Cuap. VIII. POLITICAL TROUBLES IN 1835-36. 189 
lessness and obstinacy of the Indian character in a striking manner. 
An attack was expected, as the rebels were known to be concealed in 
great numbers in the neighbouring woods ; so the Commandante of the 
garrison (Captain Lead) had the whites’ quarter strongly stockaded, 
and every man slept under arms.. The Indians acted as though inspired 
by a diabolical fanaticism ; they had no arms, except wooden spears, 
clubs, and bows and arrows; for their powder and lead had been ex- 
hausted long before. With these rude weapons they came through 
forest and campo to the storming of the now fortified town. The attack 
was made at sunrise ; the sentinels were killed or driven in, and the 
swarms of red skins climbed the stockade and thronged down the 
principal street. They were soon met by a strong and well-armed force, 
well posted in houses or behind walls, and the reckless savages were 
shot down by hundreds. It was not until the street was encumbered 
by the heaps of slain that the rest turned their backs and fled. Their 
numbers were estimated at 2,000 men ; the remnant of the force escaped 
across the campos to the village of Altar do Chao, twenty miles distant, 
whence they scattered themselves along the shores of the Tapajos, and 
gave great trouble to the Brazilians for many years afterwards. Several 
expeditions were sent from Santarem to reduce them, a task in which 
the Government was aided by the friendly Munduructis of the Upper 
Tapajos, a large body of whom, under the leadership of their Tushata 
Joaquim, made war on the hostile Indians on the lower parts both of 
the Madeira and the Tapajos, until they were nearly exterminated. 
The country around Santarem is not clothed with dense and lofty 
forest, like the rest of the great humid river plain of the Amazons. It 
is a campo region; a slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, 
wooded only in patches, or with single scattered trees. A good deal of 
the country on the borders of the Tapajos, which flows from the great 
cainpo area of Interior Brazil, is of this description. On this 
account I consider the eastern side of the river, towards its mouth, to 
be a northern prolongation of the continental land, and not a portion 
of the alluvial flats of the Amazons. The soil is a coarse gritty sand ; 
the substratum, which is visible in some places, consisting of sandstone 
conglomerate probably of the same formation as that which underlies 
the Tabatinga clay in other parts of the river valley. The surface is 
carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit for pasture, growing to a 
uniform height of about a foot. The patches of wood look like copses 
in the middle of green meadows ; they are called by the natives ‘‘ ilhas 
de mato,” or islands of jungle ; the name being, no doubt, suggested by 
their compactness of outline, neatly demarcated in insular form from the 
smooth carpet of grass around them. They are composed of a great 
variety of trees, loaded with succulent parasites, and lashed together by 
woody climbers like the forest in other parts. A narrow belt of dense 
wood, similar in character to these ilhas, and like them sharply limited 
along its borders, runs everywhere parallel and close to the river. In 
crossing the campo, the path from the town ascends a little for a mile or 
two, passing through this marginal strip of wood; the grassy land then 
slopes gradually to a broad valley, watered by rivulets, whose banks are 
clothed with lofty and luxuriant forest. Beyond this, a range of hijls 
