76 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



again, when they guide their raft to the first sandy beach that 

 appears. 



In the country between the Tapajoz and the Madeira, among 

 the labyrinths of lakes and channels of the great island of the 

 Tupinam-branos, reside the Mandrucus, the most warlike 

 Indians of the Amazons. These are probably the only perfectly 

 tattooed nation in South America. The markings are extended 

 all over the body ; they are produced by pricking with the 

 spines of a palm, and rubbing in the soot from burning 

 pitch, to produce an indelible bluish tinge. 



They build their houses with mud walls in regular villages, 

 and, though very agricultural, make war every year with an 

 adjoining tribe, the Parentintins, taking the women and chil- 

 dren for slaves, and preserving the dried heads of the men in 

 a large building or barrack, where all the men sleep at night, 

 armed with their bows and arrows ready in case of alarm. 



One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of 

 the Amazons valley is the resemblance which exists between 

 some of their customs and those of nations most remote from 

 them. 



The blow-pipe re-appears in the sumpitan of Borneo ; the 

 great houses of the Uaupes closely resemble those of the 

 Dyaks of the same country, while many small baskets and 

 bamboo boxes from Borneo and New Guinea are so similar in 

 their form and construction to those of the Amazons that 

 they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes. Then 

 again the Mandrucus, like the Dyaks, take the heads of their 

 enemies, smoke-dry them with equal care, preserving the skin 

 and hair entire, and hang them up around their houses. In 

 Australia the throwing-stick is used, and on a remote branch 

 of the Amazons we see a tribe of Indians differing from all 

 around them in substituting for the bow a weapon only found 

 in such a remote portion of the earth, among a people differing 

 from them in almost every physical character. How can such 

 similarities be accounted for ? Do they result from some 

 remote and unknown connection between these nations, or are 

 they mere accidental coincidences produced by the same wants 

 acting upon people subject to the same conditions of climate, 

 and in an equally low state of civilisation ? 



The Caribs, whom the cruelty of the Spaniards extirpated in 



