138 THE AMAZON AND MADEIRA RIVERS. 
them in, leading an unsettled, gii)sy life on the Amazon and the lower 
course of its tributaries ; on any of which their light iiirogues, some- 
times in flotillas of tvrenty and thirty, may be seen gliding swiftly along. 
Owing to the accession of rimaway slaves, they exhibit somewhat of the 
mulatto type; and their degeneracy has been so complete as almost 
to have extinguished their original character ; which, said to have been 
a warlike and courageous one, now fitfully breaks out in darmg 
robberies and treaeherons murders. In less than a hundred and flfty 
years even their last remnants will probably have vanished entirely, 
not much to the detriment of the country, which can well spare a 
stubborn clement, incapable of adapting itself to the new order of things 
fast approaching. 
At Sapucaia-Oroca, on the right shore of the Madeira, at about 
125 miles from its mouth, there is a Mura settlement, which consists 
of about a dozen miserable sheds, scarcely large enough to tie the 
celebrated three cords underneath, in which they reijose after their 
fishing or thieving excursions. Below Sapucaia-Oroca, towards Borba 
and the mouth of the Madeira, the population is the same mixed one 
as on the Amazon. The light cabins, peeping j)icturesquely out of 
cacao groves and banana plantations, are inhabited by mestizoes of all 
shades and degrees, and occasionally by a mulatto or sambo, all of 
them able to speak Portuguese just to the extent required for inter- 
com-se with the outer world. Assuredly the time is not far distant 
when easier communications, and the all-levelling influence of trade, will 
have erased the last traces of real Indian life from these regions. 
The above-mentioned Mundrucus, formerly the mightiest and most 
warlike tribe of these parts, have only a few decaying settlements, 
of three or four cottages, on the Lower Madeira, their chief seats 
being on the Mauhes and the Tapajoz. After a long and most violent 
resistance, this ti-ibe made peace with the Portuguese, at the end of 
the last century ; and they have faithfully adhered to them ever since, 
even during the terrible “guerra dos cabanos,” so fateful to all the 
pale-faces. If irroper attention had been devoted to some branches 
of their national industry, such as the preparation of the Guaraua 
and Para tobacco, the manufactm’o of magnificent hammocks and feather 
ornaments, this tribe certainly woidd have had a prosperous career. 
At Manaos we saw some of their chieftains, with their faces tattooed 
all over in black. This unfortunately was the only item of their 
