank of crumbly earth, shaped into a succession
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of steps or terraces, marking the various halts which the waters of the river
make in the course of subsidence. The coast line was nearly straight for
many miles, and the bank averaged about thirty feet in height above the
present level of the river: at the top rose the unbroken hedge of forest. No
one could have divined that pools of water existed on that elevated land. A
narrow level space extended at the foot of the bank. On landing the first
business was to get breakfast. While a couple of Indian lads were employed
in making the fire, roasting the fish, and boiling the coffee, the rest of the
party mounted the bank, and with their long hunting knives commenced
cutting a path through the forest; the pool, called the Aningal, being about
half a mile distant. After breakfast, a great number of short poles were cut
and were laid crosswise on the path, and then three light montarias which
we had brought with us were dragged up the bank by lianas, and rolled
away to be embarked on the pool. A large net, seventy yards in length, was
then disembarked and carried to the place. The work was done very
speedily, and when Cardozo and I went to the spot at eleven o'clock, we
found some of the older Indians, including Pedro and Daniel, had begun
their sport. They were mounted on little stages called moutas, made of
poles and cross-pieces of wood secured with lianas, and were shooting the
turtles as they came near the surface, with bows and arrows. The Indians
seemed to think that netting the animals, as Cardozo proposed doing, was
not lawful sport, and wished first to have an hour or two's old-fashioned
practice with their weapons.
The pool covered an area of about four or five acres, and was closely
hemmed in by the forest, which in picturesque variety and grouping of trees
and foliage exceeded almost everything I had yet witnessed. The margins
for some distance were swampy, and covered with large tufts of a fine grass
called Matupa. These tufts in many places were overrun with ferns, and
exterior to them a crowded row of arborescent arums, growing to a height
of fifteen or twenty feet, formed a green palisade. Around the whole stood
the taller forest trees; palmate-leaved Cecropiae slender Assai palms, thirty
feet high, with their thin feathery heads crowning the gently-curving,
smooth stems; small fan-leaved palms; and as a background to all these airy
shapes, lay the voluminous masses of ordinary forest trees, with garlands,
festoons, and streamers of leafy climbers hanging from their branches. The
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pool was nowhere more than five feet deep, one foot of which was not
water, but extremely fine and soft mud.
Cardozo and I spent an hour paddling about. I was astonished at the skill
which the Indians display in shooting turtles. They did not wait for their
coming to the surface to breathe, but watched for the slight movements in
the water, which revealed their presence underneath. These little tracks on
the water are called the Siriri; the instant one was perceived an arrow flew
from the bow of the nearest man, and never failed to pierce the shell of the
submerged animal. When the turtle was very distant, of course the aim had
to be taken at a considerable elevation, but the marksmen preferred a
longish range, because the arrow then fell more perpendicularly on the shell
and entered it more deeply.
The arrow used in turtle shooting has a strong lancet-shaped steel point,
fitted into a peg which enters the tip of the shaft. The peg is secured to the
shaft by twine made of the fibres of pineapple leaves, the twine being some
thirty or forty yards in length, and neatly wound round the body of the
arrow. When the missile enters the shell, the peg drops out, and the pierced
animal descends with it towards the bottom, leaving the shaft floating on
the surface. This being done, the sportsman paddles in his montaria to the
place, and gently draws the animal by the twine, humouring it by giving it
the rein when it plunges, until it is brought again near the surface, when he
strikes it with a second arrow. With the increased hold given by the two
cords he has then no difficulty in landing his game.
By mid-day the men had shot about a score of nearly full-grown turtles.
Cardozo then gave orders to spread the net. The spongy, swampy nature of
the banks made it impossible to work the net so as to draw the booty
ashore; another method was therefore adopted. The net was taken by two
Indians and extended in a curve at one extremity of the oval-shaped pool,
holding it when they had done so by the perpendicular rods fixed at each
end; its breadth was about equal to the depth of the water, its shotted side
therefore rested on the bottom, while the floats buoyed it up on the surface,
so that the whole, when the ends were brought together, would form a
complete trap. The rest of the party then spread themselves around the
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swamp at the opposite end of the pool and began to beat, with stout poles,
the thick tufts of Matupa, in order to drive the turtles towards the middle.
This was continued for an hour or more, the beaters gradually drawing
nearer to each other, and driving the host of animals before them; the
number of little snouts constantly popping above the surface of the water
showing that all was going on well. When they neared the net the men
moved more quickly, shouting and beating with great vigour. The ends of
the net were then seized by several strong hands and dragged suddenly
forwards, bringing them at the same time together, so as to enclose all the
booty in a circle. Every man now leapt into the enclosure, the boats were
brought up, and the turtles easily captured by the hand and tossed into
them. I jumped in along with the rest, although I had just before made the
discovery that the pool abounded in ugly, red, four-angled leeches, having
seen several of these delectable animals, which sometimes fasten on the
legs of fishermen, although they, did not, on this day, trouble us, working
their way through cracks in the bottom of our montaria. Cardozo, who
remained with the boats, could not turn the animals on their backs fast
enough, so that a great many clambered out and got free again. However,
three boat-loads, or about eighty, were secured in about twenty minutes.
They were then taken ashore, and each one secured by the men tying the
legs with thongs of bast.
When the canoes had been twice filled, we desisted, after a very hard day's
work. Nearly all the animals were young ones, chiefly, according to the
statement of Pedro, from three to ten years of age; they varied from six to
eighteen inches in length, and were very fat. Cardozo and I lived almost
exclusively on them for several months afterwards. Roasted in the shell
they form a most appetising dish. These younger turtles never migrate with
their elders on the sinking of the waters, but remain in the tepid pools,
fattening on fallen fruits, and, according to the natives, on the fine
nutritious mud. We captured a few full-grown motherturtles, which were
known at once by the horny skin of their breast-plates being worn, telling
of their having crawled on the sands to lay eggs the previous year. They
had evidently made a mistake in not leaving the pool at the proper time, for
they were full of eggs, which, we were told, they would, before the season
was over, scatter in despair over the swamp. We also found several male
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turtles, or Capitaris, as they are called by the natives. These are immensely
less numerous than the females, and are distinguishable by their much
smaller size, more circular shape, and the greater length and thickness of
their tails. Their flesh is considered unwholesome, especially to sick people
having external signs of inflammation. All diseases in these parts, as well
as their remedies and all articles of food, are classed by the inhabitants as
"hot" and "cold," and the meat of the Capitari is settled by unanimous
consent as belonging to the "hot" list.
We dined on the banks of the river a little before sunset. The mosquitoes
then began to be troublesome, and finding it would be impossible to sleep
here, we all embarked and crossed the river to a sand-bank, about three
miles distant, where we passed the night. Cardozo and I slept in our
hammocks slung between upright poles, the rest stretching themselves on
the sand round a large fire. We lay awake conversing until past midnight. It
was a real pleasure to listen to the stories told by one of the older men, they
were given with so much spirit. The tales always related to struggles with
some intractable animal-jaguar, manatee, or alligator. Many interjections
and expressive gestures were used, and at the end came a sudden "Pa!
terra!" when the animal was vanquished by a shot or a blow. Many
mysterious tales were recounted about the Bouto, as the large Dolphin of
the Amazons is called. One of them was to the effect that a Bouto once had
the habit of assuming the shape of a beautiful woman, with hair hanging
loose to her heels, and walking ashore at night in the streets of Ega, to
entice the young men down to the water. If any one was so much smitten as
to follow her to the waterside, she grasped her victim round the waist and
plunged beneath the waves with a triumphant cry. No animal in the
Amazons region is the subject of so many fables as the Bouto; but it is
probable these did not originate with the Indians, but with the Portuguese
colonists. It was several years before I could induce a fisherman to harpoon
Dolphins for me as specimens, for no one ever kills these animals
voluntarily, although their fat is known to yield an excellent oil for lamps.
The superstitious people believe that blindness would result from the use of
this oil in lamps. I succeeded at length with Carepira, by offering him a
high reward when his finances were at a very low point, but he repented of
his deed ever afterwards, declaring that his luck had forsaken him from that
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day.
The next morning we again beat the pool. Although we had proof of there
being a great number of turtles yet remaining, we had very poor success.
The old Indians told us it would be so, for the turtles were "ladino"
(cunning), and would take no notice of the beating a second day. When the
net was formed into a circle, and the men had jumped in, an alligator was
found to be inclosed. No one was alarmed, the only fear expressed being
that the imprisoned beast would tear the net. First one shouted, "I have
touched his head;" then another, "he has scratched my leg;" one of the men,
a lanky Miranha, was thrown off his balance, and then there was no end to
the laughter and shouting. At last a youth of about fourteen years of age, on
my calling to him from the bank to do so, seized the reptile by the tail, and
held him tightly until, a little resistance being overcome, he was able to
bring it ashore. The net was opened, and the boy slowly dragged the
dangerous but cowardly beast to land through the muddy water, a distance
of about a hundred yards. Meantime, I had cut a strong pole from a tree,
and as soon as the alligator was drawn to solid ground, gave him a smart
rap with it on the crown of his head, which killed him instantly. It was a
good-sized individual, the jaws being considerably more than a foot long,
and fully capable of snapping a man's leg in twain. The species was the
large cayman, the Jacareuassu of the Amazonian Indians (Jacare nigra).
On the third day, we sent our men in the boats to net turtles in a larger pool
about five miles further down the river, and on the fourth, returned to Ega.
It will be well to mention here a few circumstances relative to the large

Cayman, which, with the incident just narrated, afford illustrations of the
cunning, cowardice, and ferocity of this reptile.
I have hitherto had but few occasions of mentioning alligators, although

they exist by myriads in the waters of the Upper Amazons. Many different
species are spoken of by the natives. I saw only three, and of these two only
are common: one, the Jacare-tinga, a small kind (five feet long when full
grown), having a long slender muzzle and a black-banded tail; the other,
the Jacare-uassu, to which these remarks more especially relate and the
CHAPTER XI 334
third the Jacare-curua, mentioned in a former chapter. The Jacare-uassu, or

large Cayman, grows to a length of eighteen or twenty feet, and attains an
enormous bulk. Like the turtles, the alligator has its annual migrations, for
it retreats to the interior pools and flooded forests in the wet season, and
descends to the main river in the dry season. During the months of high
water, therefore, scarcely a single individual is to be seen in the main river.
In the middle part of the Lower Amazons, about Obydos and Villa Nova,
where many of the lakes with their channels of communication with the
trunk stream dry up in the fine months, the alligator buries itself in the mud
and becomes dormant, sleeping till the rainy season returns. On the Upper
Amazons, where the dry season is never excessive, it has not this habit, but
is lively all the year round. It is scarcely exaggerating to say that the waters
of the Solimoens are as well stocked with large alligators in the dry season,
as a ditch in England is in summer with tadpoles. During a journey of five
days which I once made in the Upper Amazons steamer, in November,
alligators were seen along the coast almost every step of the way, and the
passengers amused themselves, from morning till night, by firing at them
with rifle and ball. They were very numerous in the still bays, where the
huddled crowds jostled together, to the great rattling of their coats of mail,
as the steamer passed.
The natives at once despise and fear the great cayman. I once spent a month
at Caicara, a small village of semi-civilised Indians, about twenty miles to
the west of Ega. My entertainer, the only white in the place, and one of my
best and most constant friends, Senor Innocencio Alves Faria, one day
proposed a half- day's fishing with net in the lake--the expanded bed of the
small river on which the village is situated. We set out in an open boat with
six Indians and two of Innocencio's children. The water had sunk so low
that the net had to be taken out into the middle by the Indians, whence at
the first draught, two medium-sized alligators were brought to land. They
were disengaged from the net and allowed, with the coolest unconcern, to
return to the water, although the two children were playing in it not many
yards off. We continued fishing, Innocencio and I lending a helping hand,
and each time drew a number of the reptiles of different ages and sizes,
some of them Jacare-tingas; the lake, in fact, swarmed with alligators. After
taking a very large quantity of fish, we prepared to return, and the Indians,
CHAPTER XI 335
at my suggestion, secured one of the alligators with the view of letting it

loose amongst the swarms of dogs in the village. An individual was
selected about eight feet long-- one man holding his head and another his
tail, whilst a third took a few lengths of a flexible liana, and deliberately
bound the jaws and the legs. Thus secured, the beast was laid across the
benches of the boat on which we sat during the hour and a half's journey to
the settlement. We were rather crowded, but our amiable passenger gave us
no trouble during the transit. On reaching the village, we took the animal
into the middle of the green, in front of the church, where the dogs were
congregated, and there gave him his liberty, two of us arming ourselves
with long poles to intercept him if he should make for the water, and the
others exciting the dogs. The alligator showed great terror, although the
dogs could not be made to advance, and made off at the top of its speed for
the water, waddling like a duck. We tried to keep him back with the poles,
but he became enraged, and seizing the end of the one I held in his jaws,
nearly wrenched it from my grasp. We were obliged, at length, to kill him
to prevent his escape.
These little incidents show the timidity or cowardice of the alligator. He

never attacks man when his intended victim is on his guard; but he is
cunning enough to know when this may be done with impunity-- of this we
had proof at Caicara, a few days afterwards. The river had sunk to a very
low point, so that the port and bathing-place of the village now lay at the
foot of a long sloping bank, and a large cayman made his appearance in the
shallow and muddy water. We were all obliged to be very careful in taking
our bath; most of the people simply using a calabash, pouring the water
over themselves while standing on the brink. A large trading canoe,
belonging to a Barra merchant named Soares, arrived at this time, and the
Indian crew, as usual, spent the first day or two after their coming into port
in drunkenness and debauchery ashore. One of the men, during the greatest
heat of the day, when almost everyone was enjoying his afternoon's nap,
took it into his head while in a tipsy state to go down alone to bathe. He
was seen only by the Juiz de Paz, a feeble old man who was lying in his
hammock in the open verandah at the rear of his house on the top of the
bank, and who shouted to the besotted Indian to beware of the alligator.
Before he could repeat his warning, the man stumbled, and a pair of gaping
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jaws, appearing suddenly above the surface, seized him round the waist and
drew him under the water. A cry of agony "Ai Jesus!" was the last sign
made by the wretched victim. The village was aroused: the young men with
praiseworthy readiness seized their harpoons and hurried down to the bank;
but, of course it was too late, a winding track of blood on the surface of the
water was all that could be seen. They embarked, however, in montarias,
determined upon vengeance; the monster was traced, and when, after a
short lapse of time, he came up to breathe--one leg of the man sticking out
from his jaws--was despatched with bitter curses.
The last of these minor excursions which I shall narrate, was made (again
in company of Senor Cardozo, with the addition of his housekeeper Senora
Felippa) in the season when all the population of the villages turns out to
dig up turtle eggs, and revel on the praias. Placards were posted on the
church doors at Ega, announcing that the excavation on Shimuni would
commence on the 17th of October, and on Catua, sixty miles below
Shimuni, on the 25th. We set out on the 16th, and passed on the road, in our
well-manned igarite, a large number of people-- men, women, and children
in canoes of all sizes-- wending their way as if to a great holiday gathering.
By the morning of the 17th, some 400 persons were assembled on the
borders of the sand-bank; each family having erected a rude temporary shed
of poles and palm leaves to protect themselves from the sun and rain. Large
copper kettles to prepare the oil, and hundreds of red earthenware jars, were
scattered about on the sand.
The excavation of the taboleiro, collecting the eggs and purifying the oil,
occupied four days. All was done on a system established by the old
Portuguese governors, probably more than a century ago. The
commandante first took down the names of all the masters of households,
with the number of persons each intended to employ in digging; he then
exacted a payment of 140 reis (about fourpence) a head, towards defraying
the expense of sentinels. The whole were then allowed to go to the
taboleiro. They arranged themselves around the circle, each person armed
with a paddle to be used as a spade, and then all began simultaneously to
dig on a signal being given--the roll of drums- -by order of the
commandante. It was an animating sight to behold the wide circle of rival
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diggers throwing up clouds of sand in their energetic labours, and working

gradually towards the centre of the ring. A little rest was taken during the
great heat of midday, and in the evening the eggs were carried to the huts in
baskets. By the end of the second day, the taboleiro was exhausted; large
mounds of eggs, some of them four to five feet in height, were then seen by
the side of each hut, the produce of the labours of the family.
In the hurry of digging, some of the deeper nests are passed over; to find
these out, the people go about provided with a long steel or wooden probe,
the presence of the eggs being discoverable by the ease with which the spit
enters the sand. When no more eggs are to be found, the mashing process
begins. The egg, it may be mentioned, has a flexible or leathery shell; it is
quite round, and somewhat larger than a hen's egg. The whole heap is
thrown into an empty canoe and mashed with wooden prongs; but
sometimes naked Indians and children jump into the mass and tread it
down, besmearing themselves with yolk and making about as filthy a scene
as can well be imagined. This being finished, water is poured into the
canoe, and the fatty mess then left for a few hours to be heated by the sun,
on which the oil separates and rises to the surface. The floating oil is
afterwards skimmed off with long spoons, made by tying large
mussel-shells to the end of rods, and purified over the fire in copper kettles.
The destruction of turtle eggs every year by these proceedings is enormous.

At least 6000 jars, holding each three gallons of the oil, are exported
annually from the Upper Amazons and the Madeira to Para, where it is
used for lighting, frying fish, and other purposes. It may be fairly estimated
that 2000 more jars-full are consumed by the inhabitants of the villages on
the river. Now, it takes at least twelve basketsful of eggs, or about 6000 by
the wasteful process followed, to make one jar of oil. The total number of
eggs annually destroyed amounts, therefore, to 48,000,000. As each turtle
lays about 120, it follows that the yearly offspring Of 400,000 turtles is thus
annihilated. A vast number, nevertheless, remain undetected; and these
would probably be sufficient to keep the turtle population of these rivers up
to the mark, if the people did not follow the wasteful practice of lying in
wait for the newly-hatched young, and collecting them by thousands for
eating-- their tender flesh and the remains of yolk in their entrails being
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considered a great delicacy. The chief natural enemies of the turtle are
vultures and alligators, which devour the newly-hatched young as they
descend in shoals to the water. These must have destroyed an immensely
greater number before the European settlers began to appropriate the eggs
than they do now. It is almost doubtful if this natural persecution did not act
as effectively in checking the increase of the turtle as the artificial
destruction now does. If we are to believe the tradition of the Indians,
however, it had not this result; for they say that formerly the waters teemed
as thickly with turtles as the air now does with mosquitoes. The universal
opinion of the settlers on the Upper Amazons is, that the turtle has very
greatly decreased in numbers, and is still annually decreasing.
We left Shimuni on the 20th with quite a flotilla of canoes, and descended
the river to Catua, an eleven hours' journey by paddle and current. Catua is
about six miles long, and almost entirely encircled by its praia. The turtles
had selected for their egg- laying a part of the sand-bank which was
elevated at least twenty feet above the present level of the river; the
animals, to reach the place, must have crawled up a slope. As we
approached the island, numbers of the animals were seen coming to the
surface to breathe, in a small shoaly bay. Those who had light montarias
sped forward with bows and arrows to shoot them. Carepira was foremost,
having borrowed a small and very unsteady boat, of Cardozo, and
embarked in it with his little son. After bagging a couple of turtles, and
while hauling in a third, he overbalanced himself; the canoe went over, and
he with his child had to swim for their lives in the midst of numerous
alligators, about a mile from the land. The old man had to sustain a heavy
fire of jokes from his companions for several days after this mishap. Such
accidents are only laughed at by this almost amphibious people.
The number of persons congregated on Catua was much greater than on

Shimuni, as the population of the banks of several neighbouring lakes were
here added. The line of huts and sheds extended half a mile, and several
large sailing vessels were anchored at the place. The commandante was
Senor Macedo, the Indian blacksmith of Ega before mentioned, who
maintained excellent order during the fourteen days the process of
excavation and oil manufacture lasted. There were also many primitive
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Indians here from the neighbouring rivers, among them a family of

