of the Upper Amazons. 3597 



trinkets for salsaparilla, copaiba, and hammocks made of twine from 

 the Tucu, a species of palm. One article of export the savages deal 

 in, which is scarcely so legitimate an object of trade, namely, children 

 of both sexes, who, I was told, .were prisoners taken in predatory ex- 

 cursions, and whose parents are immolated, but they themselves car- 

 ried off and readily exchanged for cutlery with the Ega traders. At 

 Ega they are employed as domestic servants. 



The rivers chiefly frequented by the traders are the Japura, on which 

 dwell many nations of friendly Indians; the lea, and the Jurua. The 

 mouths of these large affluents of the Amazons are all within four or 

 five days' voyage of Ega ; the two former, which lie on the northern 

 banks, are subject to intermittent fevers, the latter, on the south side, 

 is entirely free from endemical diseases, and was described to me as 

 teeming with valuable productions, the forests abounding with salsa- 

 parilla, valuable timbers, and India-rubber, the waters swarming with 

 fish. The Jurua is inhabited by about ten distinct nations of Indians, 

 the most remote of which are the Catoquinos, whose country lies along 

 the frontiers of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru, from the Jutahi to the Teffe. 

 The immediate banks of the main river are now not peopled by any 

 nation of savages, the original tribes having long since either retreated 

 to the more retired streams, or become amalgamated with the whites; 

 but in Ega, individuals of many of the neighbouring tribes may be 

 seen. I enumerated twenty-five distinct peoples. Many of them are 

 distinguished by the pattern of the tatooing on the face, and all of 

 them, when first brought from their birth-places, spoke their peculiar 

 languages, and each nation or tribe utterly unintelligible to the others. 

 Although the number of distinct tribes of aborigines is thus conside- 

 rable, the aggregate population is very small, and is scattered over a 

 large surface. Many tribes, from what I could learn, possessed few 

 settlements, and could not consist of so many as a thousand individu- 

 als each. Thus a district of fertile country, having an area about equal 

 I to France and Germany together, covered with a luxuriant forest, and 

 throughout having a marvellous depth of rich virgin soil, does not 

 contain more than 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. 



The Lake of Ega, as it is called, is in fact the expanded bed of the 

 Teffe, which, descending from the mountains of Bolivia, spreads itself 

 over a larger bed in the alluvial level of the Amazons, before discharg- 

 ing its waters into the fuller and more powerful current of the main 

 river : this lake, as I have said, is of vast extent. The Teffe, near its 

 junction, runs east and west ; above Ega it curves into a southerly di- 

 rection. The lake is deep, and clear of islands or shoals, and sur- 



