ing. The only recommendation of the dwell and to step over the boundary, formed by a ing was its coolness. It was, in fact, de line of slippery steins of palms, was to sink cidedly damp; the plastered walls bore a up to the knees in a sticky swamp. crop of green mould, and a slimy moisture Notwithstanding damp and mosquitoes, I oozed through the black, dirty floor; the had capital health and enjoyed myself much rooms were large, but lighted by miserable at Fonte Boa; swampy and weedy places little holes in place of windows The village being generally more healthy than dry ones is built on a clayey plateau, and the ruinous on the Amazons, probably owing to the abhouses are arranged round a large square, which is so choked up with tangied bushes that it is quite impassable, the lazy inhabitants having allowed the fiue open space to relapse into jungle. The stiff, clayey eminence is worn into deep gullies which slope toward the river, and the ascent from the port in rainy weather is so slippery that one is obliged to crawl up to the streets on allfours. A large tract of ground behind the place is clear of forest, but this, as well as the streets and gardens, is covered with a dense, tough carpet of shrubs, having the same wiry nature as our common heath. Beneath its deceitful covering the soil is always moist and soft, and in the wet season the whole is converted into a glutinous mud swamp. There is a very pretty church in one corner of the square, but in the rainy months of the year (nine out of twelve) the place of worship is almost inaccessible to the inhabitants on account of the mud, the only means of getting to it being by hugging closely the walls and palings, and so advanc. ing sideways step by step. I remained in this delectable place until the 25th of January, 1857. Fonte Boa, in addition to its other amenities, has the reputation throughout the country of being the headquarters of mosquitoes, and it fully deserves the title. They are more annoying in the houses by day than by night, for they swarm in the dark and damp rooms, keeping, in the daytime, near the floor, and settling by halfdozens together on the legs. At night the calico tent is a sufficient protection; but this is obliged to be folded every morning, and in letting it down before sunset, great care is required to prevent even one or two of the tormentors from stealing in beneath, their insatiable thirst for blood and pungent sting making these enough to spoil all comfort. In the forest the plague is much worse; but the forest-mosquito belongs to a different species from that of the town, being much larger, and having transparent wings; it is a little cloud that one carries about one's person every step on a woodland ramble, and their hum is so loud that it prevents one hearing well the notes of birds. The town mosquito has opaque speckled wings, a little less severe sting, and a silent way of going to work; the inhabitants ought to be thankful the big noisy fellows never come out of the forest. In compensation for the abundance of mosquitoes, Fonte Boa has no piums; there was, therefore, some comfort outside one's door in the daytime; the comfort, however, was lessened by there being scarcely any room in front of the house to sit down or walk about in, for, on our side of the square, the causeway was only two feet broad, sence of great radiation of heat from the ground. The forest was extremely rich and picturesque, although the soil was everywhere clayey and cold, and broad pathways threaded it for many a mile over hill and dale. In every hollow flowed a sparkling brook, with perennial and crystal waters. The margins of these streams were paradises of leafiness and verdure; the most striking feature being the variety of ferns, with immense leaves, some terrestrial, others climbing over trees, and two, at least, arborescent. I saw here some of the largest trees I had yet seen. There was one especially, a cedar, whose colossal trunk towered up for more than a hundred feet, straight as an arrow; I never saw its crown, which was lost to view, from below, beyond the crowd of lesser trees which surrounded it. Birds and monkeys in this glorious forest were very abundant; the bear like Pithecia hirsuta being the most remarkable of the monkeys, and the Umbrella Chatterer and Curl-crested Toucans among the most beautiful of the birds. The Indians and half-castes of the village had made their little plantations, and built huts for summer residence on the banks of the rivulets, and my rambles generally terminated at one or cther of these places. The people were always cheerful and friendly, and seemed to be glad when I proposed to join them at their meals, contributing the contents of my provision-bag to the dinner, and squatting down among them on the mat. The village was formerly a place of more importance than it now is, a great number of Indians belonging to the most industrious tribes, Shumánas, Passés, and Cambévas, having settled on the site and adopted civilized habits, their industry being directed by a few whites, who seem to have been men of humane views as well as enterprising traders. One of these old