98 CARIPI AND THE BAY OF MARAJO. Cuap. V. 
The locality we were to visit was situated near the extreme point of 
the land of Carnapijé, where it projects northwardly into the middle 
of the Parad estuary, and is broken into a number of islands. On 
the afternoon of January 11th, 1849, I walked through the woods to 
Raimundo’s house, taking nothing with me but a double-barrelled gun, 
a supply of ammunition, and a box for the reception of any insects 
I might capture. Raimundo was a carpenter, and seemed to be a very 
industrious man ; he had two apprentices, Indians like himself—one a 
young lad, and the other apparently about twenty years of age. His 
wife was of the same race. The Indian women are not always ofa 
taciturn disposition like their husbands. Senhora Dominga was very . 
talkative ; there was another old squaw at the house on a visit, and the 
tongues of the two were going at a great rate the whole evening, using 
only the Tupi language. Raimundo and his apprentices were employed 
building a canoe. Notwithstanding his industry, he seemed to be very 
poor, and this was the condition of most of the residents on the banks 
of the Murucupi. They have, nevertheless, considerable plantations of 
mandioca and Indian corn, besides small plots of cotton, coffee, and 
sugarcane ; the soil is very fertile ; they have no rent to pay, and no 
direct taxes. There is, moreover, always a market in Para, twenty 
miles distant, for their surplus produce, and a ready communication 
with it by water. 
Their poverty seemed to be owing chiefly to two causes. ‘The first 
is, the prevalence amongst them of a kind of communistic mode of 
regarding property. The Indian and Mameluco country people have 
a fixed notion that their neighbours have no right to be better off than 
themselves. If any of them have no food, canoe, or weapons, they beg 
or borrow without scruple of those who are better provided, and it is 
the custom not to refuse the gift or the loan. ‘There is no inducement, 
therefore, for one family to strive or attempt to raise itself above the 
others. ‘There is always a number of lazy people who prefer to live at 
the cost of their too good-natured neighbours. The other cause is the 
entire dependence of the settlers on the precarious yields of hunting 
and fishing for their supply of animal food ; which is here, as already 
mentioned, as indispensable an article of diet as in cold climates. The 
young and strong who are able and willing to-hunt and fish are few. 
Raimundo, like all other hard-working men in these parts, had to 
neglect his regular labour every four or five days, and devote a day and 
a night to hunting or fishing. It does not seem to occur to these 
people that they could secure a constant supply of meat by keeping 
cattle, sheep, or hogs, and feeding them with the produce of their 
plantations. This touches, however, on a fundamental defect of 
character which has been inherited from their Indian ancestors. The 
Brazilian aborigines had no notion of domesticating animals for use ; 
and such is the inflexibility of organisation in the red man, and by 
inheritance from Indians also in half-breeds, that the habit seems 
impossible to be acquired by them, although they show great aptitude 
in other respects for civilised life. Is this attributable fundamentally 
to the absence in South America of indigenous animals suitable for 
domestication? It would appear so; and this is a great deficiency in 
