Chap. VII. MURA lNDIA:NrS. 327 



damental defects of character in the Brazilian red man. 

 There is nothing, I think, to show that the Muras had a 

 different origin from the nobler agricultural tribes be- 

 longing to the Tupi nation, to some of whom they are 

 close neighbours, although the very striking contrast in 

 their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion 

 that they had, in the same way as the Semangs of Ma- 

 lacca, for instance, with regard to the Malays. They are 

 merely an offshoot from them, a number of segregated 

 hordes becoming degTaded by a residence most likely of 

 very many centuries in Ygapo lands, confined to a fish 

 diet, and obliged to wander constantly in search of food. 

 Those tribes which are supposed to be more nearly related 

 to the Tupis are distinguished by their settled agricul- 

 tural habits, their living in well-constructed houses, 

 their practice of many arts, such as the manufacture of 

 painted earthenware, weaving, and their general custom 

 of tattooing^, social oro-anisation, obedience to chiefs, and 

 so forth. The Muras have become a nation of nomade 

 fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts prac- 

 tised by their neighbours. They do not build substantial 

 and fixed dwellings, but live in separate families or small 

 hordes, wandering from place to place along the margins 

 of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish and 

 turtle. At each resting-place they construct temporary 

 huts at the edge of the stream, shifting them higher or 

 lower on the banks, as the waters advance or recede. 

 Their canoes originally were made simply of the thick 

 bark of trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape 

 by means of woody lianas ; these are now rarely seen, 

 as most families possess montarias, which they have 