Shumanas, good-tempered, harmless people from the Lower Japura. All of
them were tattooed around the mouth, the bluish tint forming a border to
the lips, and extending in a line on the cheeks towards the ear on each side.
They were not quite so slender in figure as the Passes of Perdo-uassu's
family; but their features deviated quite as much as those of the Passes from
the ordinary Indian type. This was seen chiefly in the comparatively small
mouth, pointed chin, thin lips, and narrow, high nose. One of the daughters,
a young girl of about seventeen years of age, was a real beauty. The colour
of her skin approached the light tanned shade of the Mameluco women; her
figure was almost faultless, and the blue mouth, instead of being a
disfigurement, gave quite a captivating finish to her appearance. Her neck,
wrists, and ankles were adorned with strings of blue beads. She was,
however, extremely bashful, never venturing to look strangers in the face,
and never quitting, for many minutes together, the side of her father and
mother. The family had been shamefully swindled by some rascally trader
on another praia; and, on our arrival, came to lay their case before Senor
Cardozo, as the delegado of police of the district. The mild way in which
the old man, without a trace of anger, stated his complaint in imperfect
Tupi quite enlisted our sympathies in his favour. But Cardozo could give
him no redress; he invited the family, however, to make their rancho near to
ours, and in the end gave them the highest price for the surplus oil which
they manufactured.
It was not all work at Catua; indeed there was rather more play than work
going on. The people make a kind of holiday of these occasions. Every fine
night parties of the younger people assembled on the sands, and dancing
and games were carried on for hours together. But the requisite liveliness
for these sports was never got up without a good deal of preliminary
rum-drinking. The girls were so coy that the young men could not get
sufficient partners for the dances without first subscribing for a few flagons
of the needful cashaca. The coldness of the shy Indian and Mameluco
maidens never failed to give way after a little of this strong drink, but it was
astonishing what an immense deal they could take of it in the course of an
evening. Coyness is not always a sign of innocence in these people, for
most of the half- caste women on the Upper Amazons lead a little career of
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looseness before they marry and settle down for life; and it is rather
remarkable that the men do not seem to object much to their brides having
had a child or two by various fathers before marriage. The women do not
lose reputation unless they become utterly depraved, but in that case they
are condemned pretty strongly by public opinion. Depravity is, however,
rare, for all require more or less to be wooed before they are won. I did not
see (although I mixed pretty freely with the young people) any breach of
propriety on the praias. The merry-makings were carried on near the
ranchos, where the more staid citizens of Ega, husbands with their wives
and young daughters, all smoking gravely out of long pipes, sat in their
hammocks and enjoyed the fun. Towards midnight we often heard, in the
intervals between jokes and laughter, the hoarse roar of jaguars prowling
about the jungle in the middle of the praia. There were several guitar-
players among the young men, and one most persevering fiddler-- so there
was no lack of music.
The favourite sport was the Pira-purasseya, or fish-dance, one of the

original games of the Indians, though now probably a little modified. The
young men and women, mingling together, formed a ring, leaving one of
their number in the middle, who represented the fish. They then all
marched round, Indian file, the musicians mixed up with the rest, singing a
monotonous but rather pretty chorus, the words of which were invented
(under a certain form) by one of the party who acted as leader. This
finished, all joined hands, and questions were put to the one in the middle,
asking what kind of fish he or she might be. To these the individual has to
reply. The end of it all is that he makes a rush at the ring, and if he succeeds
in escaping, the person who allowed him to do so has to take his place; the
march and chorus then recommences, and so the game goes on hour after
hour. Tupi was the language mostly used, but sometimes Portuguese was
sung and spoken. The details of the dance were often varied. Instead of the
names of fishes being called over by the person in the middle, the name of
some animal, flower, or other object was given to every fresh occupier of
the place. There was then good scope for wit in the invention of nicknames,
and peals of laughter would often salute some particularly good hit. Thus a
very lanky young man was called the Magoary, or the grey stork; a moist
grey-eyed man with a profile comically suggestive of a fish was christened
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Jaraki (a kind of fish), which was considered quite a witty sally; a little
Mameluco girl, with light-coloured eyes and brown hair, got the gallant
name of Rosa Blanca, or the white rose; a young fellow who had recently
singed his eye brows by the explosion of fireworks, was dubbed Pedro
queimado (burnt Peter); in short every one got a nickname, and each time
the cognomen was introduced into the chorus as the circle marched round.
Our rancho was a large one, and was erected in a line with the others near
the edge of the sand-bank which sloped rather abruptly to the water. During
the first week the people were all, more or less, troubled by alligators.
Some half-dozen full-grown ones were in attendance off the praia, floating
about on the lazily-flowing, muddy water. The dryness of the weather had
increased since we had left Shimuni, the currents had slackened, and the
heat in the middle part of the day was almost insupportable. But no one
could descend to bathe without being advanced upon by one or other of
these hungry monsters. There was much offal cast into the river, and this,
of course, attracted them to the place. One day I amused myself by taking a
basketful of fragments of meat beyond the line of ranchos, and drawing the
alligators towards me by feeding them. They behaved pretty much as dogs
do when fed-- catching the bones I threw them in their huge jaws, and
coming nearer and showing increased eagerness after every morsel. The
enormous gape of their mouths, with their blood-red lining and long fringes
of teeth, and the uncouth shapes of their bodies, made a picture of
unsurpassable ugliness. I once or twice fired a heavy charge of shot at
them, aiming at the vulnerable part of their bodies, which is a small space
situated behind the eyes, but this had no other effect than to make them
give a hoarse grunt and shake themselves; they immediately afterwards
turned to receive another bone which I threw to them.
Everyday these visitors became bolder; at length they reached a pitch of

impudence that was quite intolerable. Cardozo had a poodle dog named
Carlito, which some grateful traveller whom he had befriended had sent
him from Rio Janeiro. He took great pride in this dog, keeping it well
sheared, and preserving his coat as white as soap and water could make it.
We slept in our rancho in hammocks slung between the outer posts; a large
wood fire (fed with a kind of wood abundant on the banks of the river,
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which keeps alight all night) being made in the middle, by the side of which
slept Carlito on a little mat. Well, one night I was awoke by a great uproar.
It was caused by Cardozo hurling burning firewood with loud curses at a
huge cayman which had crawled up the bank and passed beneath my
hammock (being nearest the water) towards the place where Carlito lay.
The dog had raised the alarm in time; the reptile backed out and tumbled
down the bank to the water, the sparks from the brands hurled at him flying
from his bony hide. To our great surprise the animal (we supposed it to be
the same individual) repeated his visit the very next night, this time passing
round to the other side of our shed. Cardozo was awake, and threw a
harpoon at him, but without doing him any harm. After this it was thought
necessary to make an effort to check the alligators; a number of men were
therefore persuaded to sally forth in their montarias and devote a day to
killing them.
The young men made several hunting excursions during the fourteen days
of our stay on Catua, and I, being associated with them in all their
pleasures, made generally one of the party. These were, besides, the sole
occasions on which I could add to my collections, while on these barren
sands. Only two of these trips afforded incidents worth relating.
The first, which was made to the interior of the wooded island of Catua,
was not a very successful one. We were twelve in number, all armed with
guns and long hunting-knives. Long before sunrise, my friends woke me up
from my hammock, where I lay, as usual, in the clothes worn during the
day; and after taking each a cup-full of cashaca and ginger (a very general
practice in early morning on the sand-banks), we commenced our walk.
The waning moon still lingered in the clear sky, and a profound stillness
pervaded sleeping camp, forest, and stream. Along the line of ranchos
glimmered the fires made by each party to dry turtle-eggs for food, the eggs
being spread on little wooden stages over the smoke. The distance to the
forest from our place of starting was about two miles, being nearly the
whole length of the sand-bank, which was also a very broad one-- the
highest part, where it was covered with a thicket of dwarf willows,
mimosas, and arrow grass, lying near the ranchos. We loitered much on the
way, and the day dawned whilst we were yet on the road, the sand at this
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early hour feeling quite cold to the naked feet. As soon as we were able to
distinguish things, the surface of the praia was seen to be dotted with small
black objects. These were newly- hatched Aiyussa turtles, which were
making their way in an undeviating line to the water, at least a mile distant.
The young animal of this species is distinguishable from that of the large
turtle and the Tracaja, by the edges of the breast-plate being raised on each
side, so that in crawling it scores two parallel lines on the sand. The mouths
of these little creatures were full of sand, a circumstance arising from their
having to bite their way through many inches of superincumbent sand to
reach the surface on emerging from the buried eggs. It was amusing to
observe how constantly they turned again in the direction of the distant
river, after being handled and set down on the sand with their heads facing
the opposite quarter. We saw also several skeletons of the large cayman
(some with the horny and bony hide of the animal nearly perfect)
embedded in the sand; they reminded me of the remains of Ichthyosauri
fossilised in beds of lias, with the difference of being buried in fine sand
instead of in blue mud. I marked the place of one which had a
well-preserved skull, and the next day returned to secure it. The specimen
is now in the British Museum collection. There were also many footmarks
of jaguars on the sand.
We entered the forest, as the sun peeped over the tree-tops far away down
river. The party soon after divided, I keeping with a section which was led
by Bento, the Ega carpenter, a capital woodsman. After a short walk we
struck the banks of a beautiful little lake, having grassy margins and clear
dark water, on the surface of which floated thick beds of water-lilies. We
then crossed a muddy creek or watercourse that entered the lake, and then
found ourselves on a restinga, or tongue of land between two waters. By
keeping in sight of one or the other of these, there was no danger of our
losing our way-- all other precautions were therefore unnecessary. The
forest was tolerably clear of underwood, and consequently, easy to walk
through. We had not gone far before a soft, long-drawn whistle was heard
aloft in the trees, betraying the presence of Mutums (Curassow birds). The
crowns of the trees, a hundred feet or more over our heads, were so closely
interwoven that it was difficult to distinguish the birds-- the practised eye
of Bento, however, made them out, and a fine male was shot from the
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flock, the rest flying away and alighting at no great distance. The species
was the one of which the male has a round red ball on its beak (Crax
globicera). The pursuit of the others led us a great distance, straight towards
the interior of the island, in which direction we marched for three hours,
having the lake always on our right.
Arriving at length at the head of the lake, Bento struck off to the left across
the restinga, and we then soon came upon a treeless space choked up with
tall grass, which appeared to be the dried-up bed of another lake. Our leader
was obliged to climb a tree to ascertain our position, and found that the
clear space was part of the creek, whose mouth we had crossed lower
down. The banks were clothed with low trees, nearly all of one species, a
kind of araca (Psidium), and the ground was carpeted with a slender
delicate grass, now in flower. A great number of crimson and
vermilion-coloured butterflies (Catagramma Peristera, male and female)
were settled on the smooth, white trunks of these trees. I had also here the
great pleasure of seeing for the first time, the rare and curious Umbrella
Bird (Cephalopterus ornatus), a species which resembles in size, colour,
and appearance our common crow, but is decorated with a crest of long,
curved, hairy feathers having long bare quills, which, when raised, spread
themselves out in the form of a fringed sunshade over the head. A strange
ornament, like a pelerine, is also suspended from the neck, formed by a
thick pad of glossy steel-blue feathers, which grow on a long fleshy lobe or
excrescence. This lobe is connected (as I found on skinning specimens)
with an unusual development of the trachea and vocal organs, to which the
bird doubtless owes its singularly deep, loud, and long-sustained fluty note.
The Indian name of this strange creature is Uira-mimbeu, or fife- bird,
[Mimbeu is the Indian name for a rude kind of pan-pipes used by the
Caishanas and other tribes.] in allusion to the tone of its voice. We had the
good luck, after remaining quiet a short time, to hear its performance. It
drew itself up on its perch, spread widely the umbrella-formed crest, dilated
and waved its glossy breast-lappet, and then, in giving vent to its loud
piping note, bowed its head slowly forwards. We obtained a pair, male and
female; the female has only the rudiments of the crest and lappet, and is
duller-coloured altogether than the male. The range of this bird appears to
be quite confined to the plains of the Upper Amazons (especially the Ygapo
CHAPTER XI 345
forests), not having been found to the east of the Rio Negro.
Bento and our other friends being disappointed in finding no more

Curassows, or indeed any other species of game, now resolved to turn back.
On reaching the edge of the forest, we sat down and ate our dinners under
the shade-- each man having brought a little bag containing a few handsfull
of farinha, and a piece of fried fish or roast turtle. We expected our
companions of the other division to join us at midday, but after waiting till
past one o'clock without seeing anything of them (in fact, they had returned
to the huts an hour or two previously), we struck off across the praia
towards the encampment. An obstacle here presented itself on which we
had not counted. The sun had shone all day through a cloudless sky
untempered by a breath of wind, and the sands had become heated by it to a
degree that rendered walking over them with our bare feet impossible. The
most hardened footsoles of the party could not endure the burning soil. We
made several attempts; we tried running, having wrapped the cool leaves of
Heliconiae round our feet, but in no way could we step forward many
yards. There was no means of getting back to our friends before night,
except going round the praia, a circuit of about four miles, and walking
through the water or on the moist sand. To get to the waterside from the
place where we then stood was not difficult, as a thick bed of a flowering
shrub, called tintarana, an infusion of the leaves of which is used to dye
black, lay on that side of the sand-bank. Footsore and wearied, burthened
with our guns, and walking for miles through the tepid shallow water under
the brain-scorching vertical sun, we had, as may be imagined, anything but
a pleasant time of it. I did not, however, feel any inconvenience afterwards.
Everyone enjoys the most lusty health while living this free and wild life on
the rivers.
The other hunting trip which I have alluded to was undertaken in company
with three friendly young half-castes. Two of them were brothers, namely,
Joao (John) and Zephyrino Jabuti: Jabuti, or tortoise, being a nickname
which their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in this
country, had descended as the surname of the family. The other was Jose
Frazao, a nephew of Senor Chrysostomo, of Ega, an active, clever, and
manly young fellow, whom I much esteemed. He was almost a white-- his
CHAPTER XI 346
father being a Portuguese and his mother a Mameluca. We were

accompanied by an Indian named Lino, and a Mulatto boy, whose office
was to carry our game.
Our proposed hunting-ground on this occasion lay across the water, about
fifteen miles distant. We set out in a small montaria, at four o'clock in the
morning, again leaving the encampment asleep, and travelled at a good
pace up the northern channel of the Solimoens, or that lying between the
island Catua and the left bank of the river. The northern shore of the island
had a broad sandy beach reaching to its western extremity. We gained our
destination a little after daybreak; this was the banks of the Carapanatuba,
[Meaning, in Tupi, the river of many mosquitoes: from carapana, mosquito,
and ituba, many.] a channel some 150 yards in width, which, like the Anana
already mentioned, communicates with the Cupiyo. To reach this we had to
cross the river, here nearly two miles wide. Just as day dawned we saw a
Cayman seize a large fish, a Tambaki, near the surface; the reptile seemed
to have a difficulty in securing its prey, for it reared itself above the water,
tossing the fish in its jaws and making a tremendous commotion. I was
much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving
birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally
a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot
and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive
imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be
the neck of a bird; it did not remain long in view, but soon plunged again
beneath the stream.
We ran ashore in a most lonely and gloomy place, on a low sand- bank
covered with bushes, secured the montaria to a tree, and then, after making
a very sparing breakfast on fried fish and mandioca meal, rolled up our
trousers and plunged into the thick forest, which here, as everywhere else,
rose like a lofty wall of foliage from the narrow strip of beach. We made
straight for the heart of the land, John Jabuti leading, and breaking off at
every few steps a branch of the lower trees, so that we might recognise the
path on our return. The district was quite new to all my companions, and
being on a coast almost totally uninhabited by human beings for some 300
miles, to lose our way would have been to perish helplessly. I did not think
CHAPTER XI 347
at the time of the risk we ran of having our canoe stolen by passing Indians,
unguarded montarias being never safe even in the ports of the villages,
Indians apparently considering them common property, and stealing them
without any compunction. No misgivings clouded the lightness of heart
with which we trod forward in warm anticipation of a good day's sport.
The tract of forest through which we passed was Ygapo, but the higher
parts of the land formed areas which went only a very few inches under
water in the flood season. It consisted of a most bewildering diversity of
grand and beautiful trees, draped, festooned, corded, matted, and ribboned
with climbing plants, woody and succulent, in endless variety. The most
prevalent palm was the tall Astryocaryum Jauari, whose fallen spines made
it necessary to pick our way carefully over the ground, as we were all
barefooted. There was not much green underwood, except in places where
Bamboos grew; these formed impenetrable thickets of plumy foliage and
thorny, jointed stems, which always compelled us to make a circuit to avoid
them. The earth elsewhere was encumbered with rotting fruits, gigantic
bean-pods, leaves, limbs, and trunks of trees; fixing the impression of its
being the cemetery as well as the birthplace of the great world of vegetation
overhead. Some of the trees were of prodigious height. We passed many
specimens of the Moratinga, whose cylindrical trunks, I dare not say how
many feet in circumference, towered up and were lost amidst the crowns of
the lower trees, their lower branches, in some cases, being hidden from our
view. Another very large and remarkable tree was the Assacu (Sapium
aucuparium). A traveller on the Amazons, mingling with the people, is sure
to hear much of the poisonous qualities of the juices of this tree. Its bark
exudes, when hacked with a knife, a milky sap, which is not only a fatal
poison when taken internally, but is said to cause incurable sores if simply
sprinkled on the skin. My companions always gave the Assacu a wide berth
when we passed one. The tree looks ugly enough to merit a bad name, for
the bark is of a dingy olive colour, and is studded with short and sharp,
venomous-looking spines.
After walking about half a mile we came upon a dry watercourse, where we
observed, first, the old footmarks of a tapir, and, soon after, on the margin
of a curious circular hole full of muddy water, the fresh tracks of a Jaguar.
CHAPTER XI 348
This latter discovery was hardly made when a rush was heard amidst the
bushes on the top of a sloping bank on the opposite side of the dried creek.
We bounded forward; it was, however, too late, for the animal had sped in a
few minutes far out of our reach. It was clear we had disturbed, on our
approach, the Jaguar, while quenching his thirst at the water-hole. A few
steps further on we saw the mangled remains of an alligator (the
Jacaretinga). The head, forequarters, and bony shell were the only parts
which remained; but the meat was quite fresh, and there were many
footmarks of the Jaguar around the carcase-- so that there was no doubt this
had formed the solid part of the animal's breakfast. My companions now
began to search for the alligator's nest, the presence of the reptile so far
from the river being accountable for on no other ground than its maternal
solicitude for its eggs. We found, in fact, the nest at the distance of a few
yards from the place. It was a conical pile of dead leaves, in the middle of
which twenty eggs were buried. These were of elliptical shape,
considerably larger than those of a duck, and having a hard shell of the
texture of porcelain, but very rough on the outside. They make a loud sound
when rubbed together, and it is said that it is easy to find a mother alligator
in the Ygapo forests by rubbing together two eggs in this way, she being
never far off, and attracted by the sounds.
I put half-a-dozen of the alligator's eggs in my game-bag for specimens,

and we then continued on our way. Lino, who was now first, presently
made a start backwards, calling out "Jararaca!" This is the name of a
poisonous snake (genus Craspedocephalus), which is far more dreaded by
the natives than Jaguar or Alligator. The individual seen by Lino lay coiled
up at the foot of a tree, and was scarcely distinguishable, on account of the
colours of its body being assimilated to those of the fallen leaves. Its
hideous, flat triangular head, connected with the body by a thin neck, was
reared and turned towards us: Frazao killed it with a charge of shot,
shattering it completely, and destroying, to my regret, its value as a
specimen. In conversing on the subject of Jararacas as we walked onwards,
every one of the party was ready to swear that this snake attacks man
without provocation, leaping towards him from a considerable distance
when he approaches. I met, in the course of my daily rambles in the woods,
many Jararacas, and once or twice narrowly very escaped treading on them,
CHAPTER XI 349
but never saw them attempt to spring. On some subjects the testimony of
the natives of a wild country is utterly worthless. The bite of the Jararacas
is generally fatal. I knew of four or five instances of death from it, and only
of one clear case of recovery after being bitten; but in that case the person
was lamed for life.
We walked over moderately elevated and dry ground for about a mile, and
then descended (three or four feet only) to the dry bed of another creek.
This was pierced in the same way as the former water-course, with round
holes full of muddy water. They occurred at intervals of a few yards, and
had the appearance of having been made by the hand of man. The smallest
were about two feet, the largest seven or eight feet in diameter. As we
approached the most extensive of the larger ones, I was startled at seeing a
number of large serpent-like heads bobbing about the surface. They proved
to be those of electric eels, and it now occurred to me that the round holes
were made by these animals working constantly round and round in the
moist, muddy soil. Their depth (some of them were at least eight feet deep)
was doubtless due also to the movements of the eels in the soft soil, and
accounted for their not drying up, in the fine season, with the rest of the
creek. Thus, while alligators and turtles in this great inundated forest region
retire to the larger pools during the dry season, the electric eels make for
themselves little ponds in which to pass the season of drought.
My companions now cut each a stout pole, and proceeded to eject the eels
in order to get at the other fishes, with which they had discovered the ponds
to abound. I amused them all very much by showing how the electric shock
from the eels could pass from one person to another. We joined hands in a
line while I touched the biggest and freshest of the animals on the head
with the point of my hunting-knife. We found that this experiment did not
succeed more than three times with the same eel when out of the water; for,
the fourth time the shock was scarcely perceptible. All the fishes found in
the holes (besides the eels) belonged to one species, a small kind of Acari,
or Loricaria, a group whose members have a complete bony integument.
Lino and the boy strung them together through the gills with slender sipos,
and hung them on the trees to await our return later in the day.
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Leaving the bed of the creek, we marched onwards, always towards the
centre of the land, guided by the sun, which now glimmered through the
thick foliage overhead. About eleven o'clock we saw a break in the forest
before us, and presently emerged on the banks of a rather large sheet of
water. This was one of the interior pools of which there are so many in this
district. The margins were elevated some few feet, and sloped down to the
water, the ground being hard and dry to the water's edge, and covered with
shrubby vegetation. We passed completely round this pool, finding the
crowns of the trees on its borders tenanted by curassow birds, whose
presence was betrayed as usual by the peculiar note which they emit. My
companions shot two of them. At the further end of the lake lay a deep
watercourse, which we traced for about half a mile, and found to
communicate with another and smaller pool. This second one evidently
swarmed with turtles, as we saw the snouts of many peering above the
surface of the water: the same had not been seen in the larger lake, probably
because we had made too much noise in hailing our discovery on
approaching its banks. My friends made an arrangement on the spot for
returning to this pool, after the termination of the egg harvest on Catua.
In recrossing the space between the two pools, we heard the crash of
monkeys in the crowns of trees overhead. The chase of these occupied us a
considerable time. Jose fired at length at one of the laggards of the troop,
and wounded him. He climbed pretty nimbly towards a denser part of the
tree, and a second and third discharge failed to bring him down. The poor
maimed creature then trailed his limbs to one of the topmost branches,
where we descried him soon after, seated and picking the entrails from a
wound in his abdomen-- a most heart-rending sight. The height from the
ground to the bough on which he was perched could not have been less
than 150 feet, and we could get a glimpse of him only by standing directly
underneath, and straining our eyes upwards. We killed him at last by
loading our best gun with a careful charge, and resting the barrel against the
treetrunk to steady the aim. A few shots entered his chin, and he then fell
heels over head screaming to the ground. Although it was I who gave the
final shot, this animal did not fall to my lot in dividing the spoils at the end
of the day. I regret now not having preserved the skin, as it belonged to a
very large species of Cebus, and one which I never met with afterwards.
CHAPTER XI 351
It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when we again reached the spot
where we had first struck the banks of the larger pool. We hitherto had but
poor sport, so after dining on the remains of our fried fish and farinha, and
smoking our cigarettes, the apparatus for making which, including bamboo
tinder-box and steel and flint for striking a light, being carried by every one
always on these expeditions, we made off in another (westerly) direction
through the forest to try to find better hunting-ground. We quenched our
thirst with water from the pool, which I was rather surprised to find quite
pure. These pools are, of course, sometimes fouled for a time by the
movements of alligators and other tenants in the fine mud which settles at
the bottom, but I never observed a scum of confervae or traces of oil
revealing animal decomposition on the surface of these waters, nor was
there ever any foul smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead
of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the
dry season (and in the wet also) a most healthy country. How elaborate
must be the natural processes of self-purification in these teeming waters!
On our fresh route we were obliged to cut our way through a long belt of
bamboo underwood, and not being so careful of my steps as my
companions, I trod repeatedly on the flinty thorns which had fallen from the
bushes, finishing by becoming completely lame, one thorn having entered
deeply the sole of my foot. I was obliged to be left behind-- Lino, the
Indian, remaining with me. The careful fellow cleaned my wounds with his
saliva, placed pieces of isca (the felt-like substance manufactured by ants)
on them to staunch the blood, and bound my feet with tough bast to serve
as shoes, which he cut from the bark of a Monguba tree. He went about his
work in a very gentle way and with much skill, but was so sparing of
speech that I could scarcely get answers to the questions I put to him. When
he had done I was able to limp about pretty nimbly. An Indian when he
performs a service of this kind never thinks of a reward. I did not find so
much disinterestedness in negro slaves or half-castes. We had to wait two
hours for the return of our companions; during part of this time I was left
quite alone, Lino having started off into the jungle after a peccary (a kind of
wild hog) which had come near to where we sat, but on seeing us had given
a grunt and bounded off into the thickets. At length our friends hove in
sight, loaded with game; having shot twelve curassows and two cujubims
CHAPTER XI 352
(Penelope Pipile), a handsome black fowl with a white head, which is

