TUNANTINS. 



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bacco, which we had bought in Nauta, was now very much reduced. 

 We had used it, during our voyage on the Ucayali, to purchase food and 

 curiosities, and to give to the peons, who were not satisfied or contented 

 unless they had an occasional smoke. We also had been liberal with 

 it to governors and curates, who had been civil to us ; and now we had 

 barely enough for our own use to last us to Barra. I gave twenty-five 

 cents the mass for it in Nauta, though the " Paragua" cheated me, and 

 should only have charged me twelve and a half. We could have sold 

 it all the way to Barra for thirty-seven and a half, and fifty cents. 



December 10. — Between San Antonio and Tunantins we met the 

 governor of San Antonio, a military-looking white man, returning with 

 his wife and children from a visit to Tunantins. I showed him my 

 passport, which he asked for, and we interchanged civilities and presents; 

 he giving me a " chiriclis," like the one I lost at Caballo-cocha, and 

 water-melons ; and I making him a present of tobacco and a tinder-box. 

 The species of bird he gave me is called, in Brazil, Marianita. This one 

 took a singular disease by which it lost the use of its legs — hopped about 

 for some days on the knee-joints, with the leg and foot turned upwards in 

 front, and then died. At twenty miles from San Antonio we entered the 

 mouth of the Tunantins river. It is about fifty yards broad, and seems 

 deep, with a considerable current. The town is prettily situated on a 

 slight green eminence on the left bank, about half a mile from the 

 mouth. The population is said to be between two and three hundred, 

 though I would not suppose it to be near as much. It is composed 

 of the tribes of Cayshanas and Juries, and about twenty-five whites. 



One sees very few Indians in the Portuguese villages. They seem to 

 live apart, and in the woods ; and are, I think, gradually disappearing 

 before the advance of civilization. They are used as beasts of burden, 

 and are thought no further of. At 2 p. m. we left Tunantins. The 

 river has eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty feet down to its entrance into 

 the Amazon, where it forms a bar of sand, stretching some hundreds of 

 yards out and downwards, on which is only six feet of water. 



December 11. — We stopped at a factoria on the left bank, sixty-five 

 miles from Tunantins, where people were making manteiga. The effect of 

 " mirage," was here very remarkable. When within a mile or two of the 

 factoria, I thought I saw quite a large town, with houses of two or three 

 stories, built of stone and brick, with large heaps of white stone lying 

 about in several places. There was a vessel lying off the town that I 

 was satisfied was a large brig-of war ; but upon drawing near, my three- 

 story houses dwindled to the smallest palm ranchos ; my heaps of build- 

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