184 SANTAREM. Cuap. VIII. 
gaily-dressed companies which were there assembled to a variety of 
dances. The principal citizens, in the large rooms of whose houses 
these entertainments were given, seemed quite to enjoy them; great 
preparations were made at each place; and, after the dance, guests and 
masqueraders were regaled with pale ale and sweetmeats. Once a year 
the Indians, with whom masked dances and acting are indigenous, had 
their turn, and on one occasion they gave us a great treat. They as- 
sembled from different parts of the neighbourhood at night, on the 
outskirts of the town, and then marched through the streets by torch- 
light towards the quarter inhabited by the whites, to perform their 
hunting and devil dances before the doors of the principal inhabitants. 
There were about a hundred men, women, and children in the pro- 
cession. Many of the men were dressed in the magnificent feather 
crowns, tunics, and belts, manufactured by the Munduructis, and worn 
by them on festive occasions, but the women were naked to the waist, 
and the children quite naked, and all were painted and smeared red 
with anatto. The ringleader enacted the part of the Tushaua, or chief, 
and carried a sceptre, richly decorated with the orange, red, and green 
feathers of toucans and parrots. The pajé or medicine-man came 
along, puffing at a long tauari cigar, the instrument by which he pro- 
fesses to make his wonderful cures. Others blew harsh jarring blasts 
with the turé, a horn made of long and thick bamboo, with a split reed 
in the mouthpiece. ‘This is the war trumpet of many tribes of Indians, 
with which the sentinels of predatory hordes, mounted on a lofty tree, 
give the signal for attack to their comrades. Those Brazilians who are 
old enough to remember the times of warfare between Indians and 
settlers, retain a great horror of the turé, its loud harsh note heard in 
the dead of the night having been often the prelude to an onslaught of 
bloodthirsty Muras on the outlying settlements. The rest of the men 
in the procession carried bows and arrows, bunches of javelins, clubs, 
and paddles. The older children brought with them the household 
pets ; some had monkeys or coatis on their shoulders, and others bore 
tortoises on their heads. The squaws carried their babies in aturds, 
or large baskets, slung on their backs, and secured with a broad belt of 
bast over their foreheads. The whole thing was accurate in its repre- 
sentation of Indian life, and showed more ingenuity than some people 
give the Brazilian red man credit for. It was got up spontaneously by 
the Indians, and simply to amuse the people of the place 
The entire produce in cacao, salt fish, and other articles of a very 
large district, passes through the hands of the Santarem merchants, and 
a large trade, for this country, is done with the Indians on the Tapajos 
in salsaparilla, balsam of copaiba, indiarubber, farinha, and other pro- 
ductions. I was told the average annual yield of the Tapajos in salsa- 
parilla, was about 2000 arrobas (of 32 lbs. each). The quality of the 
drug found in the forests of the Tapajos is much superior to that of 
the Upper Amazons, and always fetches double the price at Para. The 
merchants send out young Brazilians and Portuguese in small canoes 
to trade on the rivers and collect the produce, and the cargoes are 
shipped to the capital in large cubertas and schooners, of from twenty 
to eighty tons burthen. The risk and profits must be great, or capital 