arboreal in its habits like the rest of this group of Gallinaceous birds
inhabiting the South American forests. They had discovered a third pool
containing plenty of turtles. Lino rejoined us at the same time, having
missed the peccary, but in compensation shot a Quandu, or porcupine. The
mulatto boy had caught alive in the pool a most charming little water-fowl,
a species of grebe. It was somewhat smaller than a pigeon, and had a
pointed beak; its feet were furnished with many intricate folds or frills of
skin instead of webs, and resembled very much those of the gecko lizards.
The bird was kept as a pet in Jabuti's house at Ega for a long time
afterwards, where it became accustomed to swim about in a common
hand-basin full of water, and was a great favourite with everybody.
We now retraced our steps towards the water-side, a weary walk of five or
six miles, reaching our canoe by half-past five o'clock, or a little before
sunset. It was considered by everyone at Catua that we had had an
unusually good day's sport. I never knew any small party to take so much
game in one day in these forests, over which animals are everywhere so
widely and sparingly scattered. My companions were greatly elated, and on
approaching the encampment at Catua, made a great commotion with their
paddles to announce their successful return, singing in their loudest key one
of the wild choruses of the Amazonian boatmen.
The excavation of eggs and preparation of the oil being finished, we left
Catua on the 3rd of November. Carepira, who was now attached to
Cardozo's party, had discovered another lake rich in turtles, about twelve
miles distant, in one of his fishing rambles, and my friend resolved, before
returning to Ega, to go there with his nets and drag it as we had formerly
done the Aningal. Several Mameluco families of Ega begged to accompany
us to share the labours and booty; the Shumana family also joined the party;
we therefore, formed a large body, numbering in all eight canoes and fifty
persons.
The summer season was now breaking up; the river was rising; the sky was
almost constantly clouded, and we had frequent rains. The mosquitoes also,
which we had not felt while encamped on the sand-banks, now became
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troublesome. We paddled up the northwesterly channel, and arrived at a

point near the upper end of Catua at ten o'clock p.m. There was here a very
broad beach of untrodden white sand, which extended quite into the forest,
where it formed rounded hills and hollows like sand dunes, covered with a
peculiar vegetation: harsh, reedy grasses, and low trees matted together
with lianas, and varied with dwarf spiny palms of the genus Bactris. We
encamped for the night on the sands, finding the place luckily free from
mosquitoes. The different portions of the party made arched coverings with
the toldos or maranta-leaf awnings of their canoes to sleep under, fixing the
edges in the sand. No one, however, seemed inclined to go to sleep, so after
supper we all sat or lay around the large fires and amused ourselves. We
had the fiddler with us, and in the intervals between the wretched tunes
which he played, the usual amusement of story-telling beguiled the time:
tales of hair-breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, and so forth. There were
amongst us a father and son who had been the actors, the previous year, in
an alligator adventure on the edge of the praia we had just left. The son,
while bathing, was seized by the thigh and carried under water-- a cry was
raised, and the father, rushing down the bank, plunged after the rapacious
beast, which was diving away with his victim. It seems almost incredible
that a man could overtake and master the large cayman in his own element;
but such was the case in this instance, for the animal was reached and
forced to release his booty by the man's thrusting his thumb into his eye.
The lad showed us the marks of the alligator's teeth on his thigh. We sat up
until past midnight listening to these stories and assisting the flow of talk
by frequent potations of burnt rum. A large, shallow dish was filled with
the liquor and fired; when it had burned for a few minutes, the flame was
extinguished and each one helped himself by dipping a tea-cup into the
vessel.
One by one the people dropped asleep, and then the quiet murmur of talk of
the few who remained awake was interrupted by the roar of jaguars in the
jungle about a furlong distant. There was not one only, but several of the
animals. The older men showed considerable alarm and proceeded to light
fresh fires around the outside of our encampment. I had read in books of
travel of tigers coming to warm themselves by the fires of a bivouac, and
thought my strong wish to witness the same sight would have been gratified
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tonight. I had not, however,such good fortune, although I was the last to go
to sleep, and my bed was the bare sand under a little arched covering open
at both ends. The jaguars, nevertheless, must have come very near during
the night, for their fresh footmarks were numerous within a score yards of
the place where we slept. In the morning I had a ramble along the borders
of the jungle, and found the tracks very numerous and close together on the
sandy soil.
We remained in this neighbourhood four days, and succeeded in obtaining

many hundred turtles, but we were obliged to sleep two nights within the
Carapanatuba channel. The first night passed rather pleasantly, for the
weather was fine, and we encamped in the forest, making large fires and
slinging our hammocks between the trees. The second was one of the most
miserable nights I ever spent. The air was close, and a drizzling rain began
to fall about midnight, lasting until morning. We tried at first to brave it out
under the trees. Several very large fires were made, lighting up with ruddy
gleams the magnificent foliage in the black shades around our encampment.
The heat and smoke had the desired effect of keeping off pretty well the
mosquitoes, but the rain continued until at length everything was soaked,
and we had no help for it but to bundle off to the canoes with drenched
hammocks and garments. There was not nearly room enough in the flotilla
to accommodate so large a number of persons lying at full length; moreover
the night was pitch dark, and it was quite impossible in the gloom and
confusion to get at a change of clothing. So there we lay, huddled together
in the best way we could arrange ourselves, exhausted with fatigue and
irritated beyond all conception by clouds of mosquitoes. I slept on a bench
with a sail over me, my wet clothes clinging to my body, and to increase
my discomfort, close beside me lay an Indian girl, one of Cardozo's
domestics, who had a skin disfigured with black diseased patches, and
whose thick clothing, not having been washed during the whole time we
had been out (eighteen days), gave forth a most vile effluvium.
We spent the night of the 7th of November pleasantly on the smooth sands,
where the jaguars again serenaded us, and on the succeeding morning we
commenced our return voyage to Ega. We first doubled the upper end of
the island of Catua, and then struck off for the right bank of the Solimoens.
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The river was here of immense width, and the current was so strong in the
middle that it required the most strenuous exertions on the part of our
paddlers to prevent us from being carried miles away down the stream. At
night we reached the Juteca, a small river which enters the Solimoens by a
channel so narrow that a man might almost jump across it, but a furlong
inwards expands into a very pretty lake several miles in circumference. We
slept again in the forest, and again were annoyed by rain and mosquitoes;
but this time Cardozo and I preferred remaining where we were to mingling
with the reeking crowd in the boats. When the grey dawn arose a steady
rain was still falling, and the whole sky had a settled, leaden appearance,
but it was delightfully cool. We took our net into the lake and gleaned a
good supply of delicious fish for breakfast. I saw at the upper end of this
lake the native rice of this country growing wild.
The weather cleared up at ten o'clock a.m. At three p.m. we arrived at the
mouth of the Cayambe, another tributary stream much larger than the
Juteca. The channel of exit to the Solimoens was here also very narrow, but
the expanded river inside is of vast dimensions: it forms a lake (I may
safely venture to say), several score miles in circumference. Although
prepared for these surprises, I was quite taken aback in this case. We had
been paddling all day along a monotonous shore, with the dreary Solimoens
before us, here three to four miles broad, heavily rolling onward its muddy
waters. We come to a little gap in the earthy banks, and find a dark, narrow
inlet with a wall of forest overshadowing it on each side; we enter it, and at
a distance of two or three hundred yards a glorious sheet of water bursts
upon the view. The scenery of Cayambe is very picturesque. The land, on
the two sides visible of the lake, is high, and clothed with sombre woods,
varied here and there with a white-washed house, in the middle of a green
patch of clearing, belonging to settlers. In striking contrast to these dark,
rolling forests, is the vivid, light green and cheerful foliage of the woods on
the numerous islets which rest like water-gardens on the surface of the lake.
Flocks of ducks, storks, and snow-white herons inhabit these islets, and a
noise of parrots with the tingling chorus of Tamburi-paras was heard from
them as we passed. This has a cheering effect after the depressing stillness
and absence of life in the woods on the margins of the main river.
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Cardozo and I took a small boat and crossed the lake to visit one of the
settlers, and on our return to our canoe, while in the middle of the lake, a
squall suddenly arose in the direction towards which we were going, so that
for a whole hour we were in great danger of being swamped. The wind
blew away the awning and mats, and lashed the waters into foam, the
waves rising to a great height. Our boat, fortunately, was excellently
constructed, rising well towards the prow, so that with good steering we
managed to head the billows as they arose, and escaped without shipping
much water. We reached our igarite at sunset, and then made all speed to
Curubaru, fifteen miles distant, to encamp for the night on the sands. We
reached the praia at ten o'clock. The waters were now mounting fast upon
the sloping beach, and we found on dragging the net next morning that fish
was beginning to be scarce. Cardozo and his friends talked quite gloomily
at breakfast time over the departure of the joyous verao, and the setting in
of the dull, hungry winter season.
At nine o'clock in the morning of the 10th of November a light wind from
down river sprang up, and all who had sails hoisted them. It was the first
time during our trip that we had had occasion to use our sails, so continual
is the calm on this upper river. We bowled along merrily, and soon entered
the broad channel lying between Baria and the mainland on the south bank.
The wind carried us right into the mouth of the Teffe and at four o'clock
p.m. we cast anchor in the port of Ega.
CHAPTER XII
ANIMALS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA
Scarlet-faced Monkeys--Parauacu Monkey--Owl-faced Night-apes--

Marmosets--Jupura--Bats--Birds--Cuvier's Toucan--Curl-crested
Toucan--Insects--Pendulous Cocoons--Foraging Ants--Blind Ants
As may have been gathered from the remarks already made, the
neighbourhood of Ega was a fine field for a Natural History collector. With
the exception of what could be learned from the few specimens brought
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home, after transient visits by Spix and Martius and the Count de
Castelnau, whose acquisitions have been deposited in the public museums
of Munich and Paris, very little was known in Europe of the animal tenants
of this region; the collections that I had the opportunity of making and
sending home attracted, therefore, considerable attention. Indeed, the name
of my favourite village has become quite a household word among a
numerous class of Naturalists, not only in England but abroad, in
consequence of the very large number of new species (upwards of 3000)
which they have had to describe, with the locality "Ega" attached to them.
The discovery of new species, however, forms but a small item in the
interest belonging to the study of the living creation. The structure, habits,
instincts, and geographical distribution of some of the oldest-known forms
supply inexhaustible materials for reflection. The few remarks I have to
make on the animals of Ega will relate to the mammals, birds, and insects,
and will sometimes apply to the productions of the whole Upper Amazons
region. We will begin with the monkeys, the most interesting, next to man,
of all animals.
Scarlet-faced Monkeys--Early one sunny morning, in the year 1855, I saw

in the streets of Ega a number of Indians, carrying on their shoulders down
to the port, to be embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, a large cage
made of strong lianas, some twelve feet in length and five in height,
containing a dozen monkeys of the most grotesque appearance. Their
bodies (about eighteen inches in height, exclusive of limbs) were clothed
from neck to tail with very long, straight, and shining whitish hair; their
heads were nearly bald, owing to the very short crop of thin grey hairs, and
their faces glowed with the most vivid scarlet hue. As a finish to their
striking physiognomy, they had bushy whiskers of a sandy colour, meeting
under the chin, and reddish-yellow eyes. These red-faced apes belonged to
a species called by the Indians Uakari, which is peculiar to the Ega district,
and the cage with its contents was being sent as a present by Senor
Chrysostomo, the Director of Indians of the Japura, to one of the
Government officials at Rio Janeiro, in acknowledgment of having been
made colonel of the new National Guard. They had been obtained with
great difficulty in the forests which cover the lowlands near the principal
mouth of the Japura, about thirty miles from Ega. It was the first time I had
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seen this most curious of all the South American monkeys, and one that
appears to have escaped the notice of Spix and Martius. I afterwards made a
journey to the district inhabited by it, but did not then succeed in obtaining
specimens; before leaving the country, however, I acquired two individuals,
one of which lived in my house for several weeks.
The scarlet-faced monkey belongs, in all essential points of structure, to the

same family (Cebidae) as the rest of the large- sized American species; but
it differs from all its relatives in having only the rudiment of a tail, a
member which reaches in some allied kinds the highest grade of
development known in the order. It was so unusual to see a nearly tailless
monkey from America, that naturalists thought, when the first specimens
arrived in Europe, that the member had been shortened artificially.
Nevertheless, the Uakari is not quite isolated from its related species of the
same family, several other kinds, also found on the Amazons, forming a
graduated passage between the extreme forms as regards the tail. The
appendage reaches its perfection in those genera (the Howlers, the
Lagothrix and the Spider monkeys) in which it presents on its under-surface
near the tip a naked palm, which makes it sensitive and useful as a fifth
hand in climbing. In the rest of the genera of Cebidae (seven in number,
containing thirty-eight species), the tail is weaker in structure, entirely
covered with hair, and of little or no service in climbing, a few species
nearly related to our Uakari having it much shorter than usual. All the
Cebidae, both long-tailed and short-tailed, are equally dwellers in trees. The
scarlet-faced monkey lives in forests, which are inundated during great part
of the year, and is never known to descend to the ground; the shortness of
its tail is, therefore, no sign of terrestrial habits, as it is in the Macaques and
Baboons of the Old World. It differs a little from the typical Cebidae in its
teeth, the incisors being oblique and, in the upper jaw, converging, so as to
leave a gap between the outermost and the canine teeth. Like all the rest of
its family, it differs from the monkeys of the Old World, and from man, in
having an additional grinding-tooth (premolar) in each side of both jaws,
making the complete set thirty-six instead of thirty-two in number.
The white Uakari (Brachyurus calvus), seems to be found in no other part

of America than the district just mentioned, namely, the banks of the
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Japura, near its principal mouth; and even there it is confined, as far I could
learn, to the western side of the river. It lives in small troops among the
crowns of the lofty trees, subsisting on fruits of various kinds. Hunters say
it is pretty nimble in its motions, but is not much given to leaping,
preferring to run up and down the larger boughs in travelling from tree to
tree. The mother, as in other species of the monkey order, carries her young
on her back. Individuals are obtained alive by shooting them with the
blow-pipe and arrows tipped with diluted Urari poison. They run a
considerable distance after being pierced, and it requires an experienced
hunter to track them. He is considered the most expert who can keep pace
with a wounded one, and catch it in his arms when it falls exhausted. A
pinch of salt, the antidote to the poison, is then put in its mouth, and the
creature revives. The species is rare, even in the limited district which it
inhabits. Senor Chrysostomo sent six of his most skillful Indians, who were
absent three weeks before they obtained the twelve specimens which
formed his unique and princely gift. When an independent hunter obtains
one, a very high price (thirty to forty milreis) [Three pounds seven shillings
to four pounds thirteen shillings] is asked, these monkeys being in great
demand for presents to persons of influence down the river.
Adult Uakaris, caught in the way just described, very rarely become tame.
They are peevish and sulky, resisting all attempts to coax them, and biting
anyone who ventures within reach. They have no particular cry, even when
in their native woods; in captivity they are quite silent. In the course of a
few days or weeks, if not very carefully attended to, they fall into a listless
condition, refuse food, and die. Many of them succumb to a disease which I
suppose from the symptoms to be inflammation of the chest or lungs. The
one which I kept as a pet died of this disorder after I had had it about three
weeks. It lost its appetite in a very few days, although kept in an airy
verandah; its coat, which was originally long, smooth, and glossy, became
dingy and ragged like that of the specimens seen in museums, and the
bright scarlet colour of its face changed to a duller hue. This colour, in
health, is spread over the features up to the roots of the hair on the forehead
and temples, and down to the neck, including the flabby cheeks which hang
down below the jaws. The animal, in this condition, looks at a short
distance as though some one had laid a thick coat of red paint on its
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countenance. The death of my pet was slow; during the last twenty-four
hours it lay prostrate, breathing quickly, its chest strongly heaving; the
colour of its face became gradually paler, but was still red when it expired.
As the hue did not quite disappear until two or three hours after the animal
was quite dead, I judged that it was not exclusively due to the blood, but
partly to a pigment beneath the skin which would probably retain its colour
a short time after the circulation had ceased.
After seeing much of the morose disposition of the Uakari, I was not a little
surprised one day at a friend's house to find an extremely lively and
familiar individual of this species. It ran from an inner chamber straight
towards me after I had sat down on a chair, climbed my legs and nestled in
my lap, turning round and looking up with the usual monkey's grin, after it
had made itself comfortable. It was a young animal which had been taken
when its mother was shot with a poisoned arrow; its teeth were incomplete,
and the face was pale and mottled, the glowing scarlet hue not supervening
in these animals before mature age; it had also a few long black hairs on the
eyebrows and lips. The frisky little fellow had been reared in the house
amongst the children, and allowed to run about freely, and take its meals
with the rest of the household. There are few animals which the Brazilians
of these villages have not succeeded in taming. I have even seen young
jaguars running loose about a house, and treated as pets. The animals that I
had rarely became familiar, however long they might remain in my
possession, a circumstance due no doubt to their being kept always tied up.
The Uakari is one of the many species of animals which are classified by
the Brazilians as "mortal," or of delicate constitution, in contradistinction to
those which are "duro," or hardy. A large proportion of the specimens sent
from Ega die before arriving at Para, and scarcely one in a dozen succeeds
in reaching Rip Janeiro alive. The difficulty it has of accommodating itself
to changed conditions probably has some connection with the very limited
range or confined sphere of life of the species in its natural state, its native
home being an area of swampy woods, not more than about sixty square
miles in extent, although no permanent barrier exists to cheek its dispersal,
except towards the south, over a much wider space. When I descended the
river in 1859, we had with us a tame adult Uakari, which was allowed to
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ramble about the vessel, a large schooner. When we reached the mouth of
the Rio Negro, we had to wait four days while the custom-house officials at
Barra, ten miles distant, made out the passports for our crew, and during
this time the schooner lay close to the shore, with its bowsprit secured to
the trees on the bank. Well, one morning, scarlet-face was missing, having
made his escape into the forest. Two men were sent in search of him, but
returned after several hours' absence without having caught sight of the
runaway. We gave up the monkey for lost, until the following day, when he
re-appeared on the skirts of the forest, and marched quietly down the
bowsprit to his usual place on deck. He had evidently found the forests of
the Rio Negro very different from those of the delta lands of the Japura, and
preferred captivity to freedom in a place that was so uncongenial to him.
The Parauacu Monkey.--Another Ega monkey, nearly related to the

