Cuap. X. MENTAL APATHY OF INDIANS. 259 
by pulling our way from tree to tree. When we encountered a vemanso 
near the shore, we got along very pleasantly for a few miles by rowing: 
but this was a rare occurrence. During leisure hours the Indians em- 
ployed themselves in sewing. Vicente was a good hand at cutting out 
shirts and trousers, and acted as master tailor to the whole party ; each 
had a thick steel thimble and a stock of needles and thread of his own. 
Vicente made for me a set of blue-check cotton shirts during the 
passage. 
The goodness of these Indians, like that of most others amongst 
whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad 
qualities, than in the possession of good ones ; in other words, it was 
negative rather than positive. Their phlegmatic, apathetic tempera- 
ment, coldness of desire and deadness of feeling, want of curiosity 
and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very un- 
interesting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull, 
gloomy quality, and they seem never to be stirred by the emotions— 
love, pity, admiration, fear, wonder, joy, enthusiasm. These are cha- 
racteristics of the whole race. The good fellowship of our Cucamas 
seemed to rise, not from warm sympathy, but simply from the absence of 
eager selfishness in small matters. On the morning when the favour- 
able wind sprang up, one of the crew, a lad of about seventeen years of 
age, was absent ashore at the time of starting, having gone alone in one 
of the montarias to gather wild fruit. The sails were spread and we 
travelled for several hours at great speed, leaving the poor fellow to 
paddle after us against the strong current. Vicente, who might have 
waited a few minutes at starting, and the others, only laughed when the 
hardship of their companion was alluded to. He overtook us at night, 
having worked his way with frightful labour the whole day without a 
morsel of food. He grinned when he came on board, and not a dozen 
words were said on either side. 
Their want of curiosity is extreme. One day we had an unusually 
sharp thunder-shower. The crew were lying about the deck, and after 
each explosion all set up a loud laugh ; the wag of the party exclaiming, 
“There’s my old uncle hunting again!” an expression showing the 
utter emptiness of mind of the spokesman. I asked Vicente what he 
thought was the cause of lightning and thunder. He said, ‘‘ Timaa 
ichoqua,”—I don’t know. He had never given the subject a moment’s 
thought! It was the same with other things. I asked him who made 
the sun, the stars, the trees? He didn’t know, and had never heard 
the subject mentioned amongst his tribe. The Tupi language, at least 
as taught by the old Jesuits, has a word—Tupana—signifying God. 
Vicente sometimes used this word, but he showed by his expressions 
that he did not attach the idea of a Creator to it. He seemed to think 
it meant some deity, or visible image, which the whites worshipped in 
the churches he had seen in the villages. None of the Indian tribes on 
the Upper Amazons have an idea of a Supreme Being, and consequently 
have no word to express it in their own languages. Vicente thought 
the river on which we were travelling encircled the whole earth, and 
that the land was an island, like those seen in the stream, but larger. 
Here a gleam of curiosity and imagination in the Indian mind is re- 
