Cuap. VII. SERPA. 159 
its origin from this circumstance, signifying striped or painted rock. It 
is an old settlement, and was once the seat of the district government, 
which had authority over the Barra of the Rio Negro. It was in 1849 
a wretched-looking village, but it has since revived, on account of 
having been chosen by the Steamboat Company of the Amazons as 
a station for steam saw-mills and tile manufactories. We arrived on 
Christmas-eve, when the village presented an animated appearance from 
the number of people congregated for the holidays. The port was full 
of canoes, large and small—from the montaria, with its arched awning 
of woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the two-masted cuberta of the 
peddling trader, who had resorted to the place in the hope of trafficking 
with settlers coming from remote sitios to attend the festival. We 
anchored close to an igarité, whose owner was an old Juri Indian, 
disfigured by a large black tattooed patch in the middle of his face, and 
by his hair being close cropped, except a fringe in front of the head. 
In the afternoon we went ashore. The population seemed to consist 
chiefly of semi-civilised Indians, living as usual in half-finished mud 
hovels. The streets were irregularly laid out, and overrun with weeds 
and bushes swarming with ‘‘mocuim,” a very minute scarlet acarus, 
which sweeps off to one’s clothes in passing, and attaching itself in 
great numbers to the skin causes a most disagreeable itching. The few 
whites and better class of mameluco residents live in more substantial 
dwellings, whitewashed and tiled. All, both men and women, seemed 
to me much more cordial, and at the same time more brusque in their 
manners than any Brazilians I had yet met with. One of them, Captain 
Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time afterwards : a lively, intelligent, 
and thoroughly good-hearted man, who had quite a reputation through- 
out the interior of the country for generosity, and for being a firm 
friend of foreign residents and stray travellers. Some of these excellent 
people were men of substance, being owners of trading vessels, slaves, 
and extensive plantations of cacao and tobacco. 
We stayed at Serpa five days. Some of the ceremonies observed 
at Christmas were interesting, inasmuch as they were the same, with 
little modification, as those taught by the Jesuit missionaries, more than 
a century ago, to the aboriginal tribes whom they had induced to settle 
on this spot. In the morning all the women and girls, dressed in white 
gauze chemises and showy calico print petticoats, went in procession 
to church, first going the round of the town to take up the different 
““mordomos,” or stewards, whose office is to assist the Juiz of the festa. 
These stewards carried each a long white reed, decorated with coloured 
ribbons ; several children also accompanied, grotesquely decked with 
finery. Three old squaws went in front, holding the “sairé,” a large 
semicircular frame, clothed with cotton and studded with ornaments, 
bits of looking-glass, and so forth. This they danced up and down, 
singing all the time a monotonous whining hymn in the Tupi language, 
and at frequent intervals turning round to face the followers, who then 
all stopped for a few moments. I was told that this sairé was a device 
adopted by the Jesuits to attract the savages to church, for these 
everywhere followed the mirrors, in which they saw as it were magically 
reflected their own persons. In the evening, good-humoured revelry 