Uakaris, is the Parauacu (Pithecia hirsuta), a timid inoffensive creature with
a long bear-like coat of harsh speckled-grey hair. The long fur hangs over
the head, half concealing the pleasing diminutive face, and clothes also the
tail to the tip, which member is well developed, being eighteen inches in
length, or longer than the body. The Parauacu is found on the "terra firma"
lands of the north shore of the Solimoens from Tunantins to Peru. It exists
also on the south side of the river, namely, on the banks of the Teffe, but
there under a changed form, which differs a little from its type in colours.
This form has been described by Dr. Gray as a distinct species, under the
name of Pithecia albicans. The Parauacu is also a very delicate animal,
rarely living many weeks in captivity; but any one who succeeds in keeping
it alive for a month or two, gains by it a most affectionate pet. One of the
specimens of Pithecia albicans now in the British Museum was, when
living, the property of a young Frenchman, a neighbour of mine at Ega. It
became so tame in the course of a few weeks that it followed him about the
streets like a dog. My friend was a tailor, and the little pet used to spend the
greater part of the day seated on his shoulder, while he was at work on his
board. Nevertheless,it showed great dislike to strangers, and was not on
good terms with any other member of my friend's household than himself. I
saw no monkey that showed so strong a personal attachment as this gentle,
timid, silent, little creature. The eager and passionate Cebi seem to take the
lead of all the South American monkeys in intelligence and docility, and
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the Coaita has perhaps the most gentle and impressible disposition; but the
Parauacu, although a dull, cheerless animal, excels all in this quality of
capability of attachment to individuals of our own species. It is not
wanting, however, in intelligence as well as moral goodness, proof of
which was furnished one day by an act of our little pet. My neighbour had
quitted his house in the morning without taking Parauacu with him, and the
little creature having missed its friend, and concluded, as it seemed, that he
would be sure to come to me, both being in the habit of paying me a daily
visit together, came straight to my dwelling, taking a short cut over
gardens, trees, and thickets, instead of going the roundabout way of the
street. It had never done this before, and we knew the route it had taken
only from a neighbour having watched its movements. On arriving at my
house and not finding its master, it climbed to the top of my table, and sat
with an air of quiet resignation waiting for him. Shortly afterwards my
friend entered, and the gladdened pet then jumped to its usual perch on his
shoulder.
Owl-laced Night Apes--A third interesting genus of monkeys found near

Ega, are the Nyctipitheci, or night apes, called Ei-a by the Indians. Of these
I found two species, closely related to each other but nevertheless quite
distinct, as both inhabit the same forests, namely, those of the higher and
drier lands, without mingling with each other or intercrossing. They sleep
all day long in hollow trees, and come forth to prey on insects and eat fruits
only in the night. They are of small size, the body being about a foot long,
and the tall fourteen inches, and are thickly clothed with soft grey and
brown fur, similar in substance to that of the rabbit. Their physiognomy
reminds one of an owl, or tiger-cat: the face is round and encircled by a ruff
of whitish fur. the muzzle is not at all prominent; the mouth and chin are
small; the cars are very short, scarcely appearing above the hair of the head;
and the eyes are large and yellowish in colour, imparting the staring
expression of nocturnal animals of prey. The forehead is whitish, and
decorated with three black stripes, which in one of the species
(Nyctipithecus trivirgatus) continue to the crown; and in the other (N.
felinus), meet on the top of the forehead. N. trivirgatus was first described
by Humboldt, who discovered it on the banks of the Cassiquiare, near the
head waters of the Rio Negro.
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I kept a pet animal of the N. trivirgatus for many months, a young one
having been given to me by an Indian compadre, as a present from my
newly-baptised godson. These monkeys, although sleeping by day, are
aroused by the least noise; so that, when a person passes by a tree in which
a number of them are concealed, he is startled by the sudden apparition of a
group of little striped faces crowding a hole in the trunk. It was in this way
that my compadre discovered the colony from which the one given to me
was taken. I was obliged to keep my pet chained up; it therefore, never
became thoroughly familiar. I once saw, however, an individual of the
other species (N. felinus) which was most amusingly tame. It was as lively
and nimble as the Cebi, but not so mischievous and far more confiding in
its disposition, delighting to be caressed by all persons who came into the
house. But its owner, the Municipal Judge of Ega, Dr. Carlos Mariana, had
treated it for many weeks with the greatest kindness, allowing it to sleep
with him at night in his hammock, and to nestle in his bosom half the day
as he lay reading. It was a great favourite with everyone, from the
cleanliness of its habits to the prettiness of its features and ways. My own
pet was kept in a box, in which was placed a broad-mouthed glass jar; into
this it would dive, head foremost, when any one entered the room, turning
round inside, and thrusting forth its inquisitive face an instant afterwards to
stare at the intruder. It was very active at night, venting at frequent intervals
a hoarse cry, like the suppressed barking of a dog, and scampering about
the room, to the length of its tether, after cockroaches and spiders. In
climbing between the box and the wall, it straddled the space, resting its
hands on the palms and tips of the out-stretched fingers with the knuckles
bent at an acute angle, and thus mounted to the top with the greatest
facility. Although seeming to prefer insects, it ate all kinds of fruit, but
would not touch raw or cooked meat, and was very seldom thirsty. I was
told by persons who had kept these monkeys loose about the house, that
they cleared the chambers of bats as well as insect vermin. When
approached gently my Ei-a allowed itself to be caressed; but when handled
roughly, it always took alarm, biting severely, striking out its little hands,
and making a hissing noise like a cat. As already related, my pet was killed
by a jealous Caiarara monkey, which was kept in the house at the same
time.
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Barrigudo Monkeys.--Ten other species of monkeys were found, in

addition to those already mentioned, in the forests of the Upper Amazons.
All were strictly arboreal and diurnal in their habits, and lived in flocks,
travelling from tree to tree, the mothers with their children on their backs--
leading, in fact, a life similar to that of the Pararauate Indians, and, like
them, occasionally plundering the plantations which lie near their line of
march. Some of them were found also on the Lower Amazons, and have
been noticed in former chapters of this narrative. Of the remainder, the
most remarkable is the Macaco barrigudo, or bag- bellied monkey of the
Portuguese colonists, a species of Lagothrix. The genus is closely allied to
the Coaitas, or spider monkeys, having, like them, exceedingly strong and
flexible tails, which are furnished underneath with a naked palm like a
hand, for grasping. The Barrigudos, however, are very bulky animals, while
the spider monkeys are remarkable for the slenderness of their bodies and
limbs. I obtained specimens of what have been considered two species, one
(L. olivaceus of Spix?) having the head clothed with grey, the other (L.
Humboldtii) with black fur. They both live together in the same places, and
are probably only differently-coloured individuals of one and the same
species. I sent home a very large male of one of these kinds, which
measured twenty-seven inches in length of trunk, the tail being twenty-six
inches long; it was the largest monkey I saw in America, with the exception
of a black Howler, whose body was twenty-eight inches in height. The skin
of the face in the Barrigudo is black and wrinkled, the forehead is low, with
the eyebrows projecting, and, in short, the features altogether resemble in a
striking manner those of an old negro. In the forests, the Barrigudo is not a
very active animal; it lives exclusively on fruits, and is much persecuted by
the Indians, on account of the excellence of its flesh as food. From
information given me by a collector of birds and mammals, whom I
employed, and who resided a long time among the Tucuna Indians near
Tabatinga, I calculated that one horde of this tribe, 200 in number,
destroyed 1200 of these monkeys annually for food. The species is very
numerous in the forests of the higher lands, but, owing to long persecution,
it is now seldom seen in the neighbourhood of the larger villages. It is not
found at all on the Lower Amazons. Its manners in captivity are grave, and
its temper mild and confiding, like that of the Coaitas, owing to these traits,
the Barrigudo is much sought after for pets; but it is not hardy like the
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Coaitas, and seldom survives a passage down the river to Para.
Marmosets.-It now only remains to notice the Marmosets, which form the
second family of American monkeys. Our old friend Midas ursulus, of Para
and the Lower Amazons, is not found on the Upper river, but in its stead a
closely-allied species presents itself, which appears to be the Midas
rufoniger of Gervais, whose mouth is bordered with longish white hairs.
The habits of this species are the same as those of the M. ursulus, indeed it
seems probable that it is a form or race of the same stock, modified to suit
the altered local conditions under which it lives. One day, while walking
along a forest pathway, I saw one of these lively little fellows miss his
grasp as he was passing from one tree to another along with his troop. He
fell head foremost, from a height of at least fifty feet, but managed cleverly
to alight on his legs in the pathway, quickly turning around, gave me a
good stare for a few moments, and then bounded off gaily to climb another
tree. At Tunantins, I shot a pair of a very handsome species of Marmoset,
the M. rufiventer, I believe, of zoologists. Its coat was very glossy and
smooth, the back deep brown, and the underside of the body of rich black
and reddish hues. A third species (found at Tabatinga, 200 miles further
west) is of a deep black colour, with the exception of a patch of white hair
around its mouth. The little animal, at a short distance, looks as though it
held a ball of snow-white cotton in its teeth. The last I shall mention is the
Hapale pygmaeus, one of the most diminutive forms of the monkey order,
three full-grown specimens of which, measuring only seven inches in
length of body, I obtained near St. Paulo. The pretty Lilliputian face is
furnished with long brown whiskers, which are naturally brushed back over
the cars. The general colour of the animal is brownish-tawny, but the tail is
elegantly barred with black. I was surprised, on my return to England, to
learn from specimens in the British Museum, that the pigmy Marmoset was
found also in Mexico-- no other Amazonian monkey being known to
wander far from the great river plain. Thus, the smallest and apparently the
feeblest, species of the whole order, is one which has, by some means,
become the most widely dispersed.
The Jupura.--A curious animal, known to naturalists as the Kinkajou, but

called Jupura by the Indians of the Amazons, and considered by them as a
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kind of monkey, may be mentioned in this place. It is the Cercoleptes

caudivolvus of zoologists, and has been considered by some authors as an
intermediate form between the Lemur family of apes and the plantigrade
Carnivora, or Bear family. It has decidedly no close relation ship to either
of the groups of American monkeys, having six cutting teeth to each jaw,
and long claws instead of nails, with extremities of the usual shape of paws
instead of hands. Its muzzle is conical and pointed, like that of many
Lemurs of Madagascar; the expression of its countenance, and its habits
and actions, are also very similar to those of Lemurs. Its tail is very flexible
towards the tip, and is used to twine round branches in climbing. I did not
see or hear anything of this animal while residing on the Lower Amazons,
but on the banks of the Upper river, from the Teffe to Peru, it appeared to
be rather common. It is nocturnal in its habits, like the owl-faced monkeys,
although, unlike them, it has a bright, dark eye. I once saw it in
considerable numbers, when on an excursion with an Indian companion
along the low Ygapo shores of the Teffe, about twenty miles above Ega.
We slept one night at the house of a native family living in the thick of the
forest where a festival was going on and, there being no room to hang our
hammocks under shelter. on account of the number of visitors, we lay down
on a mat in the open air, near a shed which stood in the midst of a grove of
fruit-trees and pupunha palms. Past midnight, when all became still, after
the uproar of holidaymaking, as I was listening to the dull, fanning sound
made by the wings of impish hosts of vampire bats crowding round the
Caju trees, a rustle commenced from the side of the woods, and a troop of
slender, long-tailed animals were seen against the clear moonlit sky, taking
flying leaps from branch to branch through the grove. Many of them
stopped at the pupunha trees, and the hustling, twittering, and screaming,
with sounds of falling fruits, showed how they were employed. I thought, at
first, they were Nyctipitheci, but they proved to be Jupuras, for the owner
of the house early next morning caught a young one, and gave it to me. I
kept this as a pet animal for several weeks, feeding it on bananas and
mandioca-meal mixed with treacle. It became tame in a very short time,
allowing itself to be caressed, but making a distinction in the degree of
confidence it showed between myself and strangers. My pet was
unfortunately killed by a neighbour's dog, which entered the room where it
was kept. The animal is so difficult to obtain alive, its place of retreat in the
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daytime not being known to the natives, that I was unable to procure a
second living specimen.
Bats--The only other mammals that I shall mention are the bats, which exist
in very considerable numbers and variety in the forest, as well as in the
buildings of the villages. Many small and curious species, living in the
woods, conceal themselves by day under the broad leaf-blades of
Heliconiae and other plants which grow in shady places; others cling to the
trunks of trees. While walking through the forest in the daytime, especially
along gloomy ravines, one is almost sure to startle bats from their
sleeping-places; and at night they are often seen in great numbers flitting
about the trees on the shady margins of narrow channels. I captured
altogether, without giving especial attention to bats, sixteen different
species at Ega.
The Vampire Bat.--The little grey blood-sucking Phyllostoma, mentioned

in a former chapter as found in my chamber at Caripi, was not uncommon
at Ega, where everyone believes it to visit sleepers and bleed them in the
night. But the vampire was here by far the most abundant of the family of
leaf-nosed bats. It is the largest of all the South American species,
measuring twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing. Nothing in animal
physiognomy can be more hideous than the countenance of this creature
when viewed from the front; the large, leathery ears standing out from the
sides and top of the head, the erect spear-shaped appendage on the tip of the
nose, the grin and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up a
figure that reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that
imaginative people have inferred diabolical instincts on the part of so ugly
an animal. The vampire, however, is the most harmless of all bats, and its
inoffensive character is well known to residents on the banks of the
Amazons. I found two distinct species of it, one having the fur of a blackish
colour, the other of a ruddy hue, and ascertained that both feed chiefly on
fruits. The church at Ega was the headquarters of both kinds, I used to see
them, as I sat at my door during the short evening twilights, trooping forth
by scores from a large open window at the back of the altar, twittering
cheerfully as they sped off to the borders of the forest. They sometimes
enter houses; the first time I saw one in my chamber, wheeling heavily
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round and round, I mistook it for a pigeon, thinking that a tame one had
escaped from the premises of one of my neighbours. I opened the stomachs
of several of these bats, and found them to contain a mass of pulp and seeds
of fruits, mingled with a few remains of insects. The natives say they
devour ripe cajus and guavas on trees in the gardens, but on comparing the
seeds taken from their stomachs with those of all cultivated trees at Ega, I
found they were unlike any of them; it is therefore, probable that they
generally resort to the forest to feed, coming to the village in the morning to
sleep, because they find it more secure from animals of prey than their
natural abides in the woods.
Birds.--I have already had occasion to mention several of the more

interesting birds found in the Ega district. The first thing that would strike a
newcomer in the forests of the Upper Amazons would be the general
scarcity of birds; indeed, it often happened that I did not meet with a single
bird during a whole day's ramble in the richest and most varied parts of the
woods. Yet the country is tenanted by many hundred species, many of
which are, in reality, abundant, and some of them conspicuous from their
brilliant plumage. The cause of their apparent rarity is to be sought in the
sameness and density of the thousand miles of forest which constitute their
dwelling-place. The birds of the country are gregarious, at least during the
season when they are most readily found; but the frugivorous kinds are to
be met with only when certain wild fruits are ripe, and to know the exact
localities of the trees requires months of experience. It would not be
supposed that the insectivorous birds are also gregarious, but they are so--
numbers of distinct species, belonging to many different families, joining
together in the chase or search of food. The proceedings of these associated
bands of insect-hunters are not a little curious, and merit a few remarks.
While hunting along the narrow pathways that are made through the forest
in the neighbourhood of houses and villages, one may pass several days
without seeing many birds; but now and then the surrounding bushes and
trees appear suddenly to swarm with them. There are scores, probably
hundreds of birds, all moving about with the greatest activity--woodpeckers
and Dendrocolaptidae (from species no larger than a sparrow to others the
size of a crow) running up the tree trunks; tanagers, ant-thrushes,
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hummingbirds, fly-catchers, and barbets flitting about the leaves and lower
branches. The bustling crowd loses no time, and although moving in
concert, each bird is occupied, on its own account, in searching bark or leaf
or twig; the barbets visit every clayey nest of termites on the trees which lie
in the line of march. In a few minutes the host is gone, and the forest path
remains deserted and silent as before. I became, in course of time, so
accustomed to this habit of birds in the woods near Ega, that I could
generally find the flock of associated marauders whenever I wanted it.
There appeared to be only one of these flocks in each small district; and, as
it traversed chiefly a limited tract of woods of second growth, I used to try
different paths until I came up with it.
The Indians have noticed these miscellaneous hunting parties of birds, but
appear not to have observed that they are occupied in searching for insects.
They have supplied their want of knowledge, in the usual way of
half-civilised people, by a theory which has degenerated into a myth, to the
effect that the onward moving bands are led by a little grey bird, called the
Uira-para, which fascinates all the rest, and leads them a weary dance
through the thickets. There is certainly some appearance of truth in this
explanation, for sometimes stray birds encountered in the line of march, are
seen to be drawn into the throng, and purely frugivorous birds are now and
then found mixed up with the rest, as though led away by some
will-o'-the-wisp. The native women, even the white and half-caste
inhabitants of the towns, attach a superstitious value to the skin and feathers
of the Uira-para, believing that if they keep them in their clothes' chest, the
relics will have the effect of attracting for the happy possessors a train of
lovers and followers. These birds are consequently in great demand in some
places, the hunters selling them at a high price to the foolish girls, who
preserve the bodies by drying flesh and feathers together in the sun. I could
never get a sight of this famous little bird in the forest. I once employed
Indians to obtain specimens for me; but, after the same man (who was a
noted woodsman) brought me, at different times, three distinct species of
birds as the Uira-para, I gave up the story as a piece of humbug. The
simplest explanation appears to be this: the birds associate in flocks from
the instinct of self-preservation in order to be a less easy prey to hawks,
snakes, and other enemies than they would be if feeding alone.
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Toucans--Cuvier's Toucan--Of this family of birds, so conspicuous from

the great size and light structure of their beaks, and so characteristic of
tropical American forests, five species inhabit the woods of Ega. The
commonest is Cuvier's Toucan, a large bird, distinguished from its nearest
relatives by the feathers at the bottom of the back being of a saffron hue
instead of red. It is found more or less numerously throughout the year, as it
breeds in the neighbourhood, laying its eggs in holes of trees, at a great
height from the ground. During most months of the year, it is met with in
single individuals or small flocks, and the birds are then very wary.
Sometimes one of these little bands of four or five is seen perched, for
hours together, among the topmost branches of high trees, giving vent to
their remarkably loud, shrill, yelping cries, one bird, mounted higher than
the rest, acting, apparently, as leader of the inharmonious chorus; but two
of them are often heard yelping alternately, and in different notes. These
cries have a vague resemblance to the syllables Tocano, Tocano, and hence,
the Indian name of this genus of birds. At these times it is difficult to get a
shot at Toucans, for their senses are so sharpened that they descry the
hunter before he gets near the tree on which they are perched, although he
may be half-concealed among the underwood, 150 feet below them. They
stretch their necks downwards to look beneath, and on espying the least
movement among the foliage, fly off to the more inaccessible parts of the
forest. Solitary Toucans are sometimes met with at the same season,
hopping silently up and down the larger boughs, and peering into crevices
of the tree-trunks. They moult in the months from March to June, some
individuals earlier, others later. This season of enforced quiet being passed,
they make their appearance suddenly in the dry forest, near Ega, in large
flocks, probably assemblages of birds gathered together from the
neighbouring Ygapo forests, which are then flooded and cold. The birds
have now become exceedingly tame, and the troops travel with heavy
laborious flight from bough to bough among the lower trees. They thus
become an easy prey to hunters, and everyone at Ega who can get a gun of
any sort and a few charges of powder and shot, or a blow-pipe, goes daily
to the woods to kill a few brace for dinner; for, as already observed, the
people of Ega live almost exclusively on stewed and roasted Toucans
during the months of June and July, the birds being then very fat and the
meat exceedingly sweet and tender.
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No one, on seeing a Toucan, can help asking what is the use of the
enormous bill, which, in some species, attains a length of seven inches, and
a width of more than two inches. A few remarks on this subject may be
here introduced. The early naturalists, having seen only the bill of a
Toucan, which was esteemed as a marvellous production by the virtuosi of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concluded that the bird must have
belonged to the aquatic and web-footed order, as this contains so many
species of remarkable development of beak, adapted for seizing fish. Some
travvellers also related fabulous stories of Toucans resorting to the banks of
rivers to feed on fish, and these accounts also encouraged the erroneous
views of the habits of the birds which for a long time prevailed. Toucans,
however, are now well known to be eminently arboreal birds, and to belong
to a group including trogons, parrots, and barbets [Capitoninae, G. R.
Gray.]-- all of whose members are fruit-eaters. On the Amazons, where
these birds are very common, no one pretends ever to have seen a Toucan
walking on the ground in its natural state, much less acting the part of a
swimming or wading bird. Professor Owen found, on dissection, that the
gizzard in Toucans is not so well adapted for the trituration of food as it is
in other vegetable feeders, and concluded, therefore, as Broderip had
observed the habit of chewing the cud in a tame bird, that the great toothed
bill was useful in holding and remasticating the food. The bill can scarcely
be said to be a very good contrivance for seizing and crushing small birds,
or taking them from their nests in crevices of trees, habits which have been
imputed to Toucans by some writers. The hollow, cellular structure of the
interior of the bill, its curved and clumsy shape, and the deficiency of force
and precision when it is used to seize objects, suggest a want of fitness, if
this be the function of the member. But fruit is undoubtedly the chief food
of Toucans, and it is in reference to their mode of obtaining it that the use
of their uncouth bills is to be sought. Flowers and fruit on the crowns of the
large trees of South American forests grow, principally, towards the end of
slender twigs, which will not bear any considerable weight; all animals,
therefore, which feed upon fruit, or on insects contained in flowers, must,
of course, have some means of reaching the ends of the stalks from a
distance. Monkeys obtain their food by stretching forth their long arms and,
in some instances, their tails, to bring the fruit near to their mouths.
Hummingbirds are endowed with highly perfected organs of flight with
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corresponding muscular development by which they are enabled to sustain

themselves on the wing before blossoms whilst rifling them of their
contents. These strong-flying creatures, however, will, whenever they can
get near enough, remain on their perches while probing neighbouring
flowers for insects. Trogons have feeble wings, and a dull, inactive
temperament. Their mode of obtaining food is to station themselves quietly
on low branches in the gloomy shades of the forest, and eye the fruits on
the surrounding trees-- darting off, as if with an effort, every time they wish
to seize a mouthful, and returning to the same perch. Barbets (Capitoninae)
seem to have no especial endowment, either of habits or structure, to enable
them to seize fruits; and in this respect they are similar to the Toucans, if
we leave the bill out of question, both tribes having heavy bodies, with
feeble organs of flight, so that they are disabled from taking their food on
the wing. The purpose of the enormous bill here becomes evident; it is to
enable the Toucan to reach and devour fruit whil remaining seated, and thus
to counterbalance the disadvantage which its heavy body and gluttonous
appetite would otherwise give it in the competition with allied groups of
birds. The relation between the extraordinarily lengthened bill of the
Toucan and its mode of obtaining food, is therefore precisely similar to that
between the long neck and lips of the Giraffe and the mode of browsing of
the animal. The bill of the Toucan can scarcely be considered a very
perfectly-formed instrument for the end to which it is applied, as here
explained; but nature appears not to invent organs at once for the functions
to which they are now adapted, but avails herself, here of one
already-existing structure or instinct, there of another, according as they are
handy when need for their further modification arises.
One day, whil walking along the principal pathway in the woods near Ega,
I saw one of these Toucans seated gravely on a low branch close to the
road, and had no difficulty in seizing it with my hand. It turned out to be a
runaway pet bird; no one, however, came to own it, although I kept it in my
house for several months. The bird was in a half-starved and sickly
condition, but after a few days of good living it recovered health and spirits,
and became one of the most amusing pets imaginable. Many excellent
accounts of the habits of tame Toucans have been published, and therefore,
I need not describe them in detail, but I do not recollect to have seen any
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notice of their intelligence and confiding disposition under domestication,

in which qualities my pet seemed to be almost equal to parrots. I allowed
Tocano to go free about the house, contrary to my usual practice with pet
animals, he never, however, mounted my working- table after a smart
correction which he received the first time he did it. He used to sleep on the
top of a box in a corner of the room, in the usual position of these birds,
namely, with the long tail laid right over on the back, and the beak thrust
underneath the wing. He ate of everything that we eat; beef, turtle, fish,
farinha, fruit, and was a constant attendant at our table--a cloth spread on a
mat. His appetite was most ravenous, and his powers of digestion quite
wonderful. He got to know the meal hours to a nicety, and we found it very
difficult, after the first week or two, to keep him away from the
dining-room, where he had become very impudent and troublesome. We
tried to shut him out by enclosing him in the backyard, which was
separated by a high fence from the street on which our front door opened,
but he used to climb the fence and hop round by a long circuit to the
dining-room, making his appearance with the greatest punctuality as the
meal was placed on the table. He acquired the habit, afterwards, of
rambling about the street near our house, and one day he was stolen, so we
gave him up for lost. But two days afterwards he stepped through the open
doorway at dinner hour, with his old gait, and sly magpie-like expression,
having escaped from the house where he had been guarded by the person
who had stolen him, and which was situated at the further end of the
village.
The Curl-crested Toucan (Pteroglossus Beauharnaisii).--Of the four smaller

