238 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



Puris, explained to us the words sung to this dance 

 as a lamentation, the subject of which was that they 

 had attempted to pluck a flower from a tree, but 

 had fallen down. No interpretation of this melan- 

 choly scene could have appeared to us more ap- 

 propriate, than that of the loss of Paradise. ' The 

 longer the Puris continued their dance, the more 

 lively did they become, and the louder were their 

 voices. They afterwards began to change the melo- 

 dies for some others, and the dance gradually as- 

 sumed a different character. The women began 

 to twist their hips, and to shove alternately before 

 and behind, but the men only before ; the latter, 

 particularly animated by the singing, leaped out of 

 their places to the bystanders, whom they saluted 

 with a push in the stomach. One of us on this 

 occasion received such a violent shove, that he was 

 obliged to withdraw, half-fainting, from this testi- 

 mony of joy ; upon which our soldier took care to 

 return the push in his stead, as the etiquette re- 

 quired. This dance, the pantomime of which 

 seems much to resemble the Ethiopian Baducca, 

 has perhaps been introduced by the negroes among 

 the Americans. 



All the Indians of the tribes of the Puris, 

 Coropos and Coroados, whom we saw here, had an 

 extraordinary resemblance in make and counte- 

 nance ; and their individual features, probably from 

 want of civilisation, have more of the general phy- 

 siognomy of the race, than is now the case in the 



