368 



THE UPPER AMAZONS 



nations, which each have their own, to all appearance, 

 widely different language, learn Tupi on their arrival at 

 Ega, where it is the common idiom. This perhaps may 

 be attributed chiefly to the grammatical forms of all the 

 Indian tongues being the same, although the words are 

 different. As far as I could learn, the feature is common 

 to all, of placing the preposition after the noun, making 

 it, in fact, a /?c»s/-position, thus : * he is come the village 

 from ' ; * go him with, the plantation to and so forth. 

 The ideas to be expressed in their limited sphere of life 

 and thought are few ; consequently the stock of words 

 is extremely small ; besides, all Indians have the same way 

 of thinking, and the same objects to talk about ; these 

 circumstances also contribute to the ease with which they 

 learn each other's language. Hordes of the same tribe 

 living on the same branch rivers, speak mutually unin- 

 telligible languages ; this happens with the Miranhas 

 on the Japura, and with the Collinas on the Jurua ; whilst 

 Tupi is spoken with little corruption along the banks of 

 the main Amazons for a distance of 2500 miles. The 

 purity of Tupi is kept up by frequent communication 

 amongst the natives, from one end to the other of the main 

 river ; how complete and long-continued must be the 

 isolation in which the small groups of savages have lived 

 in other parts, to have caused so complete a segregation 

 of dialects ! It is probable that the strange inflexibility 

 of the Indian organization, both bodily and mental, is 

 owing to the isolation in which each small tribe has lived, 

 and to the narrow round of life and thought, and close inter- 

 marriages for countless generations, which are the neces- 

 sary results. Their fecundity is of a low degree, for it 

 is very rare to find an Indian family having so many as 

 four children, and we have seen how great is their liability 

 to sickness and death on removal from place to place. 



I have already remarked on the different way in which 

 the climate of this equatorial region affects Indians and 

 negroes. No one could live long amongst the Indians of 

 the Upper Arnazons, without being struck with their con- 

 stitutional dislike to the heat. Europeans certainly with- 

 stand the high temperature better than the original in- 

 habitants of the country : I always found I could myself 

 bear exposure to the sun or unusually hot weather, quite 

 as well as the Indians, although not well-fitted by nature 

 for a hot climate. Their skin is always hot to the touch. 



