28 On the Aborigines of Brazil, 



of care, and from their bad practice of always in acute and 

 painful diseases rushing into a running stream, takes on the 

 worst character, and causes very great mortality. 



Drinks, 



The water has an equally unfavorable effect in increasing 

 the tendency to gastric disorders. The Indian seldom set- 

 tles near a spring, but generally beside a brook, or if he 

 can, by a river. The advantage of being able to fish in it 

 daily, the facilities of intercourse which it offers, and the 

 increased means of attacking enemies, or of meeting their 

 attacks which it affords, always lead the Indian to the 

 bank of a river, or of a lake communicating with one. Thus 

 it is along the great river streams of the Amazon, the To- 

 cantin, the Madeira and the Paraguay. It is only in districts 

 where there are no large sized rivers, that the Indian thinks 

 of building his hut in more remote and elevated positions. 

 The consequence of this is, that most of them drink river 

 water, and that too at every season of the year, whether it 

 may be pure or muddy. We do now and then find in the 

 hut of a savage a large earthen vessel to let the water stand 

 in ; but he commonly drinks it fresh from the stream, from 

 which his wife or his child fetches it in a bowl of Cuiete 

 wood, (Crescentia Cajeti.) It is often warm, muddy, and 

 impure in the highest degree. The Indian oarsman on the 

 Amazon does not leave his seat to help himself from the 

 supply of clearer and cooler water kept for the use of the 

 master of the boat. He draws up the river water, and drinks 

 it freely, without considering that it contains the collective 

 impurities of the greater part of S. America. The imme- 

 diate result is the production of quantities of worms which 

 are exceedingly common in every boat's crew, and indeed in 

 every village on the course of a river. 



At the commencement of the warm rainy season, these 

 parasites often increase in prodigious numbers, and generate 



, 



