INHABITANTS OF SERPA 207 



steam saw-mills and tile manufactories. We arrived on 

 Christmas-eve, when the village presented an animated 

 appearance from the number of people congregated for 

 the holidays. The port was full of canoes, large and 

 small — from the montaria, with its arched awning of 

 woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the two-masted 

 cuberta of the peddling trader, who had resorted to the 

 place in the hope of trafficking with settlers coming 

 from remote sitios to attend the festival. We anchored 

 close to an igarite, whose owner was an old Juri Indian, 

 disfigured by a large black tatooed patch in the middle 

 of his face, and by his hair being close cropped, except a 

 fringe in front of the head. In the afternoon we went 

 ashore. The population seemed to consist chiefly of 

 semi-civilized Indians, living as usual in half-finished 

 mud hovels. The streets were irregularly laid out and 

 overrun with weeds and bushes swarming with * mocuim', 

 a very minute scarlet acarus, which sweeps off to one's 

 clothes in passing, and attaching itself in great numbers 

 to the skin causes a most disagreeable itching. The few 

 whites and better class of mameluco residents live in more 

 substantial dwellings, whitewashed and tiled. All, both 

 men and women, seemed to me much more cordial, and 

 at the same time more brusque in their manners than 

 any Brazilians I had yet met with. One of them. Captain 

 Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time afterwards ; a 

 lively, intelligent, and thoroughly good-hearted man, who 

 had quite a reputation throughout the interior of the 

 country for generosity, and for being a firm friend of 

 foreign residents and stray travellers. Some of these 

 excellent people were men of substance, being owners of 

 trading vessels, slaves, and extensive plantations of cacao 

 and tobacco. 



We stayed at Serpa five days. Some of the ceremonies 

 observed at Christmas were interesting, inasmuch as they 

 were the same, with little modification, as those taught 

 by the Jesuit missionaries more than a century ago to 

 the aboriginal tribes whom they had induced to settle 

 on this spot. In the morning all the women and girls, 

 dressed in white gauze chemises and showy calico print 

 petticoats, went in procession to church, first going the 

 round of the town to take up the different ' mordomos ' 

 or stewards, whose office is to assist the Juiz of the festa. 

 These stewards carried each a long white reed, decorated 