employers, Senhor Guerreiro, a well-educated Paraense, was still trading on the Amazons when I left the country, in 1859; he told me that forty years previously Fonte Boa was a delightful place to live in. The neighborhood was then well cleared, and almost free from mosquitoes, and the Indians were orderly, industrious, and happy. What led to the ruin of the settlement was the arrival of several Portuguese and Brazilian traders of a low class, who, in their eagerness for business, taught the easy-going Indians all kinds of trickery and immorality. They enticed the men and women away from their old employers, and thus broke up the large establishments, compelling the principals to take their capital to other places. At the time of my visit there were few pure-blood_Indians at Fonte Bua, and no true whites The inhabitants seemed to be nearly all mamelucos, and were a looseliving, rustic, plain-spoken, and ignorant set of people. There was no priest or schoolmaster within 150 miles, and had not been any for many years, the people seemed to be almost without government of any kind, and yet crime and deeds of violence appeared to be of very rare occurrence. The principal man of the village, one Senhor Justo, was a big, coarse, energetic fellow, sub-delegado of police, and the only tradesinan who owned a large vessel running directly between Fonte Boa and Pará. He had recently built a large house, in the style of middle-class dwellings of towns, namely, with brick floors and tiled roof, the bricks and tiles having been brought from Pará, 1,500 miles distant, the nearest place where they are manufactured in surplus. When Senhor Justo visited me, he was much struck with the engravings in a file of Illustrated London News, which lay on my table. It was impossible to resist his urgent entreaties to let him have some of them "to look at," so one day he carried off a portion of the papers on loan. A fortnight afterward, on going to request him to return them, I found the engravings had been cut out, and stuck all over the newly whitewashed walls of his chamber, many of them upside down. He thought a room thus decorated with foreign views would increase his importance among his neighbors, and when I yielded to his wish to keep them, was boundless in demonstrations of gratitude, ending by shipping a boat load of urtles for my use at Ega. These neglected and rude villagers still re tained many religious practices which former missionaries or priests had taught them. The ceremony which they observed at Christmas, like that described as practised by negroes in a former chapter, was very pleas ing for its simplicity, and for the heartiness with which it was conducted. The church was opened, dried, and swept clean a few days before Christmas eve, and on the morning all the women and children of the village were busy decorating it with festoons of leaves and wild flowers. Toward midnight it was illuminated inside and out with little oil lamps, made of clay, and the image of the Menino Deus,' or Child-God, in its cradle, was placed below the altar, which was lighted up with rows of wax candles-very lean ones, but the best the poor people could afford. All the villagers assembled soon afterward, dressed in their best, the women with flowers in their hair, and a few simple hymns, totally irrelevant to the occasion, but probably the only ones known by them, were sung kneeling; an old half-caste, with black spotted face, leading off the tunes. This finished, the congregation rose, and then marched in single file up one side of the church and down the other, singing together a very pretty marching chorus, and each one, on reaching the little image, stooping to kiss the end of a ribbon which was tied round its waist. Considering that the ceremony was got up of their own free will, and at consid erable expense, I thought it spoke well for the good intentions and simplicity of heart of these poor neglected villagers. I left Fonte Boa, for Ega, on the 25th of January, making the passage by steamer, down the middle of the current, in sixteen hours. The sight of the clean and neat little town, with its open spaces, close-cropped | grass, broad lake, and white sandy shores, had a most exhilarating effect, after my trip into the wilder parts of the country. The district between Ega and Loret, the first Peruvian village on the river, is, indeed, the most remcte, thinly-peopled, and barbarous of the whole line of the Amazons, from oce.n to ocean. Beyond Loreto, signs of civilizatiou, from the side of the Pacific, begin to be numerous; and from Ega, downward, the improvement is felt from the side of the Atlantic September 5th, 1857.