138 JOURNEY FROM VILLA DE ST. SALVADOR 



early times, avidity of gain, and thirst of gold, extinguished all feel- 

 ings of humanity in the European settlers ; they regarded those naked 

 ])rown men as beasts, created merely for their service, as is demon- 

 strated by the controversy occasioned even among the clergy in 

 Spanish America, by the question " whether the savages were to be 

 considered as men, like the Europeans, or not?" of which Azara 

 speaks in the second volume of his Travels. That the Puris do in 

 fact sometimes eat the bodies of their slaughtered enemies, is attested 

 by various witnesses in this part of the country. Father Joao, at St. 

 Fidelis, assured us, that he had once on a journey to the river Itape- 

 mirim, found in the forest the body of a negro, who had been killed 

 by the Puris, without arms and legs, and round which a number of 

 carrion vultures had assembled. We have observed above, that the 

 Puris would never confess to us that they eat human flesh ; but after 

 the authentic testimonies that have been adduced, their own denial 

 cannot have much weight. Our Puri too acknowledged, that his tribe 

 fix the heads of the enemies whom they have killed upon a pole, and 

 dance round them. Even among the Coroados in Minas Geraes, as 

 Mr. Freyreiss affirms, a custom prevails, of putting an arm or foot 

 of an enemy into a pot of caiii, which is afterwards sucked out by 

 the guests. 



During our stay at Muribecca we made numerous additions to our 

 collections of natural history. Notwithstanding the frequent rains, 

 our hunters made good use of the intervals in which the weather was 

 more favourable. In the great woods and marshes on the banks of 

 the Itabapuana, the Muscovy duck (anas ?noschata. Linn.), which we 

 had not before met with, built its nest. This beautiful creature, which 

 is frequently seen tame in Europe, is distinguishable by the blackish 

 red, naked, carunculated skin about the eye and the bill ; the whole 

 plumage is black, variously tinged with green and purple ; the sca- 

 pulars of the wings are snow-white in old birds, but in the young ones 



