Cuap. IX. MARACANA PARROT. 231 
what arts the old woman used: Captain Antonio said she fed it with 
her saliva. The chief reason why almost all animals become so 
wonderfully tame in the houses of the natives is, I believe, their being 
treated with uniform gentleness, and allowed to run at large about the 
rooms. Our Maracana used to accompany us sometimes in our rambles, 
one of the lads carrying it on his head. One day, in the middle of a 
long forest road, it was missed, having clung probably to an overhanging 
bough and escaped into the thickets without the boy perceiving it. 
Three hours afterwards, on our return by the same path, a voice greeted 
us in a colloquial tone as we passed, ‘‘ Maracana!” We looked about 
for some time, but could not see anything until the word was repeated 
with emphasis, “ Maracand-4!” when we espied the little truant half 
concealed in the foliage of a tree. He came down and delivered 
himself up, evidently as much rejoiced at the meeting as we were. 
After I had obtained the two men promised, stout young Indians 
17 or 18 years of age, one named Ricardo and the other Alberto, I paid 
a second visit to the western side of the river in my own canoe ; being 
determined, if possible, to obtain specimens of the White Cebus. We 
crossed over first to the mission village, Santa Cruz. It consists of 30 
or 40 wretched-looking mud huts, closely built together in three straight 
ugly rows on a high gravelly bank. The place was deserted with the 
exception of two or three old men and women and a few children. The 
missionary, Fré Isidoro, an Italian monk, was away at another station 
called Wishittiba, two days’ journey farther up the river. Report said 
of him that he had no zeal for religion or devotion to his calling, but 
was occupied in trading, using the Indian proselytes to collect salsa- 
parilla and so forth, with a view to making a purse wherewith to retire 
to his own country. The semi-civilised Indians, who speak the Tupi 
language, called him Pai tuctira, or Father Grasshopper: his peaked 
hood having a droll resemblance to the pointed head of the insect. I 
afterwards became acquainted with Fré Isidoro, and found him a man 
of superior intelligence and ability. He complained much of the ill 
treatment the Indians received at the hands of traders and the Brazilian 
civil authorities, and said that he and his predecessors had incessantly 
to contend for the rights secured to the aborigines by the laws of the 
empire. The plan of assembling families in formal, blank-looking 
settlements, like this of Santa Cruz, seemed to me very ill chosen. 
The Indians would be happier in their scattered wigwams, embowered 
in foliage on the banks of shady rivulets, where they prefer to settle 
when left to themselves. 
A narrow belt of wood runs behind the village; beyond this is an 
elevated barren campo, with a clayey and gravelly soil. To the south 
the coast country is of a similar description ; a succession of scantily- 
wooded hills, bare grassy spaces, and richly-timbered hollows. We 
traversed forest and campo in various directions, during three days, 
without meeting with monkeys, or indeed with anything that repaid us 
the time and trouble. The soil of the district appeared too dry ; at this 
season of the year I had noticed, in other parts of the country, that 
mammals and birds resorted to the more humid areas of forest ; we 
therefore proceeded to explore carefully the low and partly swampy 
