3i6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST chap, ix 
gloom of the encircling forest, gave to the whole an aspect scarcely 
earthly. The wild and somewhat mournful sounds of their music 
added to the effect, and if heard from a distance, in the dead of 
night, were well calculated to inspire with terror a person ignorant 
of their origin. 
The dances did not cease till after sunrise. In the afternoon 
an attempt was made to renew them with the intention of con- 
tinuing them through another night ; but the cauim had done its 
work so successfully on most of the performers that they were not 
to be roused to further exertion. 
The head-quarters of the Barre nation above re- 
ferred to is now at San Carlos del Rio Negro, and 
people of that nation are scattered throughout the 
whole of the Casiquiarian region 
even to Maypures on the Orinoco. 
They seem originally to have 
inhabited much lower down the 
river, and to have gradually ex- 
tended northward, and even at 
this day as far south as Castan- 
heiro and Camanaos, below the 
falls of Sao Gabriel, the old 
Indians are still Barres. The 
portrait here given of a Barre 
girl eight years old named Maria 
was made during my short stay 
at Castanheiro on my voyage up the Rio Negro. 
[In the original Journals there is no record of 
Spruce having stopped at Castanheiro either on his 
upward or downward voyage. He probably made 
the drawing at a place near, called Mazarubi, where 
he stopped to buy farinha on his voyage up to Sao 
Gabriel.] 
Fig. 17. —Maria, a 
Barre Indian (8 years 
old). 