Toucans, or Arassaris, found near Ega, the Pteroglossus flavirostris is
perhaps the most beautiful in colours, its breast being adorned with broad
belts of rich crimson and black; but the most curious species, by far, is the
Curl-crested, or Beauharnais Toucan. The feathers on the head of this
singular bird are transformed into thin, horny plates, of a lustrous black
colour, curled up at the ends, and resembling shavings of steel or
ebony-wood: the curly crest being arranged on the crown in the form of a
wig. Mr. Wallace and I first met with this species, on ascending the
Amazons, at the mouth of the Solimoens; from that point it continues as a
rather common bird on the terra firma, at least on the south side of the river
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as far as Fonte Boa, but I did not hear of its being found further to the west.
It appears in large flocks in the forests near Ega in May and June, when it
has completed its moult. I did not find these bands congregated at
fruit-trees, but always wandering through the forest, hopping from branch
to branch among the lower trees, and partly concealed among the foliage.
None of the Arassaris, to my knowledge, make a yelping noise like that
uttered by the larger Toucans (Ramphastos); the notes of the curl-crested
species are very singular, resembling the croaking of frogs. I had an
amusing adventure one day with these birds. I had shot one from a rather
high tree in a dark glen in the forest, and entered the thicket where the bird
had fallen to secure my booty. It was only wounded, and on my attempting
to seize it, set up a loud scream. In an instant, as if by magic, the shady
nook seemed alive with these birds, although there was certainly none
visible when I entered the jungle. They descended towards me, hopping
from bough to bough, some of them swinging on the loops and cables of
woody lianas, and all croaking and fluttering their wings like so many
furies. If I had had a long stick in my hand I could have knocked several of
them over. After killing the wounded one, I began to prepare for obtaining
more specimens and punishing the viragos for their boldness; but the
screaming of their companion having ceased, they remounted the trees, and
before I could reload, every one of them had disappeared.
Insects.--Upwards of 7000 species of insects were found in the

neighbourhood of Ega. I must confine myself in this place to a few remarks
on the order Lepidoptera, and on the ants, several kinds of which, found
chiefly on the Upper Amazons, exhibit the most extraordinary instincts.
I found about 550 distinct species of butterflies at Ega. Those who know a
little of Entomology will be able to form some idea of the riches of the
place in this department, when I mention that eighteen species of true
Papilio (the swallow-tail genus) were found within ten minutes' walk of my
house. No fact could speak more plainly for the surpassing exuberance of
the vegetation, the varied nature of the land, the perennial warmth and
humidity of the climate. But no description can convey an adequate notion
of the beauty and diversity in form and colour of this class of insects in the
neighbourhood of Ega. I paid special attention to them, having found that
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this tribe was better adapted than almost any other group of animals or
plants to furnish facts in illustration of the modifications which all species
undergo in nature, under changed local conditions. This accidental
superiority is owing partly to the simplicity and distinctness of the specific
character of the insects, and partly to the facility with which very copious
series of specimens can be collected and placed side by side for
comparison. The distinctness of the specific characters is due probably to
the fact that all the superficial signs of change in the organisation are
exaggerated, and made unusually plain by affecting the framework, shape,
and colour of the wings, which, as many anatomists believe, are magnified
extensions of the skin around the breathing orifices of the thorax of the
insects. These expansions are clothed with minute feathers or scales,
coloured in regular patterns, which vary in accordance with the slightest
change in the conditions to which the species are exposed. It may be said,
therefore, that on these expanded membranes Nature writes, as on a tablet,
the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the
organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same
colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the
degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of Nature must be
the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects
must be applicable to the whole organic world; therefore, the study of
butterflies-- creatures selected as the types of airiness and frivolity-- instead
of being despised, will some day be valued as one of the most important
branches of Biological science.
Before proceeding to describe the ants, a few remarks may be made on the
singular cases and cocoons woven by the caterpillars of certain moths
found at Ega. The first that may be mentioned is one of the most beautiful
examples of insect workmanship I ever saw. It is a cocoon, about the size
of a sparrow's egg, woven by a caterpillar in broad meshes of either buff or
rose-coloured silk, and is frequently seen in the narrow alleys of the forest,
suspended from the extreme tip of an outstanding leaf by a strong silken
thread five or six inches in length. It forms a very conspicuous object,
hanging thus in mid-air. The glossy threads with which it is knitted are
stout, and the structure is therefore, not liable to be torn by the beaks of
insectivorous birds, while its pendulous position makes it doubly secure
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against their attacks, the apparatus giving way when they peck at it. There
is a small orifice at each end of the egg-shaped bag, to admit of the escape
of the moth when it changes from the little chrysalis which sleeps tranquilly
in its airy cage. The moth is of a dull slatey colour, and belongs to the
Lithosiide group of the silk-worm family (Bombycidae). When the
caterpillar begins its work, it lets itself down from the tip of the leaf which
it has chosen by spinning a thread of silk, the thickness of which it slowly
increases as it descends. Having given the proper length to the cord, it
proceeds to weave its elegant bag, placing itself in the centre and spinning
rings of silk at regular intervals, connecting them at the same time by
means of cross threads - so that the whole, when finished, forms a loose
web, with quadrangular meshes of nearly equal size throughout. The task
occupies about four days: when finished, the enclosed caterpillar becomes
sluggish, its skin shrivels and cracks, and there then remains a motionless
chrysalis of narrow shape, leaning against the sides of its silken cage.
Many other kinds are found at Ega belonging to the same cocoon- weaving
family, some of which differ from the rest in their caterpillars possessing
the art of fabricating cases with fragments of wood or leaves, in which they
live secure from all enemies while they are feeding and growing. I saw
many species of these; some of them knitted together, with fine silken
threads, small bits of stick, and so made tubes similar to those of
caddice-worms; others (Saccophora) chose leaves for the same purpose,
forming with them an elongated bag open at both ends, and having the
inside lined with a thick web. The tubes of full- grown caterpillars of
Saccophora are two inches in length, and it is at this stage of growth that I
have generally seen them. They feed on the leaves of Melastoniae, and as in
crawling, the weight of so large a dwelling would be greater than the
contained caterpillar could sustain, the insect attaches the case by one or
more threads to the leaves or twigs near which it is feeding.
Foraging Ants--Many confused statements have been published in books of

travel, and copied in Natural History works, regarding these ants, which
appear to have been confounded with the Sauba, a sketch of whose habits
has been given in the first chapter of this work. The Sauba is a vegetable
feeder, and does not attack other animals; the accounts that have been
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published regarding carnivorous ants which hunt in vast armies, exciting

terror wherever they go, apply only to the Ecitons, or foraging ants, a
totally different group of this tribe of insects. The Ecitons are called Tauoca
by the Indians, who are always on the look-out for their armies when they
traverse the forest, so as to avoid being attacked. I met with ten distinct
species of them, nearly all of which have a different system of marching;
eight were new to science when I sent them to England. Some are found
commonly in every part of the country, and one is peculiar to the open
campos of Santarem; but, as nearly all the species are found together at
Ega, where the forest swarmed with their armies, I have left an account of
the habits of the whole genus for this part of my narrative. The Ecitons
resemble, in their habits, the Driver ants of Tropical Africa; but they have
no close relationship with them in structure, and indeed belong to quite
another sub-group of the ant-tribe.
Like many other ants, the communities of Ecitons are composed, besides
males and females, of two classes of workers, a large- headed
(worker-major) and a small-headed (worker-minor) class. the large-heads
have, in some species, greatly lengthened jaws, the small-heads have jaws
always of the ordinary shape; but the two classes are not sharply-defined in
structure and function, except in two of the species. There is in all of them a
little difference among the workers regarding the size of the head; but in
some species this is not sufficient to cause a separation into classes, with
division of labour; in others, the jaws are so monstrously lengthened in the
worker-majors, that they are incapacitated from taking part in the labours
which the worker- minors perform; and again, in others the difference is so
great that the distinction of classes becomes complete, one acting the part
of soldiers, and the other that of workers. The peculiar feature in the habits
of the Eciton genus is their hunting for prey in regular bodies, or armies. It
is this which chiefly distinguishes them from the genus of common red
stinging-ants, several species of which inhabit England, whose habit is to
search for food in the usual irregular manner. All the Ecitons hunt in large
organised bodies; but almost every species has its own special manner of
hunting.
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Eciton rapax.--One of the foragers, Eciton rapax, the giant of its genus,
whose worker-majors are half-an-inch in length, hunts in single file through
the forest. There is no division into classes amongst its workers, although
the difference in size is very great, some being scarcely one-half the length
of others. The head and jaws, however, are always of the same shape, and a
gradation in size is presented from the largest to the smallest, so that all are
able to take part in the common labours of the colony. The chief
employment of the species seems to be plundering the nests of a large and
defenseless ant of another genus (Formica), whose mangled bodies I have
often seen in their possession as they were marching away. The armies of
Eciton rapax are never very numerous.
Eciton legionis.--Another species, E. legionis, agrees with E. rapax in

having workers not rigidly divisible into two classes; but it is much smaller
in size, not differing greatly, in this respect, from our common English red
ant (Myrmica rubra), which it also resembles in colour. The Eciton legionis
lives in open places, and was seen only on the sandy campos of Santarem.
The movement of its hosts were, therefore, much more easy to observe than
those of all other kinds, which inhabit solely the densest thickets; its sting
and bite, also, were less formidable than those of other species. The armies
of E. legionis consist of many thousands of individuals, and move in rather
broad columns. They are just as quick to break line, on being disturbed, and
attack hurriedly and furiously any intruding object, as the other Ecitons.
The species is not a common one, and I seldom had good opportunities to
watch its habits. The first time I saw an army was one evening near sunset.
The column consisted of two trains of ants, moving in opposite directions;
one train empty-handed, the other laden with the mangled remains of
insects, chiefly larvae and pupae of other ants. I had no difficulty in tracing
the line to the spot from which they were conveying their booty: this was a
low thicket; the Ecitons were moving rapidly about a heap of dead leaves;
but as the short tropical twilight was deepening rapidly, and I had no wish
to be benighted on the lonely campos, I deferred further examination until
the next day.
On the following morning, no trace of ants could be found near the place
where I had seen them the preceding day, nor were there signs of insects of
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any description in the thicket, but at the distance of eighty or one hundred
yards, I came upon the same army, engaged, evidently, on a razzia of a
similar kind to that of the previous evening, but requiring other resources of
their instinct, owing to the nature of the wound. They were eagerly
occupied on the face of an inclined bank of light earth, in excavating mines,
whence, from a depth of eight or ten inches, they were extracting the bodies
of a bulky species of ant, of the genus Formica. It was curious to see them
crowding around the orifices of the mines, some assisting their comrades to
lift out the bodies of the Formicae, and others tearing them in pieces, on
account of their weight being too great for a single Eciton-- a number of
carriers seizing each a fragment, and carrying it off down the slope. On
digging into the earth with a small trowel near the entrances of the mines, I
found the nests of the Formicae, with grubs and cocoons, which the Ecitons
were thus invading, at a depth of about eight inches from the surface. The
eager freebooters rushed in as fast as I excavated, and seized the ants in my
fingers as I picked them out, so that I had some difficulty in rescuing a few
intact for specimens. In digging the numerous mines to get at their prey, the
little Ecitons seemed to be divided into parties, one set excavating, and
another set carrying away the grains of earth. When the shafts became
rather deep, the mining parties had to climb up the sides each time they
wished to cast out a pellet of earth; but their work was lightened for them
by comrades, who stationed themselves at the mouth of the shaft, and
relieved them of their burthens, carrying the particles, with an appearance
of foresight which quite staggered me, a sufficient distance from the edge
of the hole to prevent them from rolling in again. All the work seemed thus
to be performed by intelligent cooperation among the host of eager little
creatures, but still there was not a rigid division of labour, for some of
them, whose proceedings I watched, acted at one time as carriers of pellets,
and at another as miners, and all shortly afterwards assumed the office of
conveyors of the spoil.
In about two hours, all the nests of Formicae were rifled, though not
completely, of their contents, and I turned towards the army of Ecitons,
which were carrying away the mutilated remains. For some distance there
were many separate lines of them moving along the slope of the bank-- but
a short distance off, these all converged, and then formed one close and
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broad column, which continued for some sixty or seventy yards, and
terminated at one of those large termitariums or hillocks of white ants
which are constructed of cemented material as hard as stone. The broad and
compact column of ants moved up the steep sides of the hillock in a
continued stream; many, which had hitherto trotted along empty- handed,
now turned to assist their comrades with their heavy loads, and the whole
descended into a spacious gallery or mine, opening on the top of the
termitarium. I did not try to reach the nest, which I supposed to lie at the
bottom of the broad mine, and therefore, in the middle of the base of the
stony hillock.
Eciton drepanophora.--The commonest species of foraging ants are the

Eciton hamata and E. drepanophora, two kinds which resemble each other
so closely that it requires attentive examination to distinguish them; yet
their armies never intermingle, although moving in the same woods and
often crossing each other's tracks. The two classes of workers look, at first
sight, quite distinct, on account of the wonderful amount of difference
between the largest individuals of the one, and the smallest of the other.
There are dwarfs not more than one-fifth of an inch in length, with small
heads and jaws, and giants half an inch in length with monstrously enlarged
head and jaws, all belonging to the same brood. There is not, however, a
distinct separation of classes, individuals existing which connect together
the two extremes. These Ecitons are seen in the pathways of the forest at all
places on the banks of the Amazons, travelling in dense columns of
countless thousands. One or other of them is sure to be met with in a
woodland ramble, and it is to them, probably, that the stories we read in
books on South America apply, of ants clearing houses of vermin, although
I heard of no instance of their entering houses, their ravages being confined
to the thickest parts of the forest.
When the pedestrian falls in with a train of these ants, the first signal given
him is a twittering and restless movement of small flocks of plain-coloured
birds (ant-thrushes) in the jungle. If this be disregarded until he advances a
few steps farther, he is sure to fall into trouble, and find himself suddenly
attacked by numbers of the ferocious little creatures. They swarm up his
legs with incredible rapidity, each one driving his pincer-like jaws into his
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skin, and with the purchase thus obtained, doubling in its tail, and stinging
with all its might. There is no course left but to run for it; if he is
accompanied by natives they will be sure to give the alarm, crying
"Tauoca!" and scampering at full speed to the other end of the column of
ants. The tenacious insects who have secured themselves to his legs then
have to be plucked off one by one, a task which is generally not
accomplished without pulling them in twain, and leaving heads and jaws
sticking in the wounds.
The errand of the vast ant-armies is plunder, as in the case of Eciton

legionis; but from their moving always amongst dense thickets, their
proceedings are not so easy to observe as in that species. Wherever they
move, the whole animal world is set in commotion, and every creature tries
to get out of their way. But it is especially the various tribes of wingless
insects that have cause for fear, such as heavy-bodied spiders, ants of other
species, maggots, caterpillars, larvae of cockroaches and so forth, all of
which live under fallen leaves, or in decaying wood. The Ecitons do not
mount very high on trees, and therefore the nestlings of birds are not much
incommoded by them. The mode of operation of these armies, which I
ascertained only after long-continued observation, is as follows: the main
column, from four to six deep, moves forward in a given direction, clearing
the ground of all animal matter dead or alive, and throwing off here and
there a thinner column to forage for a short time on the flanks of the main
army, and re-enter it again after their task is accomplished. If some very
rich place be encountered anywhere near the line of march, for example, a
mass of rotten wood abounding in insect larvae, a delay takes place, and a
very strong force of ants is concentrated upon it. The excited creatures
search every cranny and tear in pieces all the large grubs they drag to light.
It is curious to see them attack wasps' nests, which are sometimes built on
low shrubs. They gnaw away the papery covering to get at the larvae,
pupae, and newly- hatched wasps, and cut everything to tatters, regardless
of the infuriated owners which are flying about them. In bearing off their
spoil in fragments, the pieces are apportioned to the carriers with some
degree of regard to fairness of load: the dwarfs taking the smallest pieces,
and the strongest fellows with small heads the heaviest portions. Sometimes
two ants join together in carrying one piece, but the worker-majors, with
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their unwieldy and distorted jaws, are incapacitated from taking any part in
the labour. The armies never march far on a beaten path, but seem to prefer
the entangled thickets where it is seldom possible to follow them. I have
traced an army sometimes for half a mile or more, but was never able to
find one that had finished its day's course and returned to its hive. Indeed, I
never met with a hive; whenever the Ecitons were seen, they were always
on the march.
I thought one day, at Villa Nova, that I had come upon a migratory horde of
this indefatigable ant. The place was a tract of open ground near the river
side, just outside the edge of the forest, and surrounded by rocks and
shrubbery. A dense column of Ecitons was seen extending from the rocks
on one side of the little haven, traversing the open space, and ascending the
opposite declivity. The length of the procession was from sixty to seventy
yards, and yet neither van nor rear was visible. All were moving in one and
the same direction, except a few individuals on the outside of the column,
which were running rearward, trotting along for a short distance, and then
turning again to follow the same course as the main body. But these
rearward movements were going on continually from one end to the other
of the line, and there was every appearance of there being a means of
keeping up a common understanding amongst all the members of the army,
for the retrograding ants stopped very often for a moment to touch one or
other of their onward-moving comrades with their antennae-- a proceeding
which has been noticed in other ants, and supposed to be their mode of
conveying intelligence. When I interfered with the column or abstracted an
individual from it, news of the disturbance was very quickly communicated
to a distance of several yards towards the rear, and the column at that point
commenced retreating. All the small- headed workers carried in their jaws a
little cluster of white maggots, which I thought at the time, might be young
larvae of their own colony, but afterwards found reason to conclude were
the grubs of some other species whose nests they had been plundering, the
procession being most likely not a migration, but a column on a marauding
expedition.
The position of the large-headed individuals in the marching column was

