INHABITANTS OF THE PAEANA EEGIONS. 213 



The shell-mounds certainly date from a remote epoch, for several have disap- 

 peared beneath the detritus washed down by ancient streams, while large trees of 

 the primeval forest have struck root in others. Some represent a prodigious 

 amount of labour, being over 300 feet wide and 50 feet high. For two or three 

 hundred years they have furnished the lime-burners with sufficient materials to 

 supply Rio Santos and many other towns with lime, yet a considerable number 

 still remain. 



On the plateaux are also seen numerous sepulchral mounds, which are known 

 in the country by the appropriate name of sepulturas velhas, " old burial grounds." 

 It is noteworthy that the earth used in the construction of these barrows is always 

 different from that of the surrounding soil. Some are built of stones, in which 

 case the materials have also been brought from a distance, as if some religious 

 idea were associated with the increased labour thus involved. 



From the form of most of the skulls found in the old graves it may be inferred 

 that the pre-historic aborigines belonged to the same race as the contemporary 

 Tupi and Guarani peoples. Nevertheless, Loefgren found in a tambaqui six miles 

 west of S. Vicente a skull analogous to those brought to light by Lund in the 

 Lagoa Santa caves. 



When the first Europeans arrived, the dominant Tamoyos were very powerful, 

 and took the lead in a general alliance of all the coast tribes against the Portu- 

 guese. These would, in fact, have probably been exterminated but for the 

 intervention of the Jesuits, Nobrega and Anchieta, who induced the warlike 

 Indians to make peace at a critical juncture. 



The other natives of the coastlands — Goyanazes, Itatins, Piturunas, Guanha- 

 nari, Curijos — have all been merged in the general population, which is now 

 rapidlv mingling with the most diverse elements. The Italians arrive in great 

 numbers in S. Paulo, and in many rural districts are already in the majority. 

 With them come other Europeans, besides gypsies, eastern Jews, and Maronites 

 from Syria. In general, the Paulist type has the reputation of being the finest 

 in Brazil. According to a local saying, we are asked to admire, in Bahia, the 

 he^s, not the she's ; in Pernambuco, the shes, not the he s ; in S. Paulo, the she's 

 and the he's. 



Being broken into scattered groups, the aborigines of the Parana States no 

 longer possess any kind of solidariry in their struggles against the whites, and are 

 thus destroyed in detail. Those grouped round the Jesuit mission of La Guayra 

 were the first to disappear, whole communities of peaceful neophytes being dis- 

 persed or led captive during the ten years ending 1638. The Jesuits themselves had 

 to take flight, and in 1641 Montoya attempted to remove the survivors to the 

 district at present known as the " Missions " on the banks of the Lower Parana. 

 But in the exodus more than half of his faithful adherents perished, and after all 

 the massacres, hardships, and disasters in the river only 12,000 remained of those 

 once flourishing congregations. 



Of late years a certain counter-movement has set in amongst the indigenous 

 populations. Being arrested or driven back by the rising flood of Argentine 

 48 



