166 LOWER AMAZONS—OBYDOS TO MANAOS. Cuap. VIL. 
formed a dense shade. ‘Two species of monkey frequented the trees, 
and I was told committed great depredations when the fruit was ripe. 
One of these, the macaco prego (Cebus cirrhifer ?), is a most impudent 
thief: it destroys more than it eats, by its random, hasty way of 
plucking and breaking the fruits, and when about to return to the forest 
carries away all it can in its hands or under its arms. The other 
species, the pretty little Chrysothrix sciureus, contents itself with 
devouring what it can on the spot. A variety of beautiful insects 
basked on the foliage, where stray gleams of sunlight glanced-through 
the canopy of broad soft-green leaves ; numbers of an elegant long- 
legged tiger-beetle (Odontocheila egregia) ran and flew about over the 
herbage. 
It belongs to a sub-genus peculiar to the warmest parts of America, 
the species of which are found only in the shade of the forest, and are 
seen quite as frequently pursuing their prey on trees and herbage as 
on the ground. The typical tiger-beetles, or Cicindelz, inhabit only 
open and sunny situations, and are wholly terrestrial in their habits. 
They are the sole forms of the family which occur in the northern and 
central parts of Europe and North America. In the Amazons region, 
the shade-loving and semi-arboreal Odontocheilz outnumber in species 
the Cicindele as twenty-two to six; all but one of this number are 
exclusively peculiar to the Amazonian forests, and this affords another 
proof of the adaptation of the Fauna to a forest-clad country, pointing 
to a long and uninterrupted existence of land covered by forests on this 
part of the earth’s surface. 
We left this place on the 8th of January, and on the afternoon of the 
gth arrived at Matari, a miserable little settlement of Mura Indians. 
Here we again anchored and went ashore. The place consisted of 
about twenty slightly-built mud hovels, and had a most forlorn appear- 
ance, notwithstanding the luxuriant forest in its rear. A horde of 
these Indians settled here many years ago, on the site of an abandoned 
missionary station, and the government had lately placed a resident 
director over them, with the intention of bringing the hitherto intract- 
able savages under authority. This, however, seemed to promise no 
other result than that of driving them to their old solitary haunts, on 
the banks of the interior waters, for many families had already with- 
drawn themselves. The absence of the usual cultivated trees and 
plants gave the place a naked and poverty-stricken aspect. I entered 
one of the hovels, where several women were employed cooking a meal. 
Portions of a large fish were roasting over a fire made in the middle of 
the low chamber, and the entrails were scattered about the floor, on 
which the women with their children were squatted. These had a 
timid, distrustful expression of countenance, and their bodies were 
begrimed with black mud, which is smeared over the skin as a pro- 
tection against mosquitoes. The children were naked ; the women wore 
petticoats of coarse cloth, ragged round the edges, and stained in 
blotches with murixi, a dye made from the bark ofa tree. One of them 
wore a necklace of monkey’s teeth. There were scarcely any house- 
hold utensils ; the place was bare, with the exception of two dirty grass 
hammocks hung in the corners. I missed the usual mandioca sheds 
