PROVINCE OF MATTO GROSSO. 



213 



Guaycuriis, who alone proceed along the plains and open country, to facilitate 

 the march of their horses. 



The Cahans live in aldeias : not more than thirty years ago they had fifteen 

 of those villages. They paint themselves with the dye of the urucu, perforate 

 the under lip, and insert a cylinder of resin, transparent as crystal, secured 

 by a small wooden pin at the upper extremity. The bow and arrow are their 

 arms, made with instruments of dint and the sharpened teeth of the boar. 

 They cultivate the cotton tree, the wool of which they spin and weave by a 

 method peculiar to themselves. Their vesture consists of a sort of ponche, in 

 the form of a sack, made of a piece of cotton cloth of good width, doubled 

 and sev^^ed in part at the corners, with an opening to introduce the head and 

 neck through, also two apertures for the arms, and terminating in two aprons, 

 with a cord round the waist. In the morning they sing hymns to the Creator, 

 accompanied with extravagant movements ; one of them, with the hands 

 clasped and the body bent, making a circular movement around the others for 

 a considerable time. Amongst them are men who are, or pretend to be, at the 

 same time, surgeons, doctors, diviners, and priests, and, like the latter, carry in 

 their hands a cross, which custom they have unquestionably derived from the 

 first Jesuitical missionaries who penetrated into the country, and who used a 

 bordao, or staff, (perhaps also as an instrument of defence,) in the shape of a 

 cross. In their district there are woods of wild orange trees, and prodigious 

 quantities of bees, which do not produce good honey, but the wax is better 

 than that of the northern provinces. 



In the middle of the last century, when the plenipotentiaries of Spain and 

 Portugal established a boundary-mark upon the Jauru, there lived in the vicinity 

 of the Fecho dos Morros, a nation of Indians, called Bayas, of which, at the 

 present day, there is no intelligence. 



The povoa^oes in this district are the fazenda of Camapuan, with a hermitage, 

 situated in 19° 36' south latitude, and Miranda, a prezidio, founded in 1797, 

 about five hundred yards from the right margin of the river Aranhahy, near a 

 serra, in a land abounding with game. Upon the track to Camapuan there is 

 a large lake. 



With the foundation of Nova Coimbra the Spaniards commenced in this 

 province the towns of Villa Real, near the tropic, St. Carlos, on the margin of 

 the river Appa, and St. Joze, which was demolished by the Portuguese about 

 twenty years ago. 



