478 
ON THE ABORIGINES 
trades quickly and well, and are a quiet, good-natured, 
inofFensive people. Tliey form tlie crews of most of the 
Para trading canoes. Their main peculiarity consists in 
their short stature, which is more observable than in any 
other tribe I am acquainted with. It may be as well, 
before proceeding further, to mention the general cha- 
racteristics of the Amazon Indians, from which the par- 
ticular tribes vary but very slightly. 
They are, a skin of a coppery or brown colour of* va- 
rious shades, often nearly the tint of smooth Honduras 
mahogany, — jet-black straight hair, thick, and never 
curled, — black eyes, and very little or no beard. With 
regard to their features, it is impossible to give any 
general characteristics. In some the whole face is wide 
and rather flattened, but I never could discern an un- 
usual obliquity of the eyes, or projection of the cheek- 
bones ; in many, of both sexes, the most perfect regula- 
rity of features exists, and there are numbers who in 
colour alone difler from a good-looking European. 
Their figures are generally superb ; and I have never 
felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue, as 
at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human 
form. The development of the chest is such as I be- 
lieve never exists in the best-formed European, exhibit- 
ing a splendid series of convex undulations, without a 
hollow in any part of it. 
Some native tribes exist in the rivers Guama, Capim, 
and Acarra, just above the city of Para, but I could 
learn little definite about them. High up the rivers 
Tocantins and Araguaya, there are numerous tribes of 
tall well-formed Indians, some of whom I have seen in 
