Chapter IX: Voyage Up the Tapajos (2)

We entered the mouth of the Cuparí 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 Mundurucú 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.

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 Jaburú 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 Cuparí 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 Senhor 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. Senhor 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. Senhor Antonio had spent his younger days at Pará, 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 Tabanidæ 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: attended 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, regularly following her wherever she went about the grounds. I found this kind of Curassow bird was very common in the forest of the Cuparí; 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 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 whilst 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. Senhor Antonio said the depredator was a Sucurujú (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 systematic manner, 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 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 farm-yards, 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 Teffé to gather wild fruit, landing on a sloping sandy shore, where the boy was left to mind the canoe whilst the man entered the forest. The beaches of the Teffé form groves of wild guava and myrtle trees, and during most months of the year are partly overflown by the river. Whilst 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 south-east and south-south-east 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 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-north-east for a short distance above Paulo Christo’s establishment, and then turns abruptly to the south-west, 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, Senhor Joao (John) Aracú, a wiry, active fellow and capital hunter, whom I wished to make a friend of and persuade to accompany me to the Mundurucú village and the falls of the Cuparí, some forty miles further up the river.

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

The expanding of the log thus hollowed out is a critical operation, and not always successful, many a good shell being spoiled from splitting or expanding irregularly. It is first reared on tressels, with the slit downwards, over a large fire, which is kept up for seven or eight hours, the process requiring unremitting 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 Coaitá, 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 Cuparí, 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 Coaitá meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting them, placing them for several hours upon a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, and which they call “muquiar.” Meat putrefies in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and dried 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 ant-eater, 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 Tucupí 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 Ygapó, 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 whilst pinning it was rather startled by a rushing noise in the vicinity. I looked up to the sky, thinking a squall was coming on, but not a breath of wind stirred in the tree-tops. On stepping out of the bushes I met face to face a huge serpent coming down a slope, making the dry twigs crack and fly with his weight as he moved over them. I had very frequently met with a smaller boa, the Cutim-boia, in a similar way, and knew from the habits of the family that there was no danger, so I stood my ground. On seeing me the reptile suddenly turned and glided at an accelerated pace down the path. Wishing to take a note of his probable size and the colours and markings of his skin, I set off after him; but he increased his speed, and I was unable to get near enough for the purpose. There was very little of the serpentine movement in his course. The rapidly moving and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the thick bed of fallen leaves, rather than a serpent with skin of varied colours. He descended towards the lower and moister parts of the Ygapó. 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 Cuparí.

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 Cuparí, the time of rising shifting a little from day to day. I pointed out the circumstance to John Aracú, 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 “maré”; 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 Cuparí, 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 Aracú consented to accompany me to the falls with one of his men to hunt and fish for me. One of my objects was to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts. We started on the 19th; our direction on that day being generally southwest. On the 20th, our course was southerly and southeasterly. This morning (August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of John Aracú. 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 Mundurucús, 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 learnt that all the fighting men had this morning returned from a two days’ pursuit of a wandering horde of savages of the Parárauáte 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 Tushaúa, 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 Tushaúa 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 Pará, 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 Cuparí horde of Mundurucús, 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 Cuparí settlement.

I spent the remainder of the day here, sending Aracú and the men to fish, whilst I amused myself with the Tushaúa 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 Parárauátes were a tribe of intractable savages, with whom the Mundurucús 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 Mundurucús of the upper Tapajos have an expedition on foot against them at the present time, and the Tushaúa 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 sugar cane, which the industrious Mundurucús had planted for the season, on the east side of the river. As soon as they were seen they made off, but the Tashaúa quickly got together all the young men of the settlement, about thirty in number, who armed themselves with guns, bows and arrows, and javelins, and started in pursuit. They tracked them, as before related, for two days through the forest, but lost their traces on the further bank of the Cuparitinga, a branch stream flowing from the northeast. The pursuers thought, at one time, they were close upon them, having found the inextinguished fire of their last encampment. The footmarks of the chief could be distinguished from the rest by their great size and the length of the stride. A small necklace made of scarlet beans was the only trophy of the expedition, and this the Tashaúa 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 amongst 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 Tashaúa, 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 Aracú, 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, orang-otangs, 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 Mundurucú language, of which I understood only two or three words. Their way of expressing surprise was a clicking sound made with the teeth, similar to the one we ourselves use, or a subdued exclamation, Hm! hm! Before I finished, from fifty to sixty had assembled; there was no pushing or rudeness, the grown-up women letting the young girls and children stand before them, and all behaved in the most quiet and orderly manner possible.

