Chap. II. ENTER THE CUPARI. 109 



through a rich moist clayey valley, covered with forests 

 and abounding in game ; whilst the banks of the Tapa- 

 jos beyond Aveyros were barren sandy campos, with 

 ranges of naked or scantily-wooded hills, forming a kind 

 of country which I had always found very unproduc- 

 tive in Natural History objects in the dry season which 

 had now set in. 



We entered the mouth of the Cupari on the evening 

 of the following day (August 3rd). It was not more 

 than 100 yards wide, but very deep : we found no bot- 

 tom in the middle with a line of eight fathoms. The 

 banks were gloriously wooded ; the familiar foliage of 

 the cacao growing abundantly amongst the mass of other 

 trees reminding me of the forests of the main Amazons. 

 We rowed for five or six miles, generally in a south- 

 easterly direction although the river had many abrupt 

 bends, and stopped for the night at a settler's house situ- 

 ated on a high bank and accessible only by a flight of 

 rude wooden steps fixed in the clayey slope. The owners 

 were two brothers, half-breeds, who with their families 

 shared the large roomy dwelling ; one of them was a 

 blacksmith, and we found him working with two Indian 

 lads at his forge, in an open shed under the shade of 

 mango trees. They were the sons of a Portuguese im- 

 migrant who had settled here forty years previously and 

 married a Mundurucu woman. He must have been a far 

 more industrious man than the majority of his country- 

 men who emigrate to Brazil now-a-days, for there were 

 signs of former extensive cultivation at the back of the 

 house in groves of orange, lemon, and coffee trees, and 

 a large plantation of cacao occupied the lower grounds. 



