THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



765 



small rivers, partly under shade between two 

 lofty walls of forest. We passed, in ascend- 

 ing, seven habitations, most of them hidden 

 in the luxuriant foliage of the banks ; their 

 sites being known only by small openings in 

 the compact wall of forest, and the presence 

 of a canoe or two tied up in little shady 

 ports. The inhabitants are chiefly Indians 

 of the Maraua tribe, whose original territory 

 comprised all the small by-stieams lying be- 

 tween the Jutahi and the Jiirua, near the 

 mouths of both these great tributaries. They 

 live in separate families or small hordes ; 

 have no common chief, and are considered 

 as a tribe little disposed to adopt civilized 

 customs or be friendly with the whites. One 

 f 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 poit 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 iwo 

 housts, about ten o'clock, and spent there 

 several hours during the great heat of mid- 

 day. The houses, which stood on a high 

 clayey bunk, 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 some- 

 what of a favorite. None of them were tat- 

 tooed, tut 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 fix 

 ing 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 

 peop-e 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 blaek-tead, the blotches having 

 coalesced to from one large patch ; others 

 were simply mottled. The black spots were 

 hard and rough, but not scaly, and were mar- 

 gined with rings of a color paler than the 

 natural hue of the skin. I had seen many 

 Indians and a few half-castes at Tunantins, 

 and afterward saw others at Fonte Boa, 

 blotched in the same way. The 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, 

 .10 resident of Ega exhibited signs of the dis- 



ease. The early explorers of tlie 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 Sap6 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 arii 

 sickly, although the blotched adults seemed 

 not to be affected in their general health. A. 

 middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told ma 

 he had cured himself of the disorder by 

 strong doses of sarsaparilla ; the black 

 patches had caused the hair of his beard an i 

 eyebrows to fall off, but it had grown again 

 since his cure. 



We left these friendly people about four" 

 o'clock in the afternoon, and in descending 

 the umbrageous river, stopped, about half- 

 way down, at another house, built in one of 

 the most charming situations I had yet seen 

 in this country. A clean, narrow, sandy 

 pathway led from the shady port to the 

 house, through a tract of forest of indescrib- 

 able luxuriance. The buildings stood on an 

 eminence in the middle of a level, cleared 

 space, the firm sandy soil, omooth as a floor, 

 forming a broad terrace around them. The 

 owner was a semi-civilized Indian, named 

 Manoel, a dull, taciturn fellow, who, to- 

 gether with his wife and children, seemed by 

 no means pleased at b eing intruded on in 

 their solitude. The family must have been 

 very industrious ; for the plantations were 

 very extensive, and included a little of almost 

 all kinds of cultivated tropical productions 

 fruit trees, vegetables, and even flowers for 

 ornament. The silent old man had surely a 

 fine appreciation of the beauties of nature, 

 for the site he had chosen commanded a view 

 of surprising magnificence over the summits 

 of the forest ; and, to give finish to the pros- 

 pect, he had planted a large quantity of 

 banana trees in the foreground, thus conceal- 

 ing the charred and dead stumps which, 

 would otherwise have marred the effect of 

 the rolling sea of greenery. The only infor- 

 mation I could get out of Manoel was that 

 large flocks of richly-colored birds came 

 down in the fruit season and despoiled his 

 trees. The sun set over the tree-tops before 

 we left this little Eden, and the remainder of 

 our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, 

 under the checkered shades of the river 

 banks, by the light of the moon. 



December 1th. Arrived at Fonte Boa^_ a 

 wretched, muddy, and dilapidated village, 

 situated two or three miles within the mouth, 

 of a narrow by-stream called the Caykiar- 

 hy, which runs almost as straight as an arti- 

 ficial canal between the village and the main 

 Amazons. The character of the vegetation 

 and soil here was different from that of all 

 other localities 1 had hitherto examined ; I 

 hail planned, therefore, to devote six weeks 

 to the place. Having written beforehand to 

 one ol the principal inhabitants, Benhor 

 Venancio, a house was renitr for me on laui- 



