OF THE AMAZON. 
495 
swer, “Yes.'' I have often in this manner obtained, as 
I thought, information, which persons better acquainted 
with the facts have assured me was quite erroneous. 
These observations however must only be taken to apply 
to those almost uncivilized nations who do not under- 
stand, at all clearly, any language in which you can com- 
municate with them. On what is obtained from Indians 
speaking Portuguese readily, I have always been able to 
rely, and I believe that much trustworthy information 
can be obtained from them. Such however is not the 
case with the wild tribes, who are totally incapable of 
understanding any connected sentence of the language 
in which they are addressed ; and I fear the story of the 
Amazons must be placed with those of the wild man- 
monkeys, which Humboldt mentions and which tradi- 
tion I also met with, and of the “ curupira," or demon 
of the woods, and “ carbunculo," of the Upper Amazon 
and Peru ; but of which superstitions we have no such 
satisfactory elucidations as I think has been now given 
of the warlike Amazons. 
To return to our Uaupes^Indians and their toilet. We 
find their daily costume enlivened with a few other or- 
naments ; a circlet of parrots' tail-feathers is generally 
worn round the head, and the cylindrical white quartz- 
stone, already described in my Narrative (p. 278), is 
invariably carried on the breast, suspended from a neck- 
lace of black seeds. 
At festivals and dances they decorate themselves with 
a complicated costume of feather head-dresses, cinctures, 
armlets, and leg ornaments, which I have sufficiently 
described in the account of their dances (p. 296). 
