AN INDIAN HUNTER 



127 



time, that animal food was as much a necessary of life 

 in this exhausting climate as it is in the North of Europe. 

 An attempt which I made to live on vegetable food was 

 quite a failure, and I could not eat the execrable salt 

 fish which Brazilians use. I had been many days without 

 meat of any kind, and nothing more was to be found 

 near Caripi, so I asked as a favour of Senhor Raimundo, 

 permission to accompany him on one of his hunting 

 trips, and shoot a little game for my own use. He con- 

 sented, and appointed a day on which I was to come 

 over to his house to sleep, so as to be ready for starting 

 with the ebb-tide shortly after midnight. 



The locality we were to visit was situated near the 

 extreme point of the land of Carnapijo, where it pro- 

 jects northwardly into the middle of the Para estuary 

 and is broken into a number of islands. On the after- 

 noon of January nth, 1849, I walked through the woods 

 to Raimundo's house, taking nothing with me but a 

 double-barrelled gun, a supply of ammunition and a box 

 for the reception of any insects I might capture. Rai- 

 mundo was a carpenter, and seemed to be a very in- 

 dustrious man ; he had two apprentices, Indians like 

 himself, one a young lad, and the other apparently about 

 twenty years of age. His wife was of the same race. 

 The Indian women are not always of a taciturn disposition 

 like their husbands. Senhora Dominga was very talkative ; 

 there was another old squaw at the house on a visit, 

 and the tongues of the two were going at a great rate 

 the whole evening, using only the Tupi language. Rai- 

 mundo and his apprentices were employed building a 

 canoe. Notwithstanding his industry, he seemed to be 

 very poor, and this was the condition of most of the 

 residents on the banks of the Murucupi. They have, 

 nevertheless, considerable plantations of mandioca and 

 Indian corn, besides small plots of cotton, coffee, and 

 sugar cane ; the soil is very fertile, they have no rent 

 to pay, and no direct taxes. There is, moreover, always 

 afmarket in Para, twenty miles distant, for their surplus 

 produce, and a ready communication with it by water. 

 I J: Their poverty seemed to be owing chiefly to two causes. 

 The first is, the prevalence amongst them of a kind of 

 communistic mode of regarding property. The Indian 

 and mameluco country people have a fixed notion that 

 their neighbours have no right to be better off than 



