THE MARUBOS. 



233 



CHAPTER XII. 



Cochiquinas — Caballo Cocha — Alligators — Indian Incantations — Loreto — Taba- 

 tinga — River Yavari— San Paulo — River Lja — Tunantins — Making manteiga — 

 River Jutay — Fronteboa — River Jurua — River Japurd. 



Cochiquinas, or New Cocliiquinas, is a miserable fishing- village, of 

 two hundred and forty inhabitants; though at this time there did not 

 appear to be forty in the village, most of them being absent fishing and 

 seeking a livelihood. Old Cochiquinas is four miles further down the 

 river, and seems a far better situation ; but the people there were afraid 

 of the attacks of the savages of the Yavari, and removed up to this 

 place. 



The old town, to which place we dropped down to breakfast, has one 

 hundred and twenty inhabitants, of which twenty-five are white, and the 

 rest Indians of the Yavari, called Marubos. These are dressed with 

 even more simplicity than the Yaguas, dispensing with the mop be- 

 hind. They have small, curly moustaches and beards ; are darker than 

 the other Indians ; and do nothing but hunt for their living. 



The governor treated us very civilly, and gave us a good breakfast of 

 soup, chickens, rice, and eggs, with milk just taken from the cow. 

 What a luxury ! I saw before his door a large canoe filled with un- 

 shelled rice, of very good quality. The governor told us that rice 

 grew very well, and gave about forty-fold in five months. He seemed 

 a very gay and good-te mpered young person, with a fine family of a 

 wife and eleven remarkably handsome children — some born in lawful 

 wedlock, others natural — but all cared for alike, and brought up to- 

 gether. I had the impertinence to ask him how he supported so many 

 people. He said that the forest and the river yielded abundantly, and 

 that he occasionally made an expedition to the Napo, and collected 

 sarsaparilla enough to buy clothes and luxuries for his family in Loreto. 

 The Napo, he says, is very full of sand-banks, and that twenty days 

 from its mouth the men have to get overboard and drag the canoes. 



The Yavari may be reached from this point by land in four days. 

 The banks of the river at this place are steep, and about thirty feet in 

 height above the present level. Veins of the same black clay slate that 

 we saw at Pebas, and that burned with a bituminous smell, also crop 

 out of the banks here. 



