476 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
The villages on the Amazon and elsewhere have 
in the first instance been formed of the Indians in 
the immediate neighbourhood who were induced or 
compelled to gather themselves together, build 
houses, and plant mandiocca. When the population 
began to fall off, expeditions of soldiers were sent 
towards the head-waters of the tributary rivers to 
attack the Indian settlements by night, kill all 
who resisted and carry off the rest, especially the 
women and children. As the Portuguese taught 
the Lingoa Geral to all the Indians, this language 
soon absorbed all the rest ; but in the Spanish 
territory, as no other medium of communication 
has been used between whites and Indians but 
Spanish, and the whites have not taken particular 
pains to teach this language to the Indians, the 
latter still constantly speak the native languages in 
conversing with one another ; and the language of, 
any pueblo is that of its first inhabitants. 
In every pueblo where there is no commerce 
its duration is necessarily brief and uncertain ; 
for when all the land suitable for cultivation is 
exhausted in the vicinity of any settlement, the 
inhabitants betake themselves to some other spot, 
either bodily or more frequently by one or two 
families at a time. Of the pueblos on the Rio 
Negro, on the Venezuelan side, only tw^o, San 
Miguel and Maroa, date from the time of the 
Spaniards. 
The agrarian Indians, who of their own accord, 
and before any whites visited them, had settled 
down to the cultivation of the soil (their settle- 
ments in Brazil are called mallocas), must also 
have frequently migrated from the same cause ; 
