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THE MUNICIPAL JUDGE. 



I met, at the house of the Commandante-militar, with an old gentle- 

 man who was on his way to Porto de Moz, near the mouth of the 

 Xingu, to take the office of municipal judge of the district. He seemed 

 to be a man well informed with regard to all the river below Barra. 

 He told me that the Xingu was obstructed by rapids for navigation in 

 large vessels within four days' travel from its mouth, and that boats 

 could not go far up on account of the savages. These rapids, however, 

 cannot be a serious impediment for boats ; for I was told at Santarem 

 that the caravans from Cuiaba to Rio Janeiro passed the Xingu in 

 boats, and found at that place porpoises of the Amazon ; from which 

 they inferred that there were no falls or serious obstacles in the river 

 below them. 



The judge asked me for accounts from Barra ; and when he received 

 the usual answer, that the town was not in a flourishing condition, and 

 was short of the necessaries of life, he shrugged his shoulders, (as all 

 in the lower province do when speaking of the new province,) as if to 

 say " I knew it." 



He said that it might come to something in forty years; but that 

 nothing could be expected of a place that furnished nothing to com- 

 merce but a few oils, and a little piassaba, and where the population 

 was composed of Muras and Ararae. He spoke bitterly of the Mura 

 tribe of Indians, and said that they were lazy and deceitful. 



According to his account, the white man furnishes the Mura with a 

 boat, pays him, beforehand, a jacket, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and 

 a hat; furnishes him with fish and farinha to eat, and tobacco to 

 smoke, and sends him out to take Pirarucu; but when the Indian gets 

 off, it is "Good-bye Mura;" or, if he does come back, he has spent so 

 much time in his fishing that the fish are not worth the outlay and the 

 time lost. 



It was true, he said, there were cattle on the Rio Branco; but they could 

 only be sent for and traded in when the river was full; and he con- 

 eluded by making a great cross in the air, and lifting up his eyes, to 

 give vent to the expression, " Heaven deliver me from Barra !" 



I conversed with the old gentleman on some projects of reform as 

 regarded the Indian population. He thought that a military force 

 should be employed to reduce them to a more perfect system of sub- 

 jection, and that they should, by all means, be compelled to work. I 

 told him that a Portuguese had said that the best reform that could be 

 made would be to hang all the Indians. My friend seemed a little 

 shocked at this, and said that there was no necessity for such root-and- 

 branch work. He said he would grant that the old ones might be 



