The Naturalist On The River Amazons Part 11

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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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.

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 pa.s.sed-- "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 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 gra.s.sy s.p.a.ces, 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 gra.s.s; 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 hands of parrots' feathers. The rods used are slender bamboos, and the lines made from the fibres of pine- apple 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 quant.i.ty 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 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 ma.s.s 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.

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 pa.s.sing, 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 anch.o.r.ed. 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.

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 const.i.tuted 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 Cura.s.sow 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, pa.s.sing 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 Cura.s.sow 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-sh.e.l.led, 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 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 circ.u.mstance, and, my men being all ash.o.r.e, 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 circ.u.mference 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 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 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 a.s.sumed a new appearance from the abundance of the Urucuri palm, a species which has a n.o.ble 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 sh.e.l.l of the boat, of the kind called Itauba amarello, the yellow variety of the stonewood. They felled it, and shaped out of the trunk a log nineteen feet in length; this they dragged from the forest, with the help of my host's men, over a road they had previously made with cylindrical pieces of wood acting as rollers. The distance was about half a mile, and the ropes used for drawing the heavy load were tough lianas cut from the surrounding trees. This part of the work occupied about a week: the log had then to be hollowed out, which was done with strong chisels through a slit made down the whole length.

The heavy portion of the task being then completed, nothing remained but to widen the opening, fit two planks for the sides and the same number of semicircular boards for the ends, make the benches, and caulk the seams.

The expanding of the log thus hollowed out is a critical operation, and not always successful, many a good sh.e.l.l 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 compa.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e black hair; but it differs in having the whiskers and a triangular patch on the crown of the head of a white colour. I thought the meat the best flavoured I had ever tasted. It resembled beef, but had a richer and sweeter taste.

During the time of our stay in this part of the Cupari, we could get scarcely anything but fish to eat, and as this diet disagreed with me, three successive days of it reducing me to a state of great weakness. I was obliged to make the most of our Coaita meat. We smoke-dried the joints instead of salting them, placing them for several hours upon a framework of sticks arranged over a fire, a plan adopted by the natives to preserve fish when they have no salt, and which they call "muquiar." Meat putrefies in this climate in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no use, unless the pieces are cut in thin slices anddried immediately in the sun.

My monkeys lasted me about: a fortnight, the last joint being an arm with the clenched fist, which I used with great economy, hanging it in the intervals, between my frugal meals, on a nail in the cabin. Nothing but the hardest necessity could have driven me so near to cannibalism as this, but we had the greatest difficulty in obtaining here a sufficient supply of animal food.

About every three days the work on the montaria had to be suspended, and all hands turned out for the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely scattered to be available. Ricardo, and Alberto occasionally brought in a tortoise or anteater, which served us for one day's consumption.

We made acquaintance here with many strange dishes, amongst them Iguana eggs; these are of oblong form, about an inch in length, and covered with a flexible sh.e.l.l. The lizard lays about two score of them in the hollows of trees. They have an oily taste; the men ate them raw, beaten up with farinha, mixing a pinch of salt in the mess; I could only do with them when mixed with Tucupi sauce, of which we had a large jar full always ready to temper unsavoury morsels.

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

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

A small creek traversed the forest behind John Aracu's house, and entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place; I used to cross it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting ground. One day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. This phenomenon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the creek became dry with the continued subsidence of the Cupari, the time of rising shifting a little from day to day. I pointed out the circ.u.mstance 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, pa.s.sing 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 princ.i.p.al affluents which cross the valley to join the main river.

August 21st.--John Aracu consented to accompany me to the falls with one of his men to hunt and fish for me. One of my objects was to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts. We started on the 19th; our direction on that day being generally southwest. On the 20th, our course was southerly and southeasterly. This morning (August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of John Aracu. The river at this place is from sixty to seventy yards wide, and runs in a zigzag course between steep clayey banks, twenty to fifty feet in height. The houses of the Mundurucus, to the number of about thirty, are scattered along the banks for a distance of six or seven miles.

The owners appear to have chosen all the most picturesque sites-- tracts of level ground at the foot of wooded heights, or little havens with bits of white sandy beach--as if they had an appreciation of natural beauty. Most of the dwellings are conical huts, with walls of framework filled in with mud and thatched with palm leaves, the broad eaves reaching halfway to the ground.

Some are quadrangular, and do not differ in structure from those of the semi-civilised settlers in other parts; others are open sheds or ranchos. They seem generally to contain not more than one or two families each.

