250 



RIVER JURUA. 



as a Spanish quarter of a dollar. A short distance above the junction 

 of the Taruaca, the Jurua bifurcates. The principal arm, which comes 

 from the left, has its waters of a white color; and the Indians who 

 dwell upon its branches say that the whites have a village near its 

 sources. (Castelnau, vol. 5, pp. 89, 90.) 



M. Castelnau collected some very curious stories concerning the 

 Indians who dwell upon the banks of the Jurua. He says, (vol. 5, p. 

 105,) "I cannot pass over in silence a very curious passage of Padre 

 Noronha, and which one is astonished to find in a work of so grave a 

 character in other respects. The Indians, Cauamas and Uginas, (says 

 the padre,) live near the sources of the river. The first are of very short 

 stature, scarcely exceeding five palms, (about three and a half feet ;) 

 and the last (of this there is no doubt) have tails, and are produced by 

 a mixture of Indians and Coata monkeys. Whatever may be the cause 

 of this fact, I am led to give it credit for three reasons : first, because 

 there is no physical reason why men should not have tails ; secondly, 

 because many Indians, whom I have interrogated regarding this thing, 

 have assured me of the fact, telling me that the tail was a palm and a 

 half long ; and, thirdly, because the Reverend Father Friar Jose de 

 Santa Theresa Ribeiro, a Carmelite, and Curate of Castro de Avelaeris, 

 assured me that he saw the same thing in an Indian who came from 

 Japura, and who sent me the following attestation : 



" ' I, Jose de Santa Theresa Ribeiro, of the Order of our Lady of Mount 

 Carmel, Ancient Observance, &c, certify and swear, in my quality of 

 Priest, and on the Holy Evangelists, that, when I was a missionary in 

 the ancient village of Parauau, where was afterwards built the village of 

 Noguera, I saw, in 1755, a man called Manuel da Silva, native of 

 Pernambuco, or Bahia, who came from the river Japura with some 

 Indians, amongst whom was one — an Infidel brute — who the said 

 Manuel declared to me had a tail ; and as I was unwilling to believe 

 such an extraordinary fact, he brought the Indian and caused him to 

 strip, on pretence of removing some turtles from a ' pen,' near which 

 I stood to assure myself of the truth. There I saw, without possibility 

 of error, that the man had a tail, of the thickness of a finger, and half 

 a palm long, and covered with a smooth and naked skin. The same 

 Manuel assured me that the Indian had told him that every month he 

 cut his tail, because he did not like to have it too longhand it grew very 

 fast. I do not know to what nation this man belonged, nor if all his 

 tribe had a similar tail ; but I understood afterwards that there was a 