rather curious. There was one of these extraordinary fellows to about a
CHAPTER XII 383
score of the smaller class. None of them carried anything in their mouths,
but all trotted along empty- handed and outside the column, at pretty
regular intervals from each other, like subaltern officers in a marching
regiment of soldiers. It was easy to be tolerably exact in this observation,
for their shining white heads made them very conspicuous amongst the rest,
bobbing up and down as the column passed over the inequalities of the
road. I did not see them change their position, or take any notice of their
small-headed comrades marching in the column, and when I disturbed the
line, they did not prance forth or show fight so eagerly as the others. These
large-headed members of the community have been considered by some
authors as a soldier class, like the similarly-armed caste in termites -- but I
found no proof of this, at least in the present species, as they always
seemed to be rather less pugnacious than the worker-minors, and their
distorted jaws disabled them from fastening on a plane surface like the skin
of an attacking animal. I am inclined, however, to think that they may act,
in a less direct way, as protectors of the community, namely, as indigestible
morsels to the flocks of ant-thrushes which follow the marching columns of
these Ecitons, and are the most formidable enemies of the species. It is
possible that the hooked and twisted jaws of the large-headed class may be
effective weapons of annoyance when in the gizzards or stomachs of these
birds, but I unfortunately omitted to ascertain whether this was really the
fact.
The life of these Ecitons is not all work, for I frequently saw them very
leisurely employed in a way that looked like recreation. When this
happened, the place was always a sunny nook in the forest. The main
column of the army and the branch columns, at these times, were in their
ordinary relative positions; but, instead of pressing forward eagerly, and
plundering right and left, they seemed to have been all smitten with a
sudden fit of laziness. Some were walking slowly about, others were
brushing their antennae with their forefeet; but the drollest sight was their
cleaning one another. Here and there an ant was seen stretching forth first
one leg and then another, to be brushed or washed by one or more of its
comrades, who performed the task by passing the limb between the jaws
and the tongue,and finishing by giving the antennae a friendly wipe. It was
a curious spectacle, and one well calculated to increase one's amazement at
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the similarity between the instinctive actions of ants and the acts of rational
beings, a similarity which must have been brought about by two different
processes of development of the primary qualities of mind. The actions of
these ants looked like simple indulgence in idle amusement. Have these
little creatures, then, an excess of energy beyond what is required for
labours absolutely necessary to the welfare of their species, and do they
thus expend it in mere sportiveness, like young lambs or kittens, or in idle
whims like rational beings? It is probable that these hours of relaxation and
cleaning may be indispensable to the effective performance of their harder
labours, but while looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were
engaged merely in play was irresistible.
Eciton praedator.--This is a small dark-reddish species, very similar to the

common red stinging-ant of England. It differs from all other Ecitons in its
habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes consisting of
myriads of individuals, and was first met with at Ega, where it is very
common. Nothing in insect movements is more striking than the rapid
march of these large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass all the rest of
the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm. They stream along the
ground and climb to the summits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf
to its apex, and whenever they encounter a mass of decaying vegetable
matter, where booty is plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all
their forces upon it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving
bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a flood of dark-red
liquid. They soon penetrate every part of the confused heap, and then,
gathering together again in marching order, onward they move. All
soft-bodied and inactive insects fall an easy prey to them, and, like other
Ecitons, they tear their victims in pieces for facility of carriage. A phalanx
of this species, when passing over a tract of smooth ground, occupies a
space of from four to six square yards; on examining the ants closely they
are seen to move, not altogether in one straightforward direction, but in
variously spreading contiguous columns, now separating a little from the
general mass, now re-uniting with it. The margins of the phalanx spread out
at times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks of an army. I was never
able to find the hive of this species.
CHAPTER XII 385
Blind Ecitons.--I will now give a short account of the blind species of
Eciton. None of the foregoing kinds have eyes of the facetted or compound
structure such as are usual in insects, and which ordinary ants (Formica) are
furnished with, but all are provided with organs of vision composed each of
a single lens. Connecting them with the utterly blind species of the genus, is
a very stout-limbed Eciton, the E. crassicornis, whose eyes are sunk in
rather deep sockets. This ant goes on foraging expeditions like the rest of
its tribe, and attacks even the nests of other stinging species (Myrmica), but
it avoids the light, moving always in concealment under leaves and fallen
branches. When its columns have to cross a cleared space, the ants
construct a temporary covered way with granules of earth, arched over, and
holding together mechanically; under this, the procession passes in secret,
the indefatigable creatures repairing their arcade as fast as breaches are
made in it.
Next in order comes the Eciton vastator, which has no eyes, although the
collapsed sockets are plainly visible; and, lastly, the Eciton erratica, in
which both sockets and eyes have disappeared, leaving only a faint ring to
mark the place where they are usually situated. The armies of E. vastator
and E. erratica move, as far as I could learn, wholly under covered roads--
the ants constructing them gradually but rapidly as they advance. The
column of foragers pushes forward step by step under the protection of
these covered passages, through the thickets, and upon reaching a rotting
log, or other promising hunting- ground, pour into the crevices in search of
booty. I have traced their arcades, occasionally, for a distance of one or two
hundred yards; the grains of earth are taken from the soil over which the
column is passing, and are fitted together without cement. It is this
last-mentioned feature that distinguishes them from the similar covered
roads made by Termites, who use their glutinous saliva to cement the grains
together. The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously
the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to
approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose
uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of
labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species. The
large-headed class, although not possessing monstrously-lengthened jaws
like the worker-majors in E. hamata and E. drepanophora, are rigidly
CHAPTER XIII 386
defined in structure from the small-headed class, and act as soldiers,

defending the working community (like soldier Termites) against all
comers. Whenever I made a breach in one of their covered ways, all the
ants underneath were set in commotion, but the worker-minors remained
behind to repair the damage, while the large-heads issued forth in a most
menacing manner, rearing their heads and snapping their jaws with an
expression of the fiercest rage and defiance.
CHAPTER XIII
EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA
Steamboat Travelling on the Amazons--Passengers--Tunantins-- Caishana

Indians--The Jutahi--The Sapo--Maraua Indians--Fonte Boa--Journey to St.
Paulo--Tucuna Indians--Illness--Descent to Para--Changes at
Para--Departure for England
November 7th, 1856-Embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, the

Tabatinga, for an excursion to Tunantins, a small semi-Indian settlement,
lying 240 miles beyond Ega. The Tabatinga is an iron boat of about 170
tons burthen, built at Rio de Janeiro, and fitted with engines of fifty
horse-power. The saloon, with berths on each side for twenty passengers, is
above deck, and open at both ends to admit a free current of air. The
captain or "commandante," was a lieutenant in the Brazilian navy, a man of
polished, sailor-like address, and a rigid disciplinarian-- his name, Senor
Nunes Mello Cardozo. I was obliged, as usual, to take with me a stock of
all articles of food, except meat and fish, for the time I intended to be
absent (three months); and the luggage, including hammocks, cooking
utensils, crockery, and so forth, formed fifteen large packages. One bundle
consisted of a mosquito tent, an article I had not yet had occasion to use on
the river, but which was indispensable in all excursions beyond Ega, every
person, man, woman and child, requiring one, as without it existence would
be scarcely possible. My tent was about eight feet long and five feet broad,
and was made of coarse calico in an oblong shape, with sleeves at each end
through which to pass the cords of a hammock. Under this shelter, which is
CHAPTER XIII 387
fixed up every evening before sundown, one can read and write, or swing in
one's hammock during the long hours which intervene before bedtime, and
feel one's sense of comfort increased by having cheated the thirsty swarms
of mosquitoes which fill the chamber.
We were four days on the road. The pilot, a Mameluco of Ega, whom I
knew very well, exhibited a knowledge of the river and powers of
endurance which were quite remarkable. He stood all this time at his post,
with the exception of three or four hours in the middle of each day, when
he was relieved by a young man who served as apprentice, and he knew the
breadth and windings of the channel, and the extent of all the
yearly-shifting shoals from the Rio Negro to Loreto, a distance of more
than a thousand miles. There was no slackening of speed at night, except
during the brief but violent storms which occasionally broke upon us, and
then the engines were stopped by the command of Lieutenant Nunes,
sometimes against the wish of the pilot. The nights were often so dark that
we passengers on the poop deck could not discern the hardy fellow on the
bridge, but the steamer drove on at full speed, men being stationed on the
look-out at the prow, to watch for floating logs, and one man placed to pass
orders to the helmsman; the keel scraped against a sand-bank only once
during the passage.
The passengers were chiefly Peruvians, mostly thin, anxious,

Yankee-looking men, who were returning home to the cities of
Moyobamba and Chachapoyas, on the Andes, after a trading trip to the
Brazilian towns on the Atlantic seaboard, whither they had gone six months
previously, with cargoes of Panama hats to exchange for European wares.
These hats are made of the young leaflets of a palm tree, by the Indians and
half-caste people who inhabit the eastern parts of Peru. They form almost
the only article of export from Peru by way of the Amazons, but the money
value is very great compared with the bulk of the goods, as the hats are
generally of very fine quality, and cost from twelve shillings to six pounds
sterling each; some traders bring down two or three thousand pounds'
worth, folded into small compass in their trunks. The return cargoes consist
of hardware, crockery, glass, and other bulky or heavy goods, but not of
cloth, which, being of light weight, can be carried across the Andes from
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the ports on the Pacific to the eastern parts of Peru. All kinds of European
cloth can be obtained at a much cheaper rate by this route than by the more
direct way of the Amazons, the import duties of Peru being, as I was told,
lower than those of Brazil, and the difference not being counter-balanced
by increased expense of transit, on account of weight, over the passes of the
Andes.
There was a great lack of amusement on board. The table was very well
served, professed cooks being employed in these Amazonian steamers, and
fresh meat insured by keeping on deck a supply of live bullocks and fowls,
which are purchased whenever there is an opportunity on the road. The
river scenery was similar to that already described as presented between the
Rio Negro and Ega: long reaches of similar aspect, with two long, low lines
of forest, varied sometimes with cliffs of red clay, appearing one after the
other. an horizon of water and sky on some days limiting the view both up
stream and down. We travelled, however, always near the bank, and, for
my part, I was never weary of admiring the picturesque grouping and
variety of trees, and the varied mantles of creeping plants which clothed the
green wall of forest every step of the way. With the exception of a small
village called Fonte Boa, retired from the main river, where we stopped to
take in firewood, and which I shall have to speak of presently, we saw no
human habitation the whole of the distance. The mornings were delightfully
cool; coffee was served at sunrise, and a bountiful breakfast at ten o'clock;
after that hour the heat rapidly increased until it became almost unbearable.
How the engine-drivers and firemen stood it without exhaustion I cannot
tell; it diminished after four o'clock in the afternoon, about which time
dinner-bell rung, and the evenings were always pleasant.
November 11th to 30th.--The Tunantins is a sluggish black-water stream,

about sixty miles in length, and towards its mouth from 100 to 200 yards in
breadth. The vegetation on its banks has a similar aspect to that of the Rio
Negro, the trees having small foliage of a sombre hue, and the dark piles of
greenery resting on the surface of the inky water. The village is situated on
the left bank, about a mile from the mouth of the river, and contains twenty
habitations, nearly all of which are merely hovels, built of lath-work and
mud. The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable on account of the
CHAPTER XIII 389
many puddles, and are choked up with weeds--leguminous shrubs, and

scarlet-flowered asclepias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it
is by the lofty forest, and surrounded by swamps, is always close, warm,
and reeking; and the hum and chirp of insects and birds cause a continual
din. The small patch of weedy ground around the village swarms with
plovers, sandpipers, striped herons, and scissor- tailed fly-catchers; and
alligators are always seen floating lazily on the surface of the river in front
of the houses.
On landing, I presented myself to Senor Paulo Bitancourt, a good- natured

half-caste, director of Indians of the neighbouring river Issa, who quickly
ordered a small house to be cleared for me. This exhilarating abode
contained only one room, the walls of which were disfigured by large and
ugly patches of mud, the work of white ants. The floor was the bare earth,
dirty and damp, the wretched chamber was darkened by a sheet of calico
being stretched over the windows, a plan adopted here to keep out the
Pium-flies, which float about in all shady places like thin clouds of smoke,
rendering all repose impossible in the daytime wherever they can effect an
entrance. My baggage was soon landed, and before the steamer departed I
had taken gun, insect-net, and game-bag, to make a preliminary exploration
of my new locality.
I remained here nineteen days, and, considering the shortness of the time,
made a very good collection of monkeys, birds, and insects. A considerable
number of the species (especially of insects) were different from those of
the four other stations, which I examined on the south side of the
Solimoens, and as many of these were "representative forms" [Species or
races which take the place of other allied species or races.] of others found
on the opposite banks of the broad river, I concluded that there could have
been no land connection between the two shores during, at least, the recent
geological period. This conclusion is confirmed by the case of the Uakari
monkeys, described in the last chapter. All these strongly modified local
races of insects confined to one side of the Solimoens (like the Uakaris),
are such as have not been able to cross a wide treeless space such as a river.
The acquisition which pleased me most, in this place, was a new species of
butterfly (a Catagramma), which has since been named C. excelsior, owing
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to its surpassing in size and beauty all the previously-known species of its
singularly beautiful genus. The upper surface of the wings is of the richest
blue, varying in shade with the play of light, and on each side is a broad
curved stripe of an orange colour. It is a bold flyer, and is not confined, as I
afterwards found, to, the northern side of the river, for I once saw a
specimen amidst a number of richly-coloured butterflies, flying about the
deck of the steamer when we were anchored off Fonte Boa, 200 miles,
lower down the river.
With the exception of three Mameluco families and a stray Portuguese

trader, all the inhabitants of the village and neighbourhood are
semi-civilised Indians of the Shumana and Passe tribes. The forests of the
Tunantins, however, are inhabited by a tribe of wild Indians called
Caishanas, who resemble much, in their social condition and manners, the
debased Muras of the Lower Amazons, and have, like them, shown no
aptitude for civilised life in any shape. Their huts commence at the distance
of an hour's walk from the village, along gloomy and narrow forest paths.
My first and only visit to a Caishana dwelling was accidental. One day,
having extended my walk further than usual, and followed one of the
forest-roads until it became a mere picada, or hunters' track, I came
suddenly upon a well-trodden pathway, bordered on each side with
Lycopodia of the most elegant shapes, the tips of the fronds stretching
almost like tendrils down the little earthy slopes which formed the edge of
the path. The road, though smooth, was narrow and dark, and in many
places blocked up by trunks of felled trees, which had been apparently
thrown across by the timid Indians on purpose to obstruct the way to their
habitations. Half-a-mile of this shady road brought me to a small open
space on the banks of a brook or creek, on the skirts of which stood a
conical hut with a very low doorway. There was also an open shed, with
stages made of split palm- stems, and a number of large wooden troughs.
Two or three dark- skinned children, with a man and woman, were in the
shed; but, immediately on espying me, all of them ran to the hut, bolting
through the little doorway like so many wild animals scared into their
burrows. A few moments after, the man put his head out with a look of
great distrust; but, on my making the most friendly gestures I could think
of, he came forth with the children. They were all smeared with black mud
CHAPTER XIII 391
and paint; the only clothing of the elders was a kind of apron made of the
inner bark of the sapucaya-tree, and the savage aspect of the man was
heightened by his hair hanging over his forehead to the eyes. I stayed about
two hours in the neighbourhood, the children gaining sufficient confidence
to come and help me to search for insects. The only weapon used by the
Caishanas is the blow-gun, and this is employed only in shooting animals
for food. They are not a warlike people, like most of the neighbouring
tribes on the Japura and Issa.
The whole tribe of Caishanas does not exceed 400 souls in number. None
of them are baptised Indians, and they do not dwell in villages, like the
more advanced sections of the Tupi stock; but each family has its own
solitary hut. They are quite harmless, do not practise tattooing, or perforate
their ears and noses in any way. Their social condition is of a low type,
very little removed, indeed, from that of the brutes living in the same
forests. They do not appear to obey any common chief, and I could not
make out that they had Pajes, or medicine-men, those rudest beginnings of
a priest class. Symbolical or masked dances, and ceremonies in honour of
the Jurupari, or demon, customs which prevail among all the surrounding
tribes, are unknown to the Caishanas. There is among them a trace of
festival keeping; but the only ceremony used is the drinking of cashiri beer,
and fermented liquors made of Indian-corn, bananas, and so forth. These
affairs, however, are conducted in a degenerate style, for they do not drink
to intoxication, or sustain the orgies for several days and nights in
succession, like the Juris Passes, and Tucunas. The men play a musical
instrument, made of pieces of stem of the arrow-grass cut in different
lengths and arranged like Pan-pipes. With this they wile away whole hours,
lolling in ragged, bast hammocks slung in their dark, smoky huts. The
Tunantins people say that the Caishanas have persecuted the wild animals
and birds to such an extent near their settlements that there is now quite a
scarcity of animal food. If they kill a Toucan, it is considered an important
event, and the bird is made to serve as a meal for a score or more persons.
They boil the meat in earthenware kettles filled with Tucupi sauce, and eat
it with beiju, or mandioca-cakes. The women are not allowed to taste of the
meat, but forced to content themselves with sopping pieces of cake in the
liquor.
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November 30th--I left Tunantins in a trading schooner of eighty tons

burthen belonging to Senor Batalha, a tradesman of Ega, which had been
out all the summer collecting produce, and was commanded by a friend of
mine, a young Paraense, named Francisco Raiol. We arrived, on the 3rd of
December, at the mouth of the Jutahi, a considerable stream about half a
mile broad, and flowing with a very sluggish current. This is one of the
series of six rivers, from 400 to 1000 miles in length, which flow from the
southwest through unknown lands lying between Bolivia and the Upper
Amazons, and enter this latter river between the Madeira and the Ucayali.
We remained at anchor four days within the mouth of the Sapo, a small
tributary of the Jutahi flowing from the southeast; Senor Raiol having to
send an igarite to the Cupatana, a large tributary some few miles farther up
the river, to fetch a cargo of salt-fish. During this time we made several
excursions in the montaria to various places in the neighbourhood. Our
longest trip was to some Indian houses, a distance of fifteen or eighteen
miles up the Sapo, a journey made with one Indian paddler, and occupying
a whole day. The stream is not more than forty or fifty yards broad; its
waters are darker in colour than those of the Jutahi, and flow, as in all these
small rivers, partly under shade between two lofty walls of forest. We
passed, in ascending, seven habitations, most of them hidden in the
luxuriant foliage of the banks; their sites being known only by small
openings in the compact wall of forest, and the presence of a canoe or two
tied up in little shady ports. The inhabitants are chiefly Indians of the
Maraua tribe, whose original territory comprised all the small by-streams
lying between the Jutahi and the Jurua, near the mouths of both these great
tributaries. They live in separate families or small hordes, have no common
chief, and are considered as a tribe little disposed to adopt civilised customs
or be friendly with the whites. One of the houses belonged to a Juri family,
and we saw the owner, an erect, noble- looking old fellow, tattooed, as
customary with his tribe, in a large patch over the middle of his face,
fishing under the shade of a colossal tree in his port with hook and line. He
saluted us in the usual grave and courteous manner of the better sort of
Indians as we passed by.
We reached the last house, or rather two houses, about ten o'clock, and
spent several hours there during the great heat of midday. The houses,
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which stood. on a high clayey bank, were of quadrangular shape, partly

open like sheds, and partly enclosed with rude mud-walls, forming one or
more chambers. The inhabitants, a few families of Marauas, comprising
about thirty persons, received us in a frank, smiling manner-- a reception
which may have been due to Senor Raiol being an old acquaintance and
somewhat of a favourite. None of them were tattooed; but the men had
great holes pierced in their earlobes, in which they insert plugs of wood,
and their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One of the younger men, a
fine strapping fellow nearly six feet high, with a large aquiline nose, who
seemed to wish to be particularly friendly with me, showed me the use of
these lip- holes, by fixing a number of little white sticks in them, and then
twisting his mouth about and going through a pantomime to represent
defiance in the presence of an enemy. Nearly all the people were disfigured
by dark blotches on the skin, the effect of a cutaneous disease very
prevalent in this part of the country. The face of one old man was
completely blackened, and looked as though it had been smeared with
black lead, the blotches having coalesced to form one large patch. Others
were simply mottled; the black spots were hard and rough, but not scaly,
and were margined with rings of a colour paler than the natural hue of the
skin.
I had seen many Indians and a few half-castes at Tunantins, and afterwards
saw others at Fonte Boa, blotched in the same way. The disease would
seem to be contagious, for I was told that a Portuguese trader became
disfigured with it after cohabiting some years with an Indian woman. It is
curious that, although prevalent in many places on the Solimoens, no
resident of Ega exhibited signs of the disease: the early explorers of the
country, on noticing spotted skins to be very frequent in certain localities,
thought they were peculiar to a few tribes of Indians. The younger children
in these houses on the Sapo were free from spots; but two or three of them,
about ten years of age, showed signs of their commencement in rounded
yellowish patches on the skin, and these appeared languid and sickly,
although the blotched adults seemed not to be affected in their general
health. A middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told me he had cured himself
of the disorder by strong doses of sarsaparilla; the black patches had caused
the hair of his beard and eyebrows to fall off, but it had grown again since
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his cure.
When my tall friend saw me, after dinner, collecting insects along the paths
near the houses, he approached, and, taking me by the arm, led me to a
mandioca shed, making signs, as he could speak very little Tupi, that he
had something to show. I was not a little surprised when, having mounted
the girao, or stage of split palm-stems, and taken down an object transfixed
to a post, he exhibited, with an air of great mystery, a large chrysalis
suspended from a leaf, which he placed carefully in my hands, saying,
"Pana-pana curi " (Tupi: butterfly by-and-by). Thus I found that the
metamorphoses of insects were known to these savages; but being unable to
talk with my new friend, I could not ascertain what ideas such a
phenomenon had given rise to in his mind. The good fellow did not leave
my side during the remainder of our stay; but, thinking apparently that I
had come here for information, he put himself to considerable trouble to
give me all he could. He made a quantity of Hypadu or Coca powder that I
might see the process; going about the task with much action and
ceremony, as though he were a conjuror performing some wonderful trick.
We left these friendly people about four o'clock in the afternoon, and in
descending the umbrageous river, stopped, about half-way down, at another
house, built in one of the most charming situations I had yet seen in this
country. A clean, narrow, sandy pathway led from the shady port to the
house, through a tract of forest of indescribable luxuriance. The buildings
stood on an eminence in the middle of a level cleared space-- the firm sand
soil, smooth as a floor, forming a broad terrace around them. The owner
was a semi-civilised Indian, named Manoel; a dull, taciturn fellow, who,
together with his wife and children, seemed by no means pleased at being
intruded on in their solitude. The family must have been very industrious,
for the plantations were very extensive, and included a little of almost all
kinds of cultivated tropical productions: fruit trees, vegetables, and even
flowers for ornament. The silent old man had surely a fine appreciation of
the beauties of nature, for the site he had chosen commanded a view of
surprising magnificence over the summits of the forest; and, to give finish
to the prospect, he had planted a large quantity of banana trees in the
foreground, thus concealing the charred and dead stumps which would
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otherwise have marred the effect of the rolling sea of greenery. The only
information I could get out of Manoel was, that large flocks of
richly-coloured birds came down in the fruit season and despoiled his trees.
The sun set over the treetops before we left this little Eden, and the
remainder of our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, under the
chequered shades of the river banks, by the light of the moon.
December 7th--Arrived at Fonte Boa; a wretched, muddy, and dilapidated

