494 



EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA 



the Amazons when I left the country, in 1859 : he told 

 me that forty years previously Fonte Boa was a delightful 

 place to live in. The neighbourhood was then well cleared, 

 and almost free from mosquitoes, and the Indians were 

 orderly, industrious, and happy. What led to the ruin 

 of the settlement was the arrival of several Portuguese 

 and Brazilian traders of a low class, who in their eagerness 

 for business taught the easy-going Indians all kinds of 

 trickery and immorality. They enticed the men and 

 women away from their old employers, and thus broke 

 up the large establishments, compelling the principals to 

 take their capital to other places. At the time of my 

 visit there were few pure-blood Indians at Fonte Boa, 

 and no true whites. The inhabitants seemed to be nearly 

 all mamelucos, and were a loose-living, rustic, plain- 

 spoken and ignorant set of people. There was no priest 

 or schoolmaster within 150 miles, and had not been any 

 for many years : the people seemed to be almost without 

 government of any kind, and yet crime and deeds of 

 violence appeared to be of very rare occurrence. The 

 principal man of the village, one Senhor Justo, was a big, 

 coarse, energetic fellow, sub-delegado of police, and the 

 only tradesman who owned a large vessel running directly 

 between Fonte Boa and Para. He had recently built a 

 large house, in the style of middle-class dwellings of 

 towns, namely, with brick floors and tiled roof, the bricks 

 and tiles having been brought from Para, 1 500 miles dis- 

 tant, the nearest place where they are manufactured in 

 surplus. When Senhor Justo visited me he was much 

 struck with the engravings in a file of Illustrated London 

 News which lay on my table. It was impossible to resist 

 his urgent entreaties to let him have some of them * to 

 look at so one day he carried off a portion of the papers 

 on loan. A fortnight afterwards, on going to request 

 him to return them, I found the engravings had been 

 cut out, and stuck all over the newly whitewashed walls 

 of his chamber, many of them upside down. He thought 

 a room thus decorated with foreign views would increase 

 his importance amongst his neighbours, and when I yielded 

 to his wish to keep them, was boundless in demonstrations 

 of gratitude, ending by shipping a boat-load of turtles for 

 my use at Ega. 



These neglected and rude villagers still retained many 

 religious practices which former missionaries or priests:! 



