INDIANS OF THE JURUA 



487 



belonging to the same tribe or nation sometimes quarrel 

 with each other. These petty wars originate in this 

 fashion : a member of a family falls ill, and his or her 

 relations, or the rest of the horde, get hold of the idea 

 that the Paje of a neighbouring horde has caused the 

 illness by witchcraft ; all then assemble for a grand 

 drinking-bout, during which they excite each other by 

 reciting their wrongs. The armed men meet on the 

 following day, and march by intricate paths or circuitous 

 streams, so as to take their enemies by surprise, and then 

 pounce upon them with loud shouts, killing all they can, 

 and burning their huts to the ground. 



November ^oth. — I left Tunantins in a trading schooner 

 of eighty tons burthen belonging to Senhor Batalha, a 

 tradesman of Ega, which had been out all the summer 

 collecting produce, and was commanded by a friend of 

 mine, a young Paraense, named Francisco Raiol. We 

 arrived, on the 3rd of December, at the mouth of the 

 Jutahi, a considerable stream about half a mile broad, 

 and flowing with a very sluggish current. This is one of 

 a series of six rivers, from 400 to 1000 miles in length, 

 which flow from the south-west through unknown lands 

 lying between Bolivia and the Upper Amazons, and enter 

 this latter river between the Madeira and the Ucayali. 

 The sources of none of them are known. The longest of 

 the six is the Purus, the first met with in ascending the 

 Solimoens. I gleaned very little information concerning 

 the Jutahi. which was not visited much by traders, but, 

 as far as I could learn, its banks were peopled by nearly 

 the same wild tribes as those of the next parallel stream, 

 the Jurua, about which I gathered a good deal from my 

 friend John da Cunha, who ascended it as far as it was 

 navigable on a trading expedition. The Jurua flows 

 wholly through a flat country covered with light-green 

 forests, and its waters are tinged ochreous, by the quantity 

 of clayey and earthy matter held in suspension, like those 

 of the Solimoens. At the end of the navigation there 

 is a road by land to the Purus, the two great streams 

 being there only about thirty or forty miles distant 

 from each other. The Jutahi must be a much shorter 

 river than the Jurua, for, as Senhor Cunha told me, the 

 Conibos, an advanced tribe of agricultural Indians living 

 Oil the banks of the Jurua near its source, have at that 



