Cuap. VII. MURA INDIANS. 167 
behind the house, with their surrounding cotton, cacao, coffee, and 
lemon trees. Two or three young men of the tribe were lounging 
about the low open doorway. They were stoutly-built fellows, but less 
well-proportioned than the semi-civilised Indians of the Lower Amazons 
generally are. Their breadth of chest was remarkable, and their arms 
were wonderfully thick and muscular. The legs appeared short in 
proportion to the trunk; the expression of their countenances was 
unmistakably more sullen and brutal, and the skin of a darker hue, 
than is common in the Brazilian red man. Before we left the hut an 
old couple came in; the husband carrying his paddle, bow, arrow, and 
harpoon, the woman bent beneath the weight of a large basket filled 
with palm fruits. The man was of low stature, and had a wild ap- 
pearance from the long coarse hair which hung over his forehead. 
Both his lips were pierced with holes, as is usual with the older Muras 
seen on the river. They used formerly to wear tusks of the wild hog 
in these holes whenever they went out to encounter strangers or their 
enemies in war. The gloomy savagery, filth, and poverty of the people 
in this place made me feel quite melancholy, and I was glad to return 
to the canoe. They offered us no civilities; they did not even pass 
the ordinary salutes, which all the semi-civilised and many savage 
Indians proffer on a first meeting. The men persecuted Penna for 
cashaca, which they seemed to consider the only good thing the white 
man brings with him. As they had nothing whatever to give in 
exchange, Penna declined to supply them. ‘They followed us as we 
descended to the port, becoming very troublesome when about a dozen 
had collected together. They brought their empty bottles with them, 
and promised fish and turtle if we would only trust them first with the 
coveted aguardente, or cau-im, as they calledit. Penna was inexorable : 
he ordered the crew to weigh anchor, and the disappointed savages 
remained hooting after us with all their might, from the top of the 
bank, as we glided away. 
The Muras have a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, 
the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white 
settlers. Every one spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, 
and cruel. They have a greater repugnance than any other class of 
Indians to settled habits, regular labour, and the service of the whites ; 
their distaste, in fact, to any approximation towards civilised life is 
invincible. Yet most of these faults are only an exaggeration of the 
fundamental defects of character in the Brazilian red man. There is 
nothing, I think, to show that the Muras had a different origin from 
the nobler agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi nation, to some of 
whom they are close neighbours, although the yery striking contrast in 
their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion that they had, 
in the same way as the Semangs of Malacca, for instance, with regard 
to the Malays. They are merely an offshoot from them, a number of 
segregated hordes becoming degraded by a residence most likely of 
very many centuries in Ygap6 lands, confined to a fish diet, and obliged 
to wander constantly in search of food. Those tribes which are supposed 
to be more nearly related to the Tupis are distinguished by their settled 
agricultural habits, their living in well-constructed houses, their practice 