The Mundurucús 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 Múras. They have ever since been firm friends of the whites. It is remarkable how faithfully this friendly feeling has been handed down amongst the Mundurucús, 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 Jurís and Passés on the Upper Amazons, or the Uapés 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 Mundurucús beyond the cataracts) have first to distribute their wares—cheap cotton cloths, iron hatchets, cutlery, small wares, and cashaça—amongst the minor chiefs, and then wait three or four months for repayment in produce.

A rapid change is taking place in the habits of these Indians through frequent intercourse with the whites, and those who dwell on the banks of the Tapajos now seldom tattoo their children. The principal Tashaúa 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 Mundurucús of the Cuparí 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 Júmas and the Jacarés, and make now an annual expedition against the Parárauátes, 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 Mundurucús and the Aráras. 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 Turé on the approach of the Aráras, who choose the night for their onslaughts.

Each horde of Mundurucús has its pajé 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 pajé 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 Tauarí, 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 pajés was sent for by a woman in John Aracu’s family, to operate on a child who suffered much from pains in the head. Senhor 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 air-root of some plant. The pajé was with difficulty persuaded to operate whilst Senhor 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 Tashaúa 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 Mundurucús 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 head-dresses, 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 Tashaúa 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 tarobá, and the monotonous jingle is kept up, with little intermission, night and day, until the stimulating beverage is finished.

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

The men awoke me at four o’clock with the sound of their oars on leaving the port of the Tashaúa. 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 José and one of the men forward in the montaria with John Aracú, 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 Guaríba, or howling monkey, and two large lizards. The Guaríba 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 (Œstrus). The back and tail were of a ruddy-brown colour, the limbs, and underside of the body, black. The men ascended to the second falls, which form a cataract several feet in height, about fifteen miles beyond our anchorage. The macaws were found feeding in small flocks on the fruit of the Tucumá palm (Astryocaryum Tucumá), 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 Piránhas. 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 Piránhas 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 Acará bandeira (Mesonauta insignis, of Günther), 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 Sarapó came wriggling along, one by one, with a slow movement. We caught with hook and line, baited with pieces of banana, several Curimatá (Anodus Amazonum), a most delicious fish, which, next to the Tucunare and the Pescada, is most esteemed by the natives. The Curimatá seemed to prefer the middle of the stream, where the waters were agitated beneath the little cascade.

Acará (Mesonauta insignis).

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 Pará, 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.

Sarapó (Carapus). Needle-fish (Hemaramphus).

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 Parárauátes, so that I could not, after their return on the fourth day, induce them to undertake another journey. We began our descent of the river in the evening of the 26th of August. At night forest and river were again enveloped in mist, and the air before sunrise was quite cold. There is a considerable current from the falls to the house of John Aracú, 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 Cuparí 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 Cuparí friends especially suffered very severely. John Aracú 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 Mundurucú 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 Cuparí 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 day-time a strong wind rages from down river, against which it is impossible to contend as there is no current, and the swell raised by its sweeping over scores of miles of shallow water is dangerous to small vessels. The coast for the greater part of the distance affords no shelter; there are, however, a number of little harbours, called _esperas_, which the canoemen calculate upon, carefully arranging each night-voyage so as to reach one of them before the wind begins the next morning.