village situated two or three miles within the mouth of a narrow by-stream
called the Cayhiar-hy, which runs almost as straight as an artificial canal
between the village and the main Amazons. The character of the vegetation
and soil here was different from that of all other localities I had hitherto
examined; I had planned, therefore, to devote six weeks to the place.
Having written beforehand to one of the principal inhabitants, Senor
Venancio, a house was ready for me on landing. The only recommendation
of the dwelling was its coolness. It was, in fact, rather damp; the plastered
walls bore a crop of green mold, and a slimy moisture oozed through the
black, dirty floor; the rooms were large, but lighted by miserable little holes
in place of windows. The village is built on a clayey plateau, and the
ruinous houses are arranged round a large square, which is so choked up
with tangled bushes that it is quite impassable, the lazy inhabitants having
allowed the fine open space to relapse into jungle. The stiff clayey
eminence is worn into deep gullies which slope towards the river, and the
ascent from the port in rainy weather is so slippery that one is obliged to
crawl up to the streets on all fours. A large tract of round behind the place
is clear of forest, but this, as well as the streets and gardens, is covered with
a dense, tough carpet of shrubs, having the same wiry nature as our
common heath. Beneath its deceitful covering the soil is always moist and
soft, and in the wet season the whole is converted into a glutinous mud
swamp. There is a very pretty church in one corner of the square, but in the
rainy months of the year (nine out of twelve) the place of worship is almost
inaccessible to the inhabitants on account of the mud, the only means of
getting to it being by hugging closely the walls and palings, and so
advancing sideways step by step.
CHAPTER XIII 396
I remained in this delectable place until the 25th of January, 1857. Fonte
Boa, in addition to its other amenities, has the reputation throughout the
country of being the headquarters of mosquitoes, and it fully deserves the
title. They are more annoying in the houses by day than by night, for they
swarm in the dark and damp rooms, keeping, in the daytime, near the floor,
and settling by half-dozens together on the legs. At night the calico tent is a
sufficient protection; but this is obliged to be folded every morning, and in
letting it down before sunset, great care is required to prevent even one or
two of the tormentors from stealing in beneath, their insatiable thirst for
blood, and pungent sting, making these enough to spoil all comfort. In the
forest the plague is much worse; but the forest-mosquito belongs to a
different species from that of the town, being much larger, and having
transparent wings; it is a little cloud that one carries about one's person
every step on a woodland ramble, and their hum is so loud that it prevents
one hearing well the notes of birds. The town-mosquito has opaque
speckled wings, a less severe sting, and a silent way of going to work; the
inhabitants ought to be thankful the big, noisy fellows never come out of
the forest. In compensation for the abundance of mosquitoes, Fonte Boa has
no piums; there was, therefore, some comfort outside one's door in the
daytime; the comfort, however, was lessened by their being scarcely any
room in front of the house to sit down or walk about, for, on our side of the
square, the causeway was only two feet broad, and to step over the
boundary, formed by a line of slippery stems of palms, was to sink up to the
knees in a sticky swamp.
Notwithstanding damp and mosquitoes, I had capital health, and enjoyed

myself much at Fonte Boa; swampy and weedy places being generally
more healthy than dry ones in the Amazons, probably owing to the absence
of great radiation of heat from the ground. The forest was extremely rich
and picturesque, although the soil was everywhere clayey and cold, and
broad pathways threaded it for many a mile over hill and dale. In every
hollow flowed a sparkling brook, with perennial and crystal waters. The
margins of these streams were paradises of leafiness and verdure; the most
striking feature being the variety of ferns, with immense leaves, some
terrestrial, others climbing over trees, and two, at least, arborescent. I saw
here some of the largest trees I had yet seen; there was one especially, a
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cedar, whose colossal trunk towered up for more than a hundred feet,
straight as an arrow; I never saw its crown, which was lost to view, from
below, beyond the crowd of lesser trees which surrounded it. Birds and
monkeys in this glorious forest were very abundant; the bear-like Pithecia
hirsuta being the most remarkable of the monkeys, and the Umbrella
Chatterer and Curl-crested Toucans amongst the most beautiful of the birds.
The Indians and half-castes of the village have made their little plantations,
and built huts for summer residence on the banks of the rivulets, and my
rambles generally terminated at one or other of these places. The people
were always cheerful and friendly, and seemed to be glad when I proposed
to join them at their meals, contributing the contents of my provision-bag to
the dinner, and squatting down among them on the mat.
The village was formerly a place of more importance than it now is, a great
number of Indians belonging to the most industrious tribes, Shumanas,
Passes, and Cambevas, having settled on the site and adopted civilised
habits, their industry being directed by a few whites, who seem to have
been men of humane views as well as enterprising traders. One of these old
employers, Senor Guerreiro, a well-educated Paraense, was still trading on
the Amazons when I left the country in 1859: he told me that forty years
previously Fonte Boa was a delightful place to live in. The neighbourhood
was then well cleared, and almost free from mosquitoes, and the Indians
were orderly, industrious, and happy. What led to the ruin of the settlement
was the arrival of several Portuguese and Brazilian traders of a low class,
who in their eagerness for business taught the easy-going Indians all kinds
of trickery and immorality. They enticed the men and women away from
their old employers, and thus broke up the large establishments, compelling
the principals to take their capital to other places. At the time of my visit
there were few pure-blood Indians at Fonte Boa, and no true whites. The
inhabitants seemed to be nearly all Mamelucos, and were a loose-living,
rustic, plain- spoken and ignorant set of people. There was no priest or
schoolmaster within 150 miles, and had not been any for many years: the
people seemed to be almost without government of any kind, and yet crime
and deeds of violence appeared to be of very rare occurrence. The principal
man of the village, one Senor Justo, was a big, coarse, energetic fellow,
sub-delegado of police, and the only tradesman who owned a large vessel
CHAPTER XIII 398
running directly between Fonte Boa and Para. He had recently built a large
house, in the style of middle-class dwellings of towns, namely, with brick
floors and tiled roof, the bricks and tiles having been brought from Para,
1500 miles distant, the nearest place where they are manufactured in
surplus. When Senor Justo visited me he was much struck with the
engravings in a file of Illustrated London News, which lay on my table. It
was impossible to resist his urgent entreaties to let him have some of them,
"to look at," so one day he carried off a portion of the papers on loan. A
fortnight afterwards, on going to request him to return them, I found the
engravings had been cut out, and stuck all over the newly whitewashed
walls of his chamber, many of them upside down. He thought a room thus
decorated with foreign views would increase his importance among his
neighbours, and when I yielded to his wish to keep them, was boundless in
demonstrations of gratitude, ending by shipping a boat-load of turtles for
my use at Ega.
These neglected and rude villagers still retained many religious practices
which former missionaries or priests had taught them. The ceremony which
they observed at Christmas, like that described as practised by negroes in a
former chapter, was very pleasing for its simplicity, and for the heartiness
with which it was conducted. The church was opened, dried, and swept
clean a few days before Christmas Eve, and on the morning all the women
and children of the village were busy decorating it with festoons of leaves
and wild flowers. Towards midnight it was illuminated inside and out with
little oil lamps, made of clay, and the image of the "menino Deus," or
Child-God, in its cradle, was placed below the altar, which was lighted up
with rows of wax candles, very lean ones, but the best the poor people
could afford. All the villagers assembled soon afterwards, dressed in their
best, he women with flowers in their hair, and a few simple hymns, totally
irrelevant to the occasion, but probably the only ones known by them, were
sung kneeling; an old half-caste, with black- spotted face, leading off the
tunes. This finished, the congregation rose, and then marched in single file
up one side of the church and down the other, singing together a very pretty
marching chorus, and each one, on reaching the little image, stooping to
kiss the end of a ribbon which was tied round its waist. Considering that the
ceremony was got up of their own free will, and at considerable expense, I
CHAPTER XIII 399
thought it spoke well for the good intentions and simplicity of heart of these
poor, neglected villagers.
I left Fonte Boa, for Ega, on the 25th of January, making the passage by
steamer, down the middle of the current, in sixteen hours. The sight of the
clean and neat little town, with its open spaces, close-cropped grass, broad
lake, and white sandy shores, had a most exhilarating effect, after my trip
into the wilder parts of the country. The district between Ega and Loreto,
the first Peruvian village on the river, is, indeed, the most remote,
thinly-peopled, and barbarous of the whole line of the Amazons, from
ocean to ocean. Beyond Loreto, signs of civilisation, from the side of the
Pacific, begin to be numerous, and, from Ega downwards, the improvement
is felt from the side of the Atlantic.
September 5th, 1857--Again embarked on the Tabatinga, this time for a

longer excursion than the last, namely to St. Paulo de Olivenca, a village
higher up than any I had yet visited, being 260 miles distant, in a straight
line, from Ega, or about 400 miles following the bends of the river.
The waters were now nearly at their lowest point; but this made no
difference to the rate of travelling, night or day. Several of the Parana
mirims, or by-channels, which the steamer threads in the season of
full-water, to save a long circuit, were now dried up, their empty beds
looking like deep sandy ravines in the midst of the thick forest. The large
sand-islands, and miles of sandy beach, were also uncovered, and these,
with the swarms of large aquatic birds; storks, herons, ducks, waders, and
spoon-bills, which lined their margins in certain places, made the river view
much more varied and animated than it is in the season of the flood.
Alligators of large size were common near the shores, lazily floating, and
heedless of the passing steamer. The passengers amused themselves by
shooting at them from the deck with a double-barrelled rifle we had on
board. The sign of a mortal hit was the monster turning suddenly over, and
remaining floating, with its white belly upwards. Lieutenant Nunes wished
to have one of the dead animals on board, for the purpose of opening the
abdomen, and, if a male, extracting a part which is held in great estimation
among Brazilians as a "remedio," charm or medicine. The steamer was
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stopped, and a boat sent, with four strong men, to embark the beast; the
body, however, was found too heavy to be lifted into the boat; so a rope
was passed round it, and the hideous creature towed alongside, and hoisted
on deck by means of the crane, which was rigged for the purpose. It had
still some sparks of life, and when the knife was applied, lashed its tail, and
opened its enormous jaws, sending the crowd of bystanders flying in all
directions. A blow with a hatchet on the crown of the head gave him his
quietus at last. The length of the animal was fifteen feet; but this statement
can give but an imperfect idea of its immense bulk and weight. The
numbers of turtles which were seen swimming in quiet shoaly bays passed
on the road, also gave us much amusement. They were seen by dozens
ahead, with their snouts peering above the surface of the water; and, on the
steamer approaching, turning round to stare, but not losing confidence till
the vessel had nearly passed, when they appeared to be suddenly smitten
with distrust, diving like ducks under the stream.
We had on board, among our deck-passengers, a middle-aged Indian, of the

Juri tribe; a short, thickset man, with features resembling much those of the
late Daniel O'Connell. His name was Caracara-i (Black Eagle), and his
countenance seemed permanently twisted into a grim smile, the effect of
which was heightened by the tattooed marks--a blue rim to the mouth, with
a diagonal pointed streak from each corner towards the ear. He was dressed
in European-style black hat, coat, and trousers--looking very uncomfortable
in the dreadful heat which, it is unnecessary to say, exists on board a
steamer, under a vertical sun, during midday hours. This Indian was a
man of steady resolution, ambitious and enterprising; very rare qualities in
the race to which he belonged, weakness of resolution being one of the
fundamental defects in the Indian character. He was now on his return
home to the banks of the Issa from Para, whither he had been to sell a large
quantity of sarsaparilla that he had collected, with the help of a number of
Indians, whom he induces, or forces, to work for him. One naturally feels
inclined to know what ideas such a favourable specimen of the Indian race
may have acquired after so much experience amongst civilised scenes. On
conversing with our fellow-passenger, I was greatly disappointed in him; he
had seen nothing, and thought of nothing, beyond what concerned his little
trading speculation, his mind being, evidently, what it had been before,
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with regard to all higher subjects or general ideas, a blank. The dull, mean,
practical way of thinking of the Amazonian Indians, and the absence of
curiosity and speculative thought which seems to be organic or confirmed
in their character, although they are improvable to a certain extent, make
them, like commonplace people everywhere, most uninteresting
companions. Caracara-i disembarked at Tunantins with his cargo, which
consisted of a considerable number of packages of European wares.
The river scenery about the mouth of the Japura is extremely grand, and
was the subject of remark among the passengers. Lieutenant Nunes gave it
as his opinion, that there was no diminution of width or grandeur in the
mighty stream up to this point, a distance of 1500 miles from the Atlantic;
and yet we did not here see the two shores of the river on both sides at
once; lines of islands, or tracts of alluvial land, having by-channels in the
rear, intercepting the view of the northern mainland, and sometimes also of
the southern. Beyond the Issa, however, the river becomes evidently
narrower, being reduced to an average width of about a mile; there were
then no longer those magnificent reaches, with blank horizons, which occur
lower down. We had a dark and rainy night after passing Tunantins, and the
passengers were all very uneasy on account of the speed at which we were
travelling, twelve miles an hour, with every plank vibrating with the force
of the engines. Many of them could not sleep, myself among the number.
At length, a little after midnight, a sudden shout startled us: "Back her!"
(English terms being used in matters relating to steam-engines). The pilot
instantly sprung to the helm, and in a few moments we felt our paddle-box
brushing against the wall of forest into which we had nearly driven
headlong. Fortunately, the water was deep close up to the bank. Early in the
morning of the 10th of September we anchored in the port of St. Paulo,
after five days' quick travelling from Ega.
St. Paulo is built on a high hill, on the southern bank of the river. The hill is
formed of the same Tabatinga clay, which occurs at intervals over the
whole valley of the Amazons, but nowhere rises to so great an elevation as
here, the height being about 100 feet above the mean level of the river. The
ascent from the port is steep and slippery; steps and resting-places have
been made to lighten the fatigue of mounting, otherwise the village would
CHAPTER XIII 402
be almost inaccessible, especially to porters of luggage and cargo, for there

are no means of making a circuitous road of more moderate slope, the hill
being steep on all sides, and surrounded by dense forests and swamps. The
place contains about 500 inhabitants, chiefly half-castes and Indians of the
Tucuna and Collina tribes, who are very little improved from their
primitive state. The streets are narrow, and in rainy weather inches deep in
mud; many houses are of substantial structure, but in a ruinous condition,
and the place altogether presents the appearance, like Fonte Boa, of having
seen better days. Signs of commerce, such as meet the eye at Ega, could
scarcely be expected in this remote spot, situate 1800 miles, or seven
months' round voyage by sailing-vessels, from Para, the nearest market for
produce. A very short experience showed that the inhabitants were utterly
debased, the few Portuguese and other immigrants having, instead of
promoting industry, adopted the lazy mode of life of the Indians, spiced
with the practice of a few strong vices of their own introduction.
The head-man of the village, Senor Antonio Ribeiro, half-white

half-Tucuna, prepared a house for me on landing, and introduced me to the
principal people. The summit of the hill is grassy table-land, of two or three
hundred acres in extent. The soil is not wholly clay, but partly sand and
gravel; the village itself, however, stands chiefly on clay, and the streets
therefore after heavy rains, become filled with muddy puddles. On damp
nights the chorus of frogs and toads which swarm in weedy back-yards
creates such a bewildering uproar that it is impossible to carry on a
conversation indoors except by shouting. My house was damper even than
the one I occupied at Fonte Boa, and this made it extremely difficult to
keep my collections from being spoilt by mould. But the general humidity
of the atmosphere in this part of the river was evidently much greater than
it is lower down; it appears to increase gradually in ascending from the
Atlantic to the Andes. It was impossible at St. Paulo to keep salt for many
days in a solid state, which was not the case at Ega, when the baskets in
which it is contained were well wrapped in leaves. Six degrees further
westward, namely, at the foot of the Andes, the dampness of the climate of
the Amazonian forest region appears to reach its acme, for Poeppig found
at Chinchao that the most refined sugar, in a few days, dissolved into syrup,
and the best gunpowder became liquid, even when enclosed in canisters. At
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St. Paulo refined sugar kept pretty well in tin boxes, and I had no difficulty
in keeping my gunpowder dry in canisters, although a gun loaded overnight
could very seldom be fired off in the morning.
The principal residents at St. Paulo were the priest, a white from Para, who
spent his days and most of his nights in gambling and rum-drinking,
corrupting the young fellows and setting the vilest example to the Indians;
the sub-delegado, an upright, open-hearted, and loyal negro, whom I have
before mentioned, Senor Jose Patricio; the Juiz de Paz, a half-caste named
Geraldo, and lastly, Senor Antonio Ribeiro, who was Director of the
Indians. Geraldo and Ribeiro were my near neighbours, but they took
offence at me after the first few days, because I would not join them in their
drinking bouts, which took place about every third day. They used to begin
early in the morning with Cashaca mixed with grated ginger, a powerful
drink, which used to excite them almost to madness. Neighbour Geraldo,
after these morning potations, used to station himself opposite my house
and rave about foreigners, gesticulating in a threatening manner towards me
by the hour. After becoming sober in the evening, he usually came to offer
me the humblest apologies, driven to it, I believe, by his wife, he himself
being quite unconscious of this breach of good manners. The wives of the
St. Paulo worthies, however, were generally as bad as their husbands;
nearly all the women being hard drinkers, and corrupt to the last degree.
Wifebeating naturally flourished under such a state of things. I found it
always best to lock myself indoors after sunset, and take no notice of the
thumps and screams which used to rouse the village in different quarters
throughout the night, especially at festival times.
The only companionable man I found in the place, except Jose Patricio,
who was absent most part of the time, was the negro tailor of the village, a
tall, thin, grave young man, named Mestre Chico (Master Frank), whose
acquaintance I had made at Para several years previously. He was a free
negro by birth, but had had the advantage of kind treatment in his younger
days, having been brought up by a humane and sensible man, one Captain
Basilio, of Pernambuco, his padrinho, or godfather. He neither drank,
smoked, nor gambled, and was thoroughly disgusted at the depravity of all
classes in this wretched little settlement, which he intended to quit as soon
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as possible.
When he visited me at night he used to knock at my shutters in a manner

we had agreed on, it being necessary to guard against admitting drunken
neighbours, and we then spent the long evenings most pleasantly, working
and conversing. His manners were courteous, and his talk well worth
listening to, for the shrewdness and good sense of his remarks. I first met
Mestre Chico at the house of an old negress of Para, Tia Rufina (Aunt
Rufina), who used to take charge of my goods when I was absent on a
voyage, and this affords me an opportunity of giving a few further instances
of the excellent qualities of free negroes in a country where they are not
wholly condemned to a degrading position by the pride or selfishness of the
white race. This old woman was born a slave, but, like many others in the
large towns of Brazil, she had been allowed to trade on her own account, as
market-woman, paying a fixed sum daily to her owner, and keeping for
herself all her surplus gains. In a few years she had saved sufficient money
to purchase her freedom, and that of her grown- up son. This done, the old
lady continued to strive until she had earned enough to buy the house in
which she lived, a considerable property situated in one of the principal
streets. When I returned from the interior, after seven years' absence from
Para, I found she was still advancing in prosperity, entirely through her
own exertions (being a widow) and those of her son, who continued, with
the most regular industry, his trade as blacksmith, and was now building a
number of small houses on a piece of unoccupied land attached to her
property. I found these and many other free negroes most trustworthy
people, and admired the constancy of their friendships and the gentleness
and cheerfulness of their manners towards each other. They showed great
disinterestedness in their dealings with me, doing me many a piece of
service without a hint at remuneration; but this may have been partly due to
the name of Englishman, the knowledge of our national generosity towards
the African race being spread far and wide amongst the Brazilian negroes.
I remained at St. Paulo five months; five years would not have been
sufficient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and
Botany. Although now a forest-rambler of ten years' experience, the
beautiful forest which surrounds this settlement gave me as much
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enjoyment as if I had only just landed for the first time in a tropical
country. The plateau on which the village is built extends on one side
nearly a mile into the forest, but on the other side the descent into the
lowland begins close to the streets; the hill sloping abruptly towards a
boggy meadow surrounded by woods, through which a narrow winding
path continues the slope down to a cool shady glen, with a brook of
icy-cold water flowing at the bottom. At mid-day the vertical sun penetrates
into the gloomy depths of this romantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of
the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green,
and black tanagers and brightly- coloured butterflies sport about in the stray
beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest in
almost every direction, and one is constantly meeting, while rambling
through the thickets, with trickling rills and bubbling springs, so
well-provided is the country with moisture. Some of the rivulets flow over
a sandy and pebbly bed, and the banks of all are clothed with the most
magnificent vegetation conceivable. I had the almost daily habit, in my
solitary walks, of resting on the clean banks of these swift-flowing streams,
and bathing for an hour at a time in their bracing waters; hours which now
remain among my most pleasant memories. The broad forest roads
continue, as I was told, a distance of several days' journey into the interior,
which is peopled by Tucunas and other Indians, living in scattered houses
and villages nearly in their primitive state, the nearest village lying about
six miles from St. Paulo. The banks of all the streams are dotted with
palm-thatched dwellings of Tucunas, all half-buried in the leafy wilderness,
the scattered families having chosen the coolest and shadiest nooks for their
abodes.
I frequently heard in the neighbourhood of these huts, the "realejo" or organ