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

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

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

To amuse the Tushaua, I fetched from the canoe the two volumes of Knight's Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature. The engravings quite took his fancy, and he called his wives, of whom, as I afterwards learned from Aracu, he had three or four, to look at them; one of them was a handsome girl, decorated with necklace and bracelets of blue beads. In a short time, others left their work, and I then had a crowd of women and children around me, who all displayed unusual curiosity for Indians. It was no light task to go through the whole of the ill.u.s.trations, 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 sh.e.l.ls and insects. They recognised the portraits of the most striking birds and mammals which are found in their own country-- the jaguar, howling monkeys, parrots, trogons, and toucans. The elephant was settled to be a large kind of Tapir; but they made but few remarks, and those in the Mundurucu language, of which I understood only two or three words. Their way of expressing surprise was a clicking sound made with the teeth, similar to the one we ourselves use, or a subdued exclamation, Hm! hm! Before I finished, from fifty to sixty had a.s.sembled; 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 sh.o.r.es of the Tapajos (chiefly the right bank), from 3 to 7 south lat.i.tude, 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 Pa.s.ses 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 quant.i.ties of sarsaparilla, India-rubber, and Tonka beans, in the forests. The traders, on their arrival at the Campinas (the scantily wooded region inhabited by the main body of Mundurucus beyond the cataracts) have first to distribute their wares--cheap cotton cloths, iron hatchets, cutlery, small wares, and cashaca--amongst the minor chiefs, and then wait three or four months for repayment in produce.

A rapid change is taking place in the habits of these Indians through frequent intercourse with the whites, and those who dwell on the banks of the Tapajos now seldom tattoo their children. The princ.i.p.al Tushaua of the whole tribe or nation, named Joaquim, was rewarded with a commission in the Brazilian army, in acknowledgment of the a.s.sistance 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 t.i.tle. Yet they show no apt.i.tude for the civilised life of towns, and, like the rest of the Brazilian tribes, seem incapable of any further advance in culture.

In their former wars they exterminated two of the neighbouring peoples, the Jumas and the Jacares, and make now an annual expedition against the Pararauates, and one or two other similar wild tribes who inhabit the interior of the land. Additionally they are sometimes driven by hunger towards the banks of the great rivers to rob the plantations of the agricultural Indians.

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

Each horde of Mundurucus has its paje or medicine man, who is the priest and doctor; he fixes upon the time most propitious for attacking the enemy; exorcises evil spirits, and professes to cure the sick. All illness whose origin is not very apparent is supposed to be caused by a worm in the part affected. This the paje pretends to extract; he blows on the seat of pain the smoke from a large cigar, made with an air of great mystery by rolling tobacco in folds of Tauari, and then sucks the place, drawing from his mouth, when he has finished, what he pretends to be the worm. It is a piece of very clumsy conjuring. One of these pajes was sent for by a woman in John Aracu's family, to operate on a child who suffered much from pains in the head. Senor John contrived to get possession of the supposed worm after the trick was performed in our presence, and it turned out to be a long white airroot of some plant. The paje was with difficulty persuaded to operate while Senor John and I were present. I cannot help thinking that he, as well as all others of the same profession, are conscious impostors, handing down the shallow secret of their divinations and tricks from generation to generation. The inst.i.tution 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 superst.i.tious regard for them. They manufacture headdresses, sashes, and tunics, besides sceptres; the feathers being a.s.sorted 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 quant.i.ty of taroba, and the monotonous jingle is kept up, with little intermission, night and day, until the stimulating beverage is finished.

We left the Tushaua's house early the next morning. The impression made upon me by the glimpse of Indian life in its natural state obtained here, and at another cl.u.s.ter of houses visited higher up, was a pleasant one, notwithstanding the disagreeable incident of the Pararauate visit. The Indians are here seen to the best advantage; having relinquished many of their most barbarous practices, without being corrupted by too close contact with the inferior whites and half-breeds of the civilised settlements. The manners are simpler, the demeanour more gentle, cheerful, and frank, than amongst the Indians who live near the towns. I could not help contrasting their well-fed condition, and the signs of orderly, industrious habits, with the poverty and laziness of the semi-civilised people of Altar do Chao. I do not think that the introduction of liquors has been the cause of much harm to the Brazilian Indian. He has his drinking bout now and then, like the common working people of other countries. It was his habit in his original state, before Europeans visited his country, but he is always ashamed of it afterwards, and remains sober during the pretty long intervals.

The harsh, slave-driving practices of the Portuguese and their descendants have been the greatest curses to the Indians; the Mundurucus of the Cupari, however, have been now for many years protected against ill-treatment. This is one of the good services rendered by the missionaries, who take care that the Brazilian laws in favour of the aborigines shall be respected by the brutal and unprincipled traders who go amongst them. I think no Indians could be in a happier position than these simple, peaceful, and friendly people on the banks of the Cupari. The members of each family live together, and seem to be much attached to each other; and the authority of the chief is exercised in the mildest manner. Perpetual summer reigns around them; the land is of the highest fertility, and a moderate amount of light work produces them all the necessessities of their simple life.

It is difficult to get at their notions on subjects that require a little abstract thought; but, the mind of the Indian is in a very primitive condition. I believe he thinks of nothing except the matters that immediately concern his daily material wants.

There is an almost total absence of curiosity in his mental disposition, consequently, he troubles himself very little concerning the causes of the natural phenomena around him. He has no idea of a Supreme Being; but, at the same time, he is free from revolting superst.i.tions--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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sai 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.