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THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



but this p'ace seemed to be its metropolis. 

 The species has been described by Perty, the 

 author of the Entomological portion of Spix 

 iind Marti us' travels, under the name of 

 Hadrus lepidotus. It is a member of the 

 Tabanidae family, and indeed is closely re- 

 lated to the Hsematopota pluvialis, a brown 

 fly which haunts the borders of woods in 

 summer time iu England. The Mottica is of 

 a bronzed-black color ; its proboscis is 

 formed of a bundle of horny lancets, which 

 we shorter and broader than is usually the 

 case in the family to which it belongs. Its 

 puncture does not pioduce much pain, but it 

 makes such a large gash in the flesh that the 

 blood trickles forth in little streams. Many 

 scores of thorn were flyicg about the canoe 

 all day, and sometimes eight or ten would 

 settle on one's ankles at the same time. It 

 is sluggish in its motions, and may be easily 

 killed with the fingers when it settles. Pen- 

 .na went forward in the montaria to the 

 Pirarecu fishing stations, on a lake lying fur- 

 ther inland ; but he did not succeed in reach- 

 ing them on account of the length and intri- 

 cacy cf the channels ; so after wasting a day, 

 -during which, however, I had a profitable 

 ramble in the forest, we again crossed the 

 river, and on the 16th continued our voyage 

 along the northern shore. 



The clay cliffs of Cararaucu are several 

 miles in length. The hard pink-and-red- 



colored beds are here extremely thick, and in 

 .some places present a compact stony texture. 

 The total height of the cliff is from thirty to 



-sixty feet above the mean level of the river, 

 -and'the clay rests on strata of the same coarse 

 iron-cemented conglomerate which has 

 ;al ready been so often mentioned. Large 

 blocks of this latter have been detached and 

 rolled by the force of currents up parts of 

 the rliff, where they are seen resting on ter- 

 races of the clay. On the top of all lies a 

 bed of sand and vegetable mould, which 

 supports a lofty forest, growing up to the 

 very brink of the precipice. After passing 

 the.' e barreiros we continued our way along 

 ~a low uninhabited coast, clothed, wherever 

 it was elevated above high-water mark, with 

 the usual vividly-colored forests of the higher 

 Ygapo lands, to which the broad and regular 

 fronds of the Murumurti palm, here ex- 

 tremely abundant, served as a great decora- 

 tion. Wherever the land was lower than the 

 flood height of the Amazons, Cecropia trees 

 prevailed, sometimes scattered over meadows 

 of lull b.oud leaved grasses, which surround- 

 ed shallow pools swarming with water-fowl. 

 AJligat jjs were common on most partsof the 



coast ; in seme places we saw also small herds 

 -of Capy haras (a large Rodent animal, like a 

 colossal Guinea-pig) among the rank herbage 

 on muddy banks, and now and then flocks 

 of the graceful squirrel monkey- (Chryso- 

 thrix sciureus), and the vivacious Caiarara 



~<Cebus albifrons) were seen taking flying 

 leaps from tree to tree. On the 22d we pass- 

 ed the mouth of the most easterly of the nu- 

 Jnerous channels which lead to the large in- 

 sterior lake of Saraca, and on the 23d threaded 



a series of passages between islands, where 

 we again saw human habitations, ninety miles 

 distant from the last house at Cararaucu. 

 On the 24th we arrived at Serpa. 



Serpa is a small village, consisting of about 

 eighty houses, built on a bank elevated 

 twenty-five feet above the level of the river. 

 'The beds of Tabatinga clay, which are here 

 intermingled with scoria-looking conglomer- 

 ate, are in some parts of the declivity prettily 

 variegated in color ; the name of the town iu 

 the Tupi language, Ita-coatiara, takes its or- 

 igin from this circumstance, signifying stri- 

 ped or painted rock. It is an old settlement, 

 and was once the seat of the district govern- 

 ment, which had authority over the Barra of 

 the Rio Negro. It was in 1849 a wretched- 

 looking village, but it has since revived, on 

 account of having been chosen by the {Steam- 

 boat Company of the Amazons as a station 

 for steam saw-mills and tile manufactories. 

 We arrived on Christmas-eve, when the vil- 

 lage presented an animated appearance from 

 the number of people congregated for the 

 holidays. The port was full of canoes, large 

 and small from the montaria, with its 

 arched awning of woven lianas and aranta- 

 leaves, to the two-masted cuberta of the ped- 

 dling trader, who had resorted to the place 

 in the hope of trafficking with settlers coming 

 from remote sitios to attend the festival. We 

 anchored close to an igarite, whose owner 

 was an old Juri Indian, disfigured by a large 

 black tattooed patch in the middle of his face, 

 and by his hair being close cropped, except 

 a fringe in front of the head. In the after- 

 noon we went ashore. The population 

 seemed to consist chiefly of semi-civilized In- 

 dians, living as usual in half-finished mud 

 hovels. The streets were irregularly laid 

 out, and overrun with weeds and bushes, 

 swarming with "mocuirn," a very minute 

 scarlet acarus, which sweeps off to one's 

 clothes in passing, and attaching itself in 

 great numbers to the skin causes a most dis- 

 agreeable itching. The few whiles and bet- 

 ter class of mameluco residents live in more 

 substantial dwellings, whitewashed and tiled. 

 All, both men and women, seemed to me 

 much more cordial, and at the same time 

 more brusque in their manners than any Bra- 

 zilians I had yet met with. One of them, 

 Captain Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long 

 time afterward ; a lively, intelligent, and 

 thoroughly good-hearted man, who had quite 

 a reputation throughout the interior of the 

 country for generosity, and for being a firm 

 friend of foreign residents and stray travel- 

 lers. Some of these excellent people were 

 men of substance, being owners of trading 

 vessels, slaves, and extensive plantations of 

 cacao and tobacco. 



We stayed at Serpa five days. Some of 

 the ceremonies observed at Christmas were 

 interesting, inasmuch as they were the same, 

 with little modification, as those taught by 

 the Jesuit missionaries more than a century 

 ago, to the aboriginal tribes whom they had 

 induced to settle on this spot. In the morn- 

 ing all the women and girls, dressed in whita 