--Again embarked on the Tabatinga, this time for a longer excursion than the last, namely, to St. Paulo de Olivença, a village higher up than any I had yet visited, being 260 miles distant in a straight line from Ega, or about 400 miles, following the bends of the river. The waters are now nearly at their lowest point; but this made no difference to the rate of travelling, night or day. Several of the Paraná-mirims, or by-channels, which the steamer threads in the season of full-water, to save a long circuit, were now dried up. their empty beds looking like deep sandy ravines in the midst of the thick forest. The large sand islands, and miles of sandy beach, were also uncovered; and these, with the swarms of large aquatic birds, storks, herons, ducks, waders, and spoon-bills, which lined their margins in certain places, made the river view much more varied and animated than it is in the season of the flood. Alligators of large size were common near the shores, lazily floating, and heedless of the passing steamer. The passengers amused themselves by shooting at them from the deck with a double-barrelled rifle we had on board. The sign of a mortal hit was the monster turning suddenly over, and remaining floating, with its white belly upward. Lieutenant Nunes wished to have one of the dead animals on board, for the purpose of opening the abdomen, and, if a male, extracting a part which is held in great estimation among Brazilians as a remedio," charm or medicine. The steamer was stopped, and a boat sent, with four strong men, to embark the beast the body, however, was found too heavy to be lifted into the boat; so a rope was passed round it, and the hideous creature towed alongside, and hoisted on deck by means of the crane, which was rigged for the purpose. It had still some sparks of life, and when the knife was applied, lashed its tail, and opened its enormous jaws, sending the crowd of bystanders flying in all directions. A blow with a hatchet, on the crown of the head, gave him his quietus at last. The length of the animal was fifteen feet; but this statement can give but an imperfect idea of its immense bulk and weight. The number of turtles which were seen swimming in quiet shoaly bays passed on the road, also gave us much amusement. They were seen by dozens ahead, with their snouts peering above the surface of the water, and, on the steamer approaching, turning round to stare, but not losing confidence till the vessel had mearly passed, when they appeared to be suddenly smitten with distrust, diving like <ducks under the stream. The river scenery about the mouth of the Japurá is extremely grand, and was the subject of remark among the passengers. LieuTenant Nunes gave it as his opinion that there was no diminution of width or grandeur in the mighty stream up to this point, a distance of 1500 miles from the Atlantic; and yet we did not here see the shores of the river on both sides at once; lines of islands or tracts of alluvial land, having by-channels in the rear, intercepting the view of the northern mainland, and sometimes also of the southern. Beyond the Issa, however, the river becomes evidently narrower, being reduced to an average width of about a mile; there were then no longer those magnificent reaches, with blank horizons, which occur lower down. We had a dark and rainy night after passing Tunantins, and the passengers were all very uneasy on account of the speed at which we were travelling, twelve miles an hour, with every plank vibrating with the force of the engines. Many of them could not sleep, myself among the number. At length, a little after midnight, a sudden shout startled us: "Back her !" (English terms being used in matters relating to steam-engines.) The pilot instantly sprang to the helm, and in a few moments we felt our padddle box brushing against the wall of forest into which we had nearly driven headlong. Fortunately, the water was deep close up to the bank. Early in the morning of the 10th of September we anchored in the port of St. Paulo, after five days' quick travelling from Ega. St. Paulo is built on a high hill, on the southern bank of the river. The hill is formed of the same Tabatinga clay which occurs at intervals over the whole valley of the Amazons, but nowhere rises to so great an elevation us here, the height being about 100 feet above the mean level of the river. The ascent from the port is steep and slippery; steps and resting-places have been made, to lighten the fatigue of mounting, otherwise the village would be almost inac cessible, especially to porters of luggage and cargo, for there are no means of making a circuitous road of more moderate slope, the hill being steep on all sides, and surrounded by dense forests and swamps. The place contains about 500 inhabitants, chiefly half castes and Indians of the Tucúnia and Colna tribes, who are very little improved from their primitive state. The streets are narrow, and in rainy weather inches deep in mud; many houses are of substantial structure, but in a ruinous condition, and the Dlace altogether presents the appearance, like Fonte Boa, of having seen better days. Signs of commerce, such as meet the eye at Ega, could scarcely be expected in this remote spot, situate 1800 miles, or seven months round voyage by sailing-vessels, from Pará, the nearest market for produce. A very short experience showed that the inhabitants were utterly debased, the few Portuguese and other immigrants having, instead of promoting industry, adopted the lazy mode of life of the Indians, spiced with the practice of a few strong vices of their own introduction. The head-man of the