196 



ST A. MARIA. 



fellow, and worked so well, that I paid him as the others. Current two 

 and a quarter miles. 



October 7. — River half a mile wide and rising fast. Trunks of trees 



begin to come down. Stopped at a settlement called Guanache. I saw 

 only two houses, with four or five men and women ; they said that the 

 others were away gathering sarsaparilla. These people cannot count, 

 and can never get from them any accurate idea of numbers. They 

 are very little removed above the "beasts that perish." They are 

 filthy, and covered with the sores and scars of sarna. The houses 

 were very large, measuring between thirty and forty feet of length, and 

 ten or fifteen in breadth. They consist of immense roofs of small poles 

 and cane, thatched with palm, and supported by short stakes four feet high 

 and three inches in diameter, planted in the ground three or four feet 

 apart, and having the spaces, except between two in front, filled in with 

 cane. Many persons " pig" together in one of these houses. Cotton 

 was growing here. Current three and one-third miles. 



October 9. — Stopped at the village of Sta. Maria, a Pirros settlement, 

 on the left bank, of one hundred and fifty souls. The curaca, who 

 seemed a more rational and respectable being than the rest, and whom 

 I afterwards saw in Nauta, told me that there were thirty-three Matri- 

 monios. These Indians ascend the Ucayali in their canoes to a point 

 not very far from Cuzco, where they go to exchange rare birds and 

 animals for beads, fish-hooks, and the little silver ornaments which they 

 wear in their noses. They bury their dead in his canoe under the floor 

 of his house. The curaca said that the Conibos buried the personal 

 effects of the deceased with him, differing in this from his people, the 

 Pirros. Their language is also different ; but in all other things they 

 are as like as peas. They have no idea of a future state, and worship 

 nothing. In fact, I think they have no ideas at all, although they can 

 make a bow or a canoe, and take a fish ; and their women can weave a 

 coarse cloth from cotton, and dye it. They asked us if we had not in our 

 boxes some great and infectious disease, which we could take up and let 

 loose among their enemies, the Cashibos of the Pichitea. 



There were twoMoyobambinos domiciliated in the village, purchasing 

 salt fish from the Indians. One of them told me that an Indian would 

 furnish eighty pieces of salt fish for eight yards of tocoyo; this man may 

 have " let the cat out of the bag," and showed me how they cheat the 

 Indians. A yard of tocuyo is the general price of three pieces. A fish 

 called payshi, which is the fish ordinarily salted, was brought in and cut 

 up whilst we were here. It is a powerful fish, about six feet long and 

 one and one-fourth in diameter. The head is fourteen inches long, with 