bird (Cyphorhinus cantans), the most remarkable songster, by far, of the
Amazonian forests. When its singular notes strike the ear for the first time,
the impression cannot be resisted that they are produced by a human voice.
Some musical boy must be gathering fruit in the thickets, and is singing a
few notes to cheer himself. The tones become more fluty and plaintive;
they are now those of a flageolet, and notwithstanding the utter
impossibility of the thing, one is for the moment convinced that somebody
is playing that instrument. No bird is to be seen, however closely the
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surrounding trees and bushes may be scanned, and yet the voice seems to
come from the thicket close to one's ears. The ending of the song is rather
disappointing. It begins with a few very slow and mellow notes, following
each other like the commencement of an air; one listens expecting to hear a
complete strain, but an abrupt pause occurs, and then the song breaks down,
finishing with a number of clicking unmusical sounds like a piping barrel
organ out of wind and tune. I never heard the bird on the Lower Amazon,
and very rarely heard it even at Ega; it is the only songster which makes an
impression on the natives, who sometimes rest their paddles whilst
travelling in their small canoes, along the shady by- streams, as if struck by
the mysterious sounds.
The Tucuna Indians are a tribe resembling much the Shumanas, Passes,
Juris, and Mauhes in their physical appearance and customs. They lead, like
those tribes, a settled agricultural life, each horde obeying a chief of more
or less influence, according to his energy and ambition, and possessing its
paje or medicine-man who fosters its superstitions; but, they are much more
idle and debauched than other Indians belonging to the superior tribes.
They are not so warlike and loyal as the Mundurucus, although resembling
them in many respects, nor have they the slender figures, dignified mien,
and gentle disposition of the Passes; there are, however, no trenchant points
of difference to distinguish them from these highest of all the tribes. Both
men and women are tattooed, the pattern being sometimes a scroll on each
cheek, but generally rows of short straight lines on the face. Most of the
older people wear bracelets, anklets, and garters of tapir-hide or tough bark;
in their homes they wear no other dress except on festival days, when they
ornament themselves with feathers or masked cloaks made of the inner bark
of a tree. They were very shy when I made my first visits to their
habitations in the forest, all scampering off to the thicket when I
approached, but on subsequent days they became more familiar, and I
found them a harmless, good-natured people.
A great part of the horde living at the first Maloca or village dwell in a
common habitation, a large oblong hut built and arranged inside with such
a disregard of all symmetry that it appeared as though constructed by a
number of hands, each working independently, stretching a rafter or fitting
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in a piece of thatch, without reference to what his fellow-labourers were

doing. The walls as well as the roof are covered with thatch of palm
leaves-- each piece consisting of leaflets plaited and attached in a row to a
lath many feet in length. Strong upright posts support the roof, hammocks
being slung between them, leaving a free space for passage and for fires in
the middle, and on one side is an elevated stage (girao) overhead, formed of
split palm-stems. The Tucunas excel over most of the other tribes in the
manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupi sauce,
caysuma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons,
ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours.
These jars, with cooking-pots, smaller jars for holding water, blow-guns,
quivers, matiri bags [These bags are formed of remarkably neat twine made
of Bromelia fibres elaborately knitted, all in one piece, with sticks; a belt of
the same material, but more closely woven, being attached to the top to
suspend them by. They afford good examples of the mechanical ability of
these Indians. The Tucunas also possess the art of skinning and stuffing
birds, the handsome kinds of which they sell in great numbers to passing
travellers.] full of small articles, baskets, skins of animals, and so forth,
form the principal part of the furniture of their huts both large and small.
The dead bodies of their chiefs are interred, the knees doubled up, in large
jars under the floors of their huts.
The semi-religious dances and drinking bouts usual among the settled tribes
of Amazonian Indians are indulged in to greater excess by the Tucunas than
they are by most other tribes. The Jurupari or Demon is the only superior
being they have any conception of, and his name is mixed up with all their
ceremonies, but it is difficult to ascertain what they consider to be his
attributes. He seems to be believed in simply as a mischievous imp, who is
at the bottom of all those mishaps of their daily life, the causes of which are
not very immediate or obvious to their dull understandings. It is vain to try
to get information out of a Tucuna on this subject; they affect great mystery
when the name is mentioned, and give very confused answers to questions:
it was clear, however, that the idea of a spirit as a beneficent God or
Creator had not entered the minds of these Indians. There is great similarity
in all their ceremonies and mummeries, whether the object is a wedding,
the celebration of the feast of fruits, the plucking of the hair from the heads
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of their children, or a holiday got up simply out of a love of dissipation.

Some of the tribe on these occasions deck themselves with the
bright-coloured feathers of parrots and macaws. The chief wears a
headdress or cap made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a web
of Bromelia twine, with erect tail plumes of macaws rising from the crown.
The cinctures of the arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches
of feathers. Others wear masked dresses; these are long cloaks reaching
below the knee, and made of the thick whitish-coloured inner bark of a tree,
the fibres of which are interlaced in so regular a manner that the material
looks like artificial cloth. The cloak covers the head; two holes are cut out
for the eyes, a large round piece of the cloth stretched on a rim of flexible
wood is stitched on each side to represent cars, and the features are painted
in exaggerated style with yellow, red, and black streaks. The dresses are
sewn into the proper shapes with thread made of the inner bark of the
Uaissima tree. Sometimes grotesque head-dresses, representing monkeys'
busts or heads of other animals, made by stretching cloth or skin over a
basketwork frame, are worn at these holidays. The biggest and ugliest mask
represents the Jurupari. In these festival habiliments the Tucunas go
through their monotonous see-saw and stamping dances accompanied by
singing and drumming, and keep up the sport often for three or four days
and nights in succession, drinking enormous quantities of caysuma,
smoking tobacco, and snuffing parica powder.
I could not learn that there was any deep symbolical meaning in these
masked dances, or that they commemorated any past event in the history of
the tribe. Some of them seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of the
Jurupari, but the masker who represents the demon sometimes gets drunk
along with the rest, and is not treated with any reverence. From all I could
make out, these Indians preserve no memory of events going beyond the
times of their fathers or grandfathers. Almost every joyful event is made the
occasion of a festival-- weddings among the best. A young man who wishes
to wed a Tucuna girl has to demand her hand of her parents, who arrange
the rest of the affair, and fix a day for the marriage ceremony. A wedding
which took place in the Christmas week while I was at St. Paulo was kept
up with great spirit for three or four days, flagging during the heats of mid-
day, but renewing itself with increased vigour every evening. During the
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whole time the bride, decked out with feather ornaments, was under the
charge of the older squaws whose business seemed to be, sedulously, to
keep the bridegroom at a safe distance until the end of the dreary period of
dancing and boosing. The Tucunas have the singular custom, in common
with the Collinas and Mauhes, of treating their young girls, on their
showing the first signs of womanhood, as if they had committed some
crime. They are sent up to the girao under the smoky and filthy roof, and
kept there on very meagre diet, sometimes for a whole month. I heard of
one poor girl dying under this treatment.
The only other tribe of this neighbourhood concerning which I obtained any
information were the Majeronas, whose territory embraces several hundred
miles of the western bank of the river Jauari, an affluent of the Solimoens,
120 miles beyond St. Paulo. These are a fierce, indomitable, and hostile
people, like the Araras of the river Madeira; they are also cannibals. The
navigation of the Jauari is rendered impossible on account of the Majeronas
lying in wait on its banks to intercept and murder all travellers, especially
whites.
Four months before my arrival at St. Paulo, two young half-castes (nearly
white) of the village went to trade on the Jauari; the Majeronas having
shown signs of abating their hostility for a year or two previously. They
had not been long gone, when their canoe returned with the news that the
two young fellows had been shot with arrows, roasted, and eaten by the
savages. Jose Patricio, with his usual activity in the cause of law and order,
despatched a party of armed men of the National Guard to the place to
make inquiries, and, if the murder should appear to be unprovoked, to
retaliate. When they reached the settlement of the horde who had eaten the
two men, it was found evacuated, with the exception of one girl, who had
been in the woods when the rest of her people had taken flight, and whom
the guards brought with them to St. Paulo. It was gathered from her, and
from other Indians on the Jauari, that the young men had brought their fate
on themselves through improper conduct towards the Majerona women.
The girl, on arriving at St. Paulo, was taken care of by Senor Jose Patricio,
baptised under the name of Maria, and taught Portuguese. I saw a good deal
of her, for my friend sent her daily to my house to fill the water-jars, make
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the fire, and so forth. I also gained her goodwill by extracting the grub of an
Oestrus fly from her back, and thus cured her of a painful tumour. She was
decidedly the best-humoured and, to all appearance, the kindest-hearted
specimen of her race I had yet seen. She was tall and very stout; in colour
much lighter than the ordinary Indian tint, and her ways altogether were
more like those of a careless, laughing country wench, such as might be
met with any day amongst the labouring class in villages in our own
country, than a cannibal. I heard this artless maiden relate, in the coolest
manner possible, how she ate a portion of the bodies of the young men
whom her tribe had roasted. But what increased greatly the incongruity of
this business, the young widow of one of the victims, a neighbour of mine,
happened to be present during the narrative, and showed her interest in it by
laughing at the broken Portuguese in which the girl related the horrible
story.
In the fourth month of my sojourn at St. Paulo I had a serious illness, an

attack of the "sizoens," or ague of the country, which, as it left me with
shattered health and damped enthusiasm, led to my abandoning the plan I
had formed of proceeding to the Peruvian towns of Pebas and Moyobamba,
250 and 600 miles further west, and so completing the examination of the
Natural History of the Amazonian plains up to the foot of the Andes. I
made a very large collection at St. Paulo, and employed a collector at
Tabatinga and on the banks of the Jauari for several months, so that I
acquired a very fair knowledge altogether of the productions of the country
bordering the Amazons to the end of the Brazilian territory, a distance of
1900 miles from the Atlantic at the mouth of the Para; but beyond the
Peruvian boundary I found now I should be unable to go. My ague seemed
to be the culmination of a gradual deterioration of health, which had been
going on for several years. I had exposed myself too much in the sun,
working to the utmost of my strength six days a week, and had suffered
much, besides, from bad and insufficient food. The ague did not exist at St.
Paulo but the foul and humid state of the village was, perhaps, sufficient to
produce ague in a person much weakened from other causes. The country
bordering the shores of the Solimoens is healthy throughout; some endemic
diseases certainly exist, but these are not of a fatal nature, and the
epidemics which desolated the Lower Amazons from Para to the Rio
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Negro, between the years 1850 and 1856, had never reached this favoured
land. Ague is known only on the banks of those tributary streams which
have dark-coloured water.
I always carried a stock of medicines with me; and a small phial of quinine,
which I had bought at Para in 1851, but never yet had use for, now came in
very useful. I took for each dose as much as would lie on the tip of a
penknife-blade, mixing it with warm camomile tea. The first few days after
my first attack I could not stir, and was delirious during the paroxysms of
fever; but the worst being over, I made an effort to rouse myself, knowing
that incurable disorders of the liver and spleen follow ague in this country if
the feeling of lassitude is too much indulged. So every morning I
shouldered my gun or insect-net, and went my usual walk in the forest. The
fit of shivering very often seized me before I got home, and I then used to
stand still and brave it out. When the steamer ascended in January, 1858,
Lieutenant Nunes was shocked to see me so much shattered, and
recommended me strongly to return at once to Ega. I took his advice, and
embarked with him, when he touched at St. Paulo on his downward voyage,
on the 2nd of February. I still hoped to be able to turn my face westward
again, to gather the yet unseen treasures of the marvellous countries lying
between Tabatinga and the slopes of the Andes; but although, after a short
rest in Ega, the ague left me, my general health remained in a state too
weak to justify the undertaking of further journeys. At length I left Ega, on
the 3rd of February, 1859, en route for England.
I arrived at Para on the 17th of March, after an absence in the interior of

seven years and a half. My old friends, English, American, and Brazilian,
scarcely knew me again, but all gave me a very warm welcome, especially
Mr. G. R. Brocklehurst (of the firm of R. Singlehurst and Co., the chief
foreign merchants, who had been my correspondents), who received me
into his house, and treated me with the utmost kindness. I was rather
surprised at the warm appreciation shown by many of the principal people
of my labours; but, in fact, the interior of the country is still the "sertao"
(wilderness)--a terra incognita to most residents of the seaport--and a man
who had spent seven years and a half in exploring it solely with scientific
aims was somewhat of a curiosity. I found Para greatly changed and
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improved. It was no longer the weedy, ruinous, village-looking place that it

appeared to be when I first knew it in 1848. The population had been
increased to 20,000 by an influx of Portuguese, Madeiran, and German
immigrants, and for many years past the provincial government had spent
their considerable surplus revenue in beautifying the city. The streets,
formerly unpaved or strewn with loose stones and sand, were now laid with
concrete in a most complete manner, all the projecting masonry of the
irregularly- built houses had been cleared away, and the buildings made
more uniform. Most of the dilapidated houses were replaced by handsome
new edifices, having long and elegant balconies fronting the first floors, at
an elevation of several feet above the roadway. The large, swampy squares
had been drained, weeded, and planted with rows of almond and casuarina
trees, so that they were now a great ornament to the city, instead of an
eyesore as they formerly were. My old favourite road, the Monguba
avenue, had been renovated and joined to many other magnificent rides
lined with trees, which in a very few years had grown to a height sufficient
to afford agreeable shade; one of these, the Estrada de Sao Jose, had been
planted with cocoa-nut palms. Sixty public vehicles, light cabriolets (some
of them built in Para), now plied in the streets, increasing much the
animation of the beautified squares, streets, and avenues.
I found also the habits of the people considerably changed. Many of the old
religious holidays had declined in importance, and given way to secular
amusements--social parties, balls, music, billiards, and so forth. There was
quite as much pleasure seeking as formerly, but it was turned in a more
rational direction, and the Paraenses seemed now to copy rather the
customs of the northern nations of Europe than those of the mother country,
Portugal. I was glad to see several new booksellers' shops, and also a fine
edifice devoted to a reading-room supplied with periodicals, globes, and
maps, and a circulating library. There were now many printing-offices, and
four daily newspapers. The health of the place had greatly improved since
1850, the year of the yellow fever, and Para was now considered no longer
dangerous to newcomers.
So much for the improvements visible in the place, and now for the dark
side of the picture. The expenses of living had increased about fourfold, a
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natural consequence of the demand for labour and for native products of all
kinds having augmented in greater ratio than the supply, through large
arrivals of nonproductive residents, and considerable importations of
money on account of the steamboat company and foreign merchants. Para,
in 1848, was one of the cheapest places of residence on the American
continent; it was now one of the dearest. Imported articles of food, clothing,
and furniture were mostly cheaper, although charged with duties varying
from 18 to 80 percent, besides high freights and large profits, than those
produced in the neighbourhood. Salt codfish was twopence per pound
cheaper than the vile salt pirarucu of the country. Oranges, which could
formerly be had almost gratis, were now sold in the streets at the rate of
three for a penny; large bananas were a penny each; tomatoes were from
two to three pence each, and all other fruits in this fruit-producing country
had advanced in like proportion. Mandioca-meal, the bread of the country,
had become so scarce and dear and bad that the poorer classes of natives
suffered famine, and all who could afford it were obliged to eat wheaten
bread at fourpence to fivepence per pound, made from American flour,
1200 barrels of which were consumed monthly; this was now, therefore, a
very serious item of daily expense to all but the most wealthy. House rent
was most exorbitant; a miserable little place of two rooms, without fixtures
or conveniences of any kind, having simply blank walls' cost at the rate of
18 sterling a year. Lastly, the hire of servants was beyond the means of all
persons in moderate circumstances--a lazy cook or porter could not be had
for less than three or four shillings a day, besides his board and what he
could steal. It cost me half-a-crown for the hire of a small boat and one man
to disembark from the steamer, a distance of 100 yards.
In rambling over my old ground in the forests of the neighbourhood, I

found great changes had taken place--to me, changes for the worse. The
mantle of shrubs, bushes, and creeping plants which formerly, when the
suburbs were undisturbed by axe or spade, had been left free to arrange
itself in rich, full, and smooth sheets and masses over the forest borders,
had been nearly all cut away, and troops of labourers were still employed
cutting ugly muddy roads for carts and cattle, through the once clean and
lonely woods. Houses and mills had been erected on the borders of these
new roads. The noble forest-trees had been cut down, and their naked,
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half-burnt stems remained in the midst of ashes, muddy puddles, and heaps
of broken branches. I was obliged to hire a negro boy to show me the way
to my favourite path near Una, which I have described in the second
chapter of this narrative; the new clearings having quite obliterated the old
forest roads. Only a few acres of the glorious forest near Una now remained
in their natural state. On the other side of the city, near the old road to the
rice mills, several scores of woodsmen were employed under Government,
in cutting a broad carriage-road through the forest to Maranham, the capital
of the neighbouring province, distant 250 miles from Para, and this had
entirely destroyed the solitude of the grand old forest path. In the course of
a few years, however, a new growth of creepers will cover the naked
treetrunks on the borders of this new road, and luxuriant shrubs form a
green fringe to the path: it will then become as beautiful a woodland road
as the old one was. A naturalist will have, henceforward, to go farther from
the city to find the glorious forest scenery which lay so near in 1848, and
work much more laboriously than was formerly needed to make the large
collections which Mr. Wallace and I succeeded in doing in the
neighbourhood of Para.
June 2, 1859--At length, on the 2nd of June, I left Para, probably forever;
embarking in a North American trading-vessel, the Frederick Demming, for
New York, the United States route being the quickest as well as the
pleasantest way of reaching England. My extensive private collections were
divided into three portions and sent by three separate ships, to lessen the
risk of loss of the whole. On the evening of the 3rd of June, I took a last
view of the glorious forest for which I had so much love, and to explore
which I had devoted so many years. The saddest hours I ever recollect to
have spent were those of the succeeding night when, the Mameluco pilot
having left us free of the shoals and out of sight of land though within the
mouth of the river at anchor waiting for the wind, I felt that the last link
which connected me with the land of so many pleasing recollections was
broken. The Paraenses, who are fully aware of the attractiveness of their
country, have an alliterative proverb, "Quem vai para (o) Para para," "He
who goes to Para stops there," and I had often thought I should myself have
been added to the list of examples. The desire, however, of seeing again my
parents and enjoying once more the rich pleasures of intellectual society,
CHAPTER XIII 415
had succeeded in overcoming the attractions of a region which may be

fittingly called a Naturalist's Paradise. During this last night on the Para
river, a crowd of unusual thoughts occupied my mind. Recollections of
English climate, scenery, and modes of life came to me with a vividness I
had never before experienced, during the eleven years of my absence.
Pictures of startling clearness rose up of the gloomy winters, the long grey
twilights, murky atmosphere, elongated shadows, chilly springs, and sloppy
summers; of factory chimneys and crowds of grimy operatives, rung to
work in early morning by factory bells; of union workhouses, confined
rooms, artificial cares, and slavish conventionalities. To live again amidst
these dull scenes, I was quitting a country of perpetual summer, where my
life had been spent like that of three-fourths of the people-- in gipsy
fashion-- on the endless streams or in the boundless forests. I was leaving
the equator, where the well-balanced forces of Nature maintained a land-
surface and climate that seemed to be typical of mundane order and beauty,
to sail towards the North Pole, where lay my home under crepuscular skies
somewhere about fifty-two degrees of latitude. It was natural to feel a little
dismayed at the prospect of so great a change; but now, after three years of
renewed experience of England, I find how incomparably superior is
civilised life, where feelings, tastes, and intellect find abundant
nourishment, to the spiritual sterility of half-savage existence, even though
it be passed in the garden of Eden. What has struck me powerfully is the
immeasurably greater diversity and interest of human character and social
conditions in a single civilised nation, than in equatorial South America,
where three distinct races of man live together. The superiority of the bleak
north to tropical regions, however, is only in their social aspect, for I hold
to the opinion that, although humanity can reach an advanced state of
culture only by battling with the inclemencies of nature in high latitudes, it
is under the equator alone that the perfect race of the future will attain to
complete fruition of man's beautiful heritage, the earth.
The following day, having no wind, we drifted out of the mouth of the Para
with the current of fresh water that is poured from the mouth of the river,
and in twenty-four hours advanced in this way seventy miles on our road.
On the 6th of June, when in 7' 55' N. lat. and 52' 30' W. long., and therefore
about 400 miles from the mouth of the main Amazons, we passed
CHAPTER XIII 416
numerous patches of floating grass mingled with tree-trunks and withered

foliage. Among these masses I espied many fruits of that peculiarly
Amazonian tree the Ubussu palm; this was the last I saw of the Great River.
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The Naturalist on the River Amazons 1

The Naturalist on the River Amazons

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The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

December, 2000 [Etext #2440]

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The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

BY CHARLES DARWIN Author of "The Origin of Species," etc.

From Natural History Review, vol. iii. 1863.

about 8000 were previously unknown to science. It may be remarked that

identical, or only slightly modified, or whether they are highly peculiar.

In a later chapter Mr. Bates commences his account of the Solimoens, or

drawbacks--"the latter increasing until it became almost insupportable." "I

But to return to the Zoological wonders of the Upper Amazon, birds,

beings escaped the observation of his watchful intelligence. The account of

The following is the list of H. W. Bates' published works:

Contributions to an insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley, Paper read before

supplemented by him:--Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography, 1870; A.

He contributed largely to the Zoologist, Entomological Society's journal,

LIFE--Memoir by E. Clodd, 1892; short notice in Clodd's Pioneers of

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1864

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