_Cnap. XIII. MARAUAS INDIANS. 371 
or be friendly with the whites. One of the houses belonged to a Juri 
family, and we saw the owner, an erect, noble-looking old fellow, 
tattooed, as customary with his tribe, in a large patch over the middle of 
his face, fishing under the shade of a colossal tree in his port with hook 
and line. He saluted us in the usual grave and courteous manner of 
the better sort of Indians as we passed by. 
We reached the last house, or rather two houses, about ten o’clock, 
and spent there several hours during the great heat of mid-day. The 
houses, which stood on a high clayey bank, were of quadrangular shape, 
partly open like sheds, and partly enclosed with rude mud-walls, forming 
one or more chambers. The inhabitants, a few families of Marauds, 
comprising about thirty persons, received us in a frank, smiling manner: 
a reception which may have been due to Senhor Raiol being an old 
acquaintance and somewhat of a favourite. None of them were tattooed ; 
but the men had great holes pierced in their ear-lobes, in which they 
insert plugs of wood, and their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One 
of the younger men, a fine strapping fellow nearly six feet high, with a 
large aquiline nose, who seemed to wish to be particularly friendly with 
me, showed me the use of these lip-holes, by fixing a number of little 
white sticks in them, and then twisting his mouth about and going 
through a pantomime to represent defiance in the presence of an enemy. 
Nearly all the people were disfigured by dark blotches on the skin, the 
effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in this part of the country. 
The face of one old man was completely blackened, and looked as 
though it had been smeared with blacklead, the blotches having coalesced 
to form one large patch. Others were simply mottled; the black spots 
were hard and rough, but not scaly, and were margined with rings of a 
colour paler than the natural hue of the skin. I had seen many Indians 
and a few half-castes at Tunantins, and afterwards saw others at Fonte Boa 
blotched in the same way. This disease would seem to be contagious, 
for I was told that a Portuguese trader became disfigured with it after 
cohabiting some years with an Indian woman. It is curious that, 
although prevalent in many places on the Solimoens, no resident of 
Ega exhibited signs of the disease: the early explorers of the country, 
on noticing spotted skins to be very frequent in certain localities, thought 
they were peculiar to a few tribes of Indians. The younger children in 
these houses on the Sapo were free from spots ; but two or three of them, 
about ten years of age, showed signs of their commencement in rounded 
yellowish patches on the skin, and these appeared languid and sickly, 
although the blotched adults seemed not to be affected in their general 
health. A middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told me he had cured 
himself of the disorder by strong doses of salsaparilla ; the black patches 
had caused the hair of his beard and eyebrows to fall off, but it had 
grown again since his cure. 
When my tall friend saw me, after dinner, collecting insects along the 
paths near the houses, he approached, and, taking me by the arm, led me 
to a mandioca shed, making signs, as he could speak very little Tupi, 
that he had something to show. I was not a little surprised when, 
having mounted the girao, or stage of split palm-stems, and taken down 
an object transfixed to a post, he exhibited, with an air of great mystery, 
