Chap. VII. INHABITANTS OF SERPA. 800 



NeiH'o. It was in 1849 a \vi'etched-lookino^ villao-e, but it 

 has since revived, on account of having being chosen by 

 the Steamboat Company of the Amazons as a station for 

 steam saw-mills and tile manufactories. We arrived on 

 Christmas-eve, when the village 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 Maranta leaves, to the two-masted 

 cuberta of the peddling 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 tatooed patch in the middle 

 of his face, and by his hair being close cropped, except a 

 fringe in front of the head. In the afternoon we went 

 ashore. The population seemed to consist chiefly of semi- 

 civilised Indians, living as usual in half-finished mud 

 hovels. The streets were irregularly laid out and overrun 

 with weeds and bushes swarming with "mocuim," 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 disag-reeable itchino-. The few whites 

 and better class of mameluco residents live in more 

 substantial dwellings, white-washed 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 Brazilians I had yet met with. One of them. 

 Captain Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time after- 

 wards ; a lively, intelligent, and thoroughly good-hearted 

 man, who had quite a reputation throughout the interior 



