On the Aborigines of Brazil. 157 



to exclude every breath of air, and thus increases the vio- 

 lence of his fever, or rushes into a running stream in which 

 he hopes to quench his inward fire. In it he often dies 

 of apoplexy : but others, who keep quieter, often do not 

 live till the eruption appears, but die previously of violent 

 delirium. In other cases the outbreak of the exanthema 

 is accelerated by cold baths or by hot drinks, and it appears 

 to such an extent, that the whole surface of the body is like 

 one huge sloughing sore. In some again large spots of inflam- 

 mation are formed under the cutis, which sometimes pass into 

 putrid suppuration, and sometimes cause metastasis to the 

 head or the lungs, and cause death after the most horrible 

 symptoms : but even the common forms of the exanthema are 

 bad enough ; the uniformly coloured regularly formed pus- 

 tules are often attended with a very painful cough, and at- 

 tacks of Angina. In other individuals, we see besides regu- 

 larly developed pustules, others which are fallen in, wrinkled, 

 black or with black spots, or the whole body is covered 

 with a black exanthema. The disease attacks individuals 

 of every age and sex, but it is especially dangerous to 

 elderly people of atrabilious and sluggish temperament, to 

 pregnant and parturient women, and is on the contrary 

 got over more easily by people of a younger and healthier 

 age. Women, seized with small-pox, frequently miscarry: 

 parturient ones communicate the disease to their offspring : 

 no wonder then, if the Indian is seized with the dread 

 of certain death, as soon as he feels the poison in his 

 veins, or sees any of his family attacked by it. Thus, 

 small-pox plays the same part among the red men that the 

 plague does in the East. Wherever it appears, all family 

 ties are dissolved : the sick are often left alone without 

 help ; while those who are well, stricken with blind terror, 

 fly bereft of their senses into the woods. The Gover- 

 nor General of Estado do Para was once with all his 

 staff in a vessel that was to convey him from Para to Macapa. 



