I90 THE LOWER AMAZONS 



to those I lived amongst near Para and Cameta. They 

 live in wretched dilapidated mud-hovels ; the women 

 cultivate small patches of mandioca ; the men spend 

 most of their time in fishing, selling what they do not 

 require themselves, and getting drunk with the most 

 exemplary regularity on casha9a, purchased with the pro- 

 ceeds. 



The configuration of the district of country in which 

 Villa Nova is situated, is remarkable. About a mile in- 

 land, there commences a chain of lakes of greater or lesser 

 extent, which are connected together by narrow channels, 

 and extend to the interior by-water of the Ramos. This 

 latter communicates with the channel of Canoma, already 

 mentioned as connected with the river Madeira. The 

 whole tract of land, therefore, forms an island, or group 

 of islands, which extends from a little below Villa Nova, 

 to the mouth of the Madeira, a distance of i8o miles ; 

 the breadth varying from ten to twenty miles. The 

 district is known by the name of the Island of Tupinam- 

 barana. The Canoma is an outlet to the waters of the 

 Madeira when this river is fuller than the main Amazons, 

 which is the case from November to February. But it 

 also receives the contributions of eight other independent 

 rivers, most of which have broad, lake-like expansions of 

 water near their junction with the Canoma. One of them, 

 the Andira-mirim, I was told, is a league broad for some 

 distance from its mouth. The country bordering these 

 interior waters is extremely fertile, and the broad lakes 

 have clear waters and sandy shores. They abound in 

 fish and turtle. The country is healthy along the banks 

 of the Canoma, and for some distance up its tributary 

 streams. In certain places on the banks of these, inter- 

 mittent fevers prevail, as they do on all those affluents 

 of the Amazons which have clear, dark waters and slow 

 currents. The incidence of this endemic is somewhat 

 remarkable, for it exists on one side of the Andira-mirim, 

 where the land is high and rocky, and not on the other 

 which is low and swampy. The old historians relate 

 that the island of Tupinambarana was colonized by a 

 portion of the great Tupi or Tupinamba nation, who 

 were driven from the seacoast near Pernambuco, by the 

 early Portuguese settlers in the sixteenth century. I think, 

 however, there is reason to conclude, that different tribes, 

 having more or less affinity with the Tupis, originally 



