Chap. V. POVERTY OF SETTLERS. 191 



over, always a market in Para, twenty miles distant, 

 for their sui*plus produce, and a ready communication 

 with it by water. 



Their poverty seemed to be owing chiefly to two 

 causes. The first is, the prevalence amongst them of a 

 kind of communistic mode of regarding property. The 

 Indian and mameluco country people have a fixed notion 

 that their neighbours have no right to be better off 

 than themselves. If any of them have no food, canoe, or 

 weapons, they beg or borrow without scruple of those who 

 are better provided, and it is the custom not to refuse 

 the gift or the loan. There is no inducement, therefore, 

 for one family to strive or attempt to raise itself above 

 the others. There is always a number of lazy people who 

 prefer to live at the cost of their too good-natured neigh- 

 bours. The other cause is, the entire dependence of the 

 settlers on the precarious yields of hunting and fishing for 

 their supply of animal food ; which is here, as abeady 

 mentioned, as indispensable an article of diet as in cold 

 chmates. The young and strong who are able and will- 

 ing to hunt and fish, are few. Kaimundo, like all other 

 hard-working men in these parts, had to neglect his 

 regular labour every four or five days, and devote a day 

 and a nioiit to huntino- or fishino^. It does not seem to 

 occur to these people, that they could secure a constant 

 sujDply of meat by keeping cattle, sheep, or hogs, and 

 feeding them with the produce of their plantations. This 

 touches, however, on a fundamental defect of character 

 Avhich has been inherited from their Indian ancestors. 

 The Brazilian aborigines had no notion of domesti- 

 cating animals for use ; and such is the inflexibility 



