Chap. IL 
ENTER THE CUPARI. 
109 
through a rich moist clayey valley, covered with forests 
and abounding in game ; whilst the banks of the Tapa- 
jos beyond Aveyros were barren sandy campos, with 
ranges of naked or scantily-wooded hills, forming a kind 
of country which I had always found very unproduc- 
tive in Natural History objects in the dry season which 
had now set in. 
We entered the mouth of the Cupari on the evening 
of the following day (August 3rd). It was not more 
than 100 yards wide, but very deep : we found no bot- 
tom in the middle with a line of eight fathoms. The 
banks were gloriously wooded ; the familiar foliage of 
the cacao growing abundantly amongst the mass of other 
trees reminding me of the forests of the main Amazons. 
We rowed for five or six miles, generally in a south- 
easterly direction although the river had many abrupt 
bends, and stopped for the night at a settler's house situ- 
ated on a high bank and accessible only by a flight of 
rude wooden steps fixed in the clayey slope. The owners 
were two brothers, half-breeds, who with their families 
shared the large roomy dwelling ; one of them was a 
blacksmith, and we found him working with two Indian 
lads at his forge, in an open shed under the shade of 
mango trees. They were the sons of a Portuguese im- 
migrant who had settled here forty years previously and 
married a Munduructi woman. He must have been a far 
more industrious man than the majority of his country- 
men who emigrate to Brazil now-a-days, for there were 
signs of former extensive cultivation at the back of the 
house in groves of orange, lemon, and coffee trees, and 
a large plantation of cacao occupied the lower grounds. 
