THE INDIANS OF PERU. 311 



M. Castelnan, iu bis Voyage, gives some statements going to show that 

 there is among the tribes of this region a definite idea of futiiiity iu 

 couuectiou with the soul's immortality and of a Supreme Being. It ap- 

 pears to me that he must have confounded the notions they have gained 

 by long contact with the friars with their original ideas. Those whom 

 I often conversed with among these tribes, traders, priests, half-breeds, 

 and Indians themselves, seemed, as far as I could learn, a race most 

 ignorant of everything beyond the daily life they led, except where they 

 had some comprehension of what t'jey had heard from the teachings of 

 the friars, who for over a hundred years have been among them. I was 

 repeatedly told by the very intelligent prefect of the order of Saint 

 Francis, at Caxiboya, the headquarters of the missions, that he had 

 never been able to detect among the purely savage natures any notions 

 of the subjects referred to, except that they seemed to have a vague 

 idea of an evil spirit, who m they looked upon as the author of all the 

 ills of life; that of the soul and its immortality they did not entertain 

 the rudest conception. 



The Couibo tribe, from their prominence on the river, are more ap- 

 proachable by the whites, and they show a larger degree of thriftiness 

 and comprehension of the uses of trade. But wheu at their homes, 

 unexcited by the animation of business, there seems little difference 

 between them and the other tribes in that country, being indisposed to 

 commnuicate information, quiet, with a species of cadness, or rather 

 apathy arising from want of thought. Yet it is well known that when 

 they, or any of the representatives of the tribes, are taken young, as is 

 frequently the case — sale of them being one of the elements of trade on 

 the rivers — and brought down to the villages on the MaraSon, or to the in- 

 terior, where there are white populations, they develop rapidly a remark- 

 able sprightliness. They learn the Spanish language with great facility, as 

 also the various duties they are called on to perform as nurses or servants 

 for children or grown people, and iu all respects acquire the arts of the 

 stage of civilization of that country with ease. Many of these young 

 persons, however, die before they have been in their new homes any 

 length of time, not from homesickness, which they rarely feel, but from 

 a change of diet and mode of life, the comparative plenty of their new 

 mode of existence and its excitement apparently producing derange- 

 ments of digestion. Among all the young people of the tribes of the 

 Ucayali and its tributaries who thus find their way into civ-lization, the 

 children of the Campas tribe, who inhabit the country of the Cerro de 

 la Sal and the south part of the Pampa del Sacramento, are preferred 

 on account of their quickness, energy, and fine physique, which, though 

 slight, is somewhat more elegant iu figure. 



The Couibo tribe control the Ucayali for some distance above the Pa- 

 chitea, and are then replaced near the Urubamba and Tambo Elvers by 

 the Pirros, who are the most stalwart of all the aborigines of this country. 

 They inhabit both sides of the Ucayali near the two rivers mentioned, 



