VOYAGE TO SANTAREM 6i 
was clad with lofty forest, including very few palms, 
so that it was probably not inundated even when 
the river was full. . . . To westward of this 
appeared the higher hills of Monte Alegre [i.e. the 
Delectable Mountains), and at their foot the town 
of that name, formerly called Curupatuba, from the 
river which enters two leagues higher up. We 
rarely saw the whole breadth of the Amazon with- 
out any intervening island ; and the broadest of 
these intervals of clear water, a little higher up 
than the Velha Pobre, was barely six nautical miles 
across. 
In the rebellion of 1835, to be unable to speak 
Lingoa Geral and to have any beard were crimes 
punished with death by the Cabanos, who carefully 
extirpated any vestiges of hair from their own 
faces ; but in 1849 the fashion had entirely changed. 
Such of our Tapuyas as rejoiced in a few straggling 
hairs on the chin and upper lip, and especially two 
or three of them who might have a drop of white 
blood in their veins, were never weary of admiring 
themselves in the glass, and of making believe to 
comb out their beards. Many of them had guitars 
(called violas) of Lisbon manufacture, costing in 
Para six or eight milreis each, and would spend 
hours together in strumming them to the same 
melancholy tune, consisting of some eight or ten 
notes, and nearly always in a minor key. In the 
evening they would sometimes dance, the per- 
formers being one, two, or three — the step a sort 
of quiet heavy shuffle, varied by occasionally lift- 
ing a leg, and by sundry snaps of the fingers and 
slaps on the thighs. I learnt afterwards that both 
