FROM RIO DE JANRTRO TO TEIE RAPIDS OF THE MADEIRA. 
4S 
half-finished little church. The ouly white man there, a greedy, am- 
Vtitious priest, is taking advantage of the ignorance of his poor Indian 
parishioners in the most shamefnl manner ; and unfortunately ho is not 
an isolated example. 
These A’igarios, and the stipcrior officers of the Guarda Nacional, 
must bo counted among the greatest drawbacks to the future prosperity 
of these districts ; for the latter have the privilege of selecting men 
for military service in the line ; and they geuerally abuse this right 
in the grossest way, leaving unmolested those who will work for them 
without wages, and sending away those who shoAV a di.spositiou to resist. 
The Brazilian Govenunent is more or less acquainted with this state 
of things ; but the Ministers plead the great distance, and take few, if any, 
measures against these petty tjwants, on account of the number of votes 
they dispose of at the elections of the Deputies for the Xatioual Assembly, 
Above Borba, which is said to have formerly produced good tobacco, 
there are some cacao-plantations, whose fruit at tire time of our passing 
there (in June) were almost ripe and of a bright yellow colour ; and about 
this part of the river also the first high trunks of the caoutchouc-tree 
are seeu— the Siphonia elastica, or Serinya, as it is called here. On the 
Amazon and lower Madeira these valuable itlants are almost destroyed by 
continuous withdrawal of their milky sap. 
The huts of some caoutchouc-gatherers (Seringueiros) are seen now 
and then— loAV roofs of palm-lea ves, beneath one end of which there is 
a raisi'd floor or framework of lath, one or two yards from the ground, 
to which the inhabitants retii-e at high water, when necessity obliges 
them to lead almost an {impliibious life. 
I'he next settlement on the right bank of the Madeira is Sapucaia- 
OndcA, a few huts of the Mura Indians, a tribe despised and pursued by 
all others for their thievi.shuess and unsettled, gqisy-like life. Especially 
the mighty Mtindurucvi tribe seems to take the Risk to heart of 
annihilating them to the last man. 
As thence to Exaltacion on the Mamord, and to Fort Principe da 
Bcira on the Guapore, there is not one settlement to be foimd of more 
than two or three cabins (even at Crato thewe is but one better house, 
and a few low straw huts) ; and as larger settlements also never existed 
before on the Madeira, one cannot but wonder that, on both old and 
modern maps, there is a great number of towns and hatnlets inscribed in 
these wildernesses. 