village, Senhor Antonia Ribeiro, half-white, half-Tucúna, prepared a house for me on landing, and introduced me to the principal people. The summit of the hill is grassy table-land, of two or three hundred acres in extent. The soil is not wholly clay, but partly sand and gravel; the village itself, however, stands chiefly on clay, and the streets, therefore, after heavy rains, become filled with muddy puddles. On damp nights the chorus of frogs and toads which swarm in weedy back yards, creates such a bewildering uproar that it is impossible to carry on a conversation in-doors except by shouting. My house was damper even than the one I occupied at Fonte Boa, and this made it extremely difficult to keep my collections from being spoiled by mould. Rut the general humidity of the atmosphere in this part of the river was evidently much greater than it is lower down; it appears to increase gradually in ascending from the Atlantic to the Andes. It was impossible at St. Paulo to keep salt for many days in a solid state, which was not the case at Ega, when the baskets in which it is contained were well wrapped in leaves. Six degrees further westward, namely, at the foot of the Andes, the dampness of the climate of the Amazonian forest region appears to reach its acme, for Poeppig found at Chinchao that the most refined sugar in a few days dissolved into syrup, and the best gunpowder became liquid, even when enclosed in canisters. At St. Paulo refined sugar kept pretty well in tin boxes, and I had no difficulty in keeping my gunpowder dry in canisters, although a gun loaded over-night could very seldom be fired off in the morning. I remained at St. Paulo five months; five years would not have been sufficient to exhaust the treasures of its neighborhood in zoology and botany. Although now a forest-rambler of ten years' experience, the beautiful forest which surrounds this settlement gave me as much enjoyment as if I had only just landed for the first time in a tropical country. The plateau on which the village is built extends on one side nearly a mile into the forest, but on the other side the descent into the lowland begins close to the streets, the hill sloping abruptly toward a boggy meadow surrounded by woods, through which a narrow winding path continues the slope down to a cool, shady glen, with a brook of icy-cold water flowing at the bottom. At mid-day the vertical sun pone trates into the gloomy depths of this remantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green, and black tanagers and brightly-colored butterflies sport about in the stray beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest in ulmost every direction, and one is constantly meeting, while rambling through the thickets, with trickling rills and bubbling springs, so well provided is the country with moisture. Some of the rivulets flow over a sandy and pebbly bed, and the banks of all are clothed with the most magnificent vege tation conceivable. I had the almost daily habit, in my solitary walks, of resting on the clean banks of these swift-flowing streams, and bathing for an hour at a time in their bracing waters; hours which now remain among my most pleasant memories. The broad forest roads continue, as I was told, a distance of several days' journey into the interior, which is peopled by Tucúnas and other Indians, living in scattered houses and villages, nearly in their primitive state, the nearest village lying about six miles from St. Paulo. The banks of all the streams are dotted with palm-thatched dwellings of Tucúnas, all half-buried in the leafy wilderness, the scattered families having chosen the coolest and shadiest nooks for their abodes. I frequently heard in the neighborhood of these huts the " realejo" or organ bird (Cyphorhinus cantans), the most remarkable song ster, by far, of the Amazonian forests. When its singular notes strike the ear for the first time the impression cannot be resisted that they are produced by a human voice-some musical boy must be gathering fruit in the thickets, and is singing a few notes to cheer himself. The tones become more fluty and plaintive; they are now those of a flageolet, and notwithstanding the utter impossibility of the thing, one is for the moment convinced that somebody is playing that instrument. No bird is to be seen, however closely the surrounding trees and bushes may be scanned, and yet the voice seems to come from the thicket close to one's ears. The ending of the song is rather disappointing. It begins with a few very slow and mellow notes, following each other like the commencement of an air; one listens expecting to hear a complete strain, but an abrupt pause occurs, and then the song breaks down, finishing with a number of clicking unmusical sounds like a piping barrel-organ out of wind and tune. I never heard the bird on the Lower Amazons, and very rarely heard it even at Ega; it is the only songster which makes an impression on the natives, who sometimes rest their paddles while travelling in their small canoes along the shady by-streams, as if struck by the mysterious sounds. The Tucúna Indians are a tribe resembling much the Shumánas, