CAMPOS 



249 



(Captain Leao) had the whites' quarter strongly stockaded, 

 and every man slept under arms. The Indians acted as 

 though inspired by a diabolical fanaticism ; they had no 

 arms, except wooden spears, clubs, and bows and arrows ; 

 for their powder and lead had been exhausted long before. 

 With these rude weapons they came through forest and 

 campo to the storming of the now fortified town. The 

 attack was made at sunrise ; the sentinels were killed or 

 driven in, and the swarms of red skins climbed the stockade 

 and thronged down the principal street. They were soon 

 met by a strong and well-armed force, well posted in houses 

 or behind walls, and the reckless savages were shot down 

 by hundreds. It was not until the street was encum- 

 bered by the heaps of slain that the rest turned their 

 backs and fled. Their numbers were estimated at 2000 

 men ; the remnant of the force escaped across the campos 

 to the village of Altar do Chao, twenty miles distant, 

 whence they scattered themselves along the shores'fof the 

 Tapajos, and gave great trouble to the Brazilians for 

 many years afterwards. Several expeditions were sent 

 from Santarem to reduce them, a task in which the 

 government was aided by the friendly Mundurucus of 

 the Upper Tapojos, a large body of whom, under the 

 leadership of their Tushaua Joaquim, made war on the 

 hostile Indians on the lower parts both of the Madeira 

 and the Tapajos, until they were nearly exterminated. 



The country around Santarem is not clothed with 

 dense and lofty forest, like the rest of the great humid 

 river plain of the Amazons. It is a campo region ; a 

 slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, wooded 

 only in patches, or with single scattered trees. A good 

 deal of the country on the borders of the Tapajos, which 

 flows from the great campo area of Interior Brazil, is of 

 this description. On this account I consider the eastern 

 side of the river, towards its mouth, to be a northern 

 prolongation of the continental land, and not a portion 

 of the alluvial flats of the Amazons. The soil is a coarse 

 gritty sand ; the substratum, which is visible in some 

 places, consisting of sandstone conglomerate probably of 

 the same formation as that which underlies the Tabatinga 

 clay in other parts of the river valley. The surface is 

 carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit for pasture, 

 growing to a uniform height of about a foot. The patches 



