168 LOWER AMAZONS—OBYDOS TO MANAOS. Cuap. VIL 
of many arts, such as the manufacture of painted earthenware, weaving, 
and their general custom of tattooing, social organisation, obedience to 
chiefs, and so forth. The Mtiras have become a nation of nomade 
fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts practised by their 
neighbours. They do not build substantial and fixed dwellings, but 
live in separate families or small hordes, wandering from place to place 
along the margins of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish 
and turtle. At each resting-place they construct temporary huts at the 
edge of the stream, shifting them higher or lower on the banks, as the 
waters advance or recede. Their canoes originally were made simply 
of the thick bark of trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape by 
means of woody lianas ; these are now rarely seen, as most families 
possess montarias, which they have contrived to steal from the settlers 
from time totime. Their food is chiefly fish and turtle, which they 
are very expert in capturing. It is said by their neighbours that they 
dive after turtles, and succeed in catching them by the legs, which I 
believe is true in the shallow lakes where turtles are imprisoned in the 
dry season. They shoot fish with bow and arrow, and have no notion 
of any other method of cooking it than by roasting. It is not quite 
clear whether the whole tribe were originally quite ignorant of agri- 
culture, as some families on the banks of the streams behind Villa 
Nova, who could scarcely have acquired the art in recent times, plant 
mandioca ; but, as a general rule, the only vegetable food used by the 
Muras is bananas and wild fruits. The original home of this tribe was 
the banks of the Lower Madeira. It appears they were hostile to 
the European settlers from the beginning; plundering their sitios, 
waylaying their canoes, and massacring all who fell into their power. 
About fifty years ago the Portuguese succeeded in turning the warlike 
propensities of the Munduructs against them ; and these, in the course 
of many years’ persecution, greatly weakened the power of the tribe, 
and drove a great part of them from their seats on the banks of the 
Madeira. The Muras are now scattered in single hordes and families 
over a wide extent of country bordering the main river from Villa Nova 
to Catua, near Ega, a distance of 800 miles. Since the disorders of 
1835-6, when they committed great havoc amongst the peaceable 
settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and were pursued and 
slaughtered in great numbers by the Munduructis in alliance with 
the Brazilians, they have given no serious trouble. 
The reasons which lead me to think the Mtiras are merely an offshoot 
from the Munduructis, or some other allied section of the widely-spread 
Tupi nation, and not an originally distinct people, are founded on a 
general comparison of the different tribes of Amazonian Indians. In 
the first place, there is no sharply-defined difference between sections 
of the Indian race, either in physical or moral qualities. They are all 
very much alike in bodily structure; and, although some are much 
lower in the scale of culture than others, yet the numerous tribes in 
this respect form a graduated link from the lowest to the highest. The 
same customs reappear in tribes who are strongly contrasted in other 
respects and live very wide apart. The Mauhés, who live in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Munduructis and Mtiras, have much in common with 
