724 



THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



culture and fishing, and have always been 

 friendly to the whites. I shall have occasion 

 to speak again of the Pusses, who are a slen- 

 derly-built and superior race of Indians, dis- 

 tinguished by a large square tattooed patch 

 in the middle of Iheir faces. The principal 

 cause of their decay in numbers seems to be 

 a disease which always appears among them 

 when a village is visited by people from tke 

 civilized settlements a slow fever, accom- 

 panied by the symptoms of a common cold, 

 " defluxo," as the Brazilians term it, ending 

 probably in consumption. The disorder has 

 been known to break out when the visitors 

 were entirely free from it ; the fcimple con- 

 tact of civilized men, in some mysterious 

 way, being sufficient to create it. It is gen- 

 erally fatal to the Juris and Passes : the first 

 question the poor patient Indians now put to 

 an advancing canoe is, " Do you bring de- 

 fluxo?" 



My assistant, Jose, in the last year of our 

 residence at Ega, ** resgatou" (ransomed, 

 the euphemism in use for purchased) two 

 Indian children, a boy and a girl, through a 

 Japura, trader. The boy was about twelve 

 years of age, and of an unusually dark color 

 of skin : he had, in fact, the tint of a Caf uzo, 

 th offspring of Indian and negro. It was 

 thought he had belonged to some perfectly 

 wild and houseless tri'be, similar to the Para- 

 rauates of the Tapajos, of which there are 

 several in different parts of the interior of 

 South America. His face was of regular 

 oval shape, but his glistening black eyes had 

 a wary, distrustful expression, like that of a 

 wild animal ; and his hands and feet were 

 small and delicately formed. Soon after his 

 arrival, finding that none of the Indian boys 

 and girls in the houses of our neighbors un- 

 derstood his language, he became sulky and 

 reserved ; not a word could be got fiom him 

 until many weeks afterward, when he sud- 

 denly broke out with complete phrases of 

 Portuguese. He was ill of swollen liver and 

 spleen, the result of intermittent fever, for 

 a long time after coming into our hands. 

 We had found it difficult to cure him, owing 

 to his almost invincible habit of eating earth, 

 baked clay, pitch, wax, and other similar 

 substances. Very many children on the 

 upper parts of the Amazons have this strange 

 habit ; not only Indians, but negroes and 

 whites. It is not, therefore, peculiar to the 

 famous Otomacs of the Orinoco, described 

 by Humboldt, or to Indians at all, and seems 

 to originate in a morbid craving, the result 

 of a meagre diet of fish, wild fruits, and 

 mandioca meal. We gave our little savage 

 the name of Sebastian. The use of these In- 

 dian children is to fill water-jars from the 

 river, gather fire- wood in the forest, cook, 

 assist in paddling themontaria in excursions, 

 and so forth. Sebastian was often my com- 

 panion in the woods, where he was very use- 

 , ful in finding the small birds I shot, which 

 sometimes fell in the thickets among confused 

 masses of fallen branches and dead leaves. 

 He was wonderfully expert at catching liz- 

 ards with his hands, and at climbing. The 

 smoothest stems of palm-trees offered little 



difficulty to him : he would gather a few 

 lengths of tough flexible lianas, tie them in, 

 a short endless band to support his feet w itu, 

 in embracing the slippery shaft, and theiL 

 mount upward by a succession of slight 

 jerks. It was very amusing, during the first- 

 few weeks, to witness the glee and pride witlk 

 which he would bring to me the bunches of 

 fruit he had gathered from almost inaccessi- 

 ble trees. He avoided the company of buys- 

 of his own race, and was evidently proud of 

 being the servant of a real white man. We* 

 brought him down with us to Para : but hd 

 showed no emotion at any of the strung.) 

 sights of the capital : the steam vessels, largs 

 ships and houses, horses and carriages, tlu* 

 pomp of church ceremonies, and so forth. 

 In this he exhibited the usual dulness of feel- 

 ing and poverty of thought of the Indian ; he 

 had, nevertheless, very keen perceptions, and. 

 was quick at learning any mechanical art. 

 Jose, who had resumed, some time before L 

 left the country, his old trade of goldsmith, 

 made him his apprentice, and he made very 

 rapid progress ; for after about three mouths* 

 teaching he came to me one day with radiant, 

 countenance, and showed me a gold ring of 

 his own making. 



The fate of the little girl, who came with 

 a second batch of children all ill of intermit, 

 tent fever, a month or two after Sebastian* 

 was very different. She was brought to our 

 house, after landing, one night in the wet 

 season, when the rain was pouring in tor- 

 rents, thin and haggard, drenched with wet, 

 and shivering with ague. And old Indians 

 who brought her to the door, said briefly, 

 " ecui eucommeiida" (here's your little par- 

 cel, or order), and went away. TLiere wa* 

 very little of the savage in her appearance, 

 and she was of a much lighter color than the- 

 boy. We found she was of the Miranha. 

 tribe, all of whom are distinguished by a slit, 

 cut in the middle of each wing of the nose, 

 in which they wear on holiday occasions a-, 

 large button made of pearly river sh-jll. We 

 took the greatest care of our little patient ;. 

 had the best nurses in the town, fomented 

 her daily, gave her quinine and the most, 

 nourishing food ; but it was all of no avail ; 

 she sank rapidly ; her liver was enormously- 

 swollen, and almost as hard to the touch as^ 

 stone. There was something uncommonly 

 pleasing in her ways, and quite unlike any- 

 thing I had yet seen in Indians. Instead of 

 being dull and taciturn, she was always 

 smiling and full of talk. We had an old 

 woman of the same tribe to attend her, who 

 explained what she said to us. She of tea 

 begged to be taken to the river to bathe : 

 asked for fruit, or coveted articles she saw 

 in the room for playthings. Her native name 

 was Oria. The last week or two she could 

 not rise from the bed we had made for her ini 

 a dry corner of the room : when she wanted 

 lifting, which was very often, she would 

 allow no one to help her but me, calling me by~ 

 the name of " Oariwa" (white man), the only- 

 word of Tupi she seemed to know. It wa& 

 inexpressibly touching to hear her, as she lay, 

 the hour the verses which sh&> 



