238 



SANTAREM 



yards distant from the other rooms. The rent was 12,000 

 reis, or about twent3^-seven shillings a month. In this 

 country, a tenant has no extra payments to make ; the 

 owners of house property pay a dizimo or tithe, to the 

 * collectoria geral', or general treasury, but with this the 

 occupier of course has nothing to do. In engaging ser- 

 vants, I had the good fortune to meet with a free mulatto, 

 an industrious and trustworthy young fellow, named Jose, 

 willing to arrange with me ; the people of his family 

 cooking for us, whilst he assisted me in collecting ; he 

 proved of the greatest service in the different excursions 

 we subsequently made. Servants of any kind were almost 

 impossible to be obtained at Santarem, free people being 

 too proud to hire themselves, and slaves too few and 

 valuable to their masters to be let out to others. These 

 matters arranged, the house put in order, and a rude table, 

 with a few chairs, bought or borrowed to furnish the house 

 with, I was ready in three or four days to commence my 

 Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood. 



I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from 

 the other settlements on the Amazons. At Cameta, the 

 lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed 

 the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as 

 on the Rio Negro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have 

 fraternised well with the aborigines. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally 

 hostile to the Portuguese ; at any rate, the blending of 

 the two races has not been here on a large scale. I did 

 not find the inhabitants the pleasant, easy-going and 

 blunt-spoken country folk that are met with in other 

 small towns of the interior. The whites, Portuguese and 

 Brazilians, are a relatively more numerous class here than 

 in other settlements, and make great pretensions to civiliza- 

 tion ; they are the merchants and shopkeepers of the 

 place ; owners of slaves, cattle estates, and cacao planta- 

 tions. Amongst the principal residents must also be 

 mentioned the civil and military authorities, who are 

 generally well-bred and intelligent people from other pro- 

 vinces. Few Indians live in the place ; it is too civilized 

 for them, and the lower class is made up (besides the few 

 slaves) of half-breeds, in whose composition negro blood 

 predominates. Coloured people also exercise the different 

 handicrafts ; the town supports two goldsmiths, who are 



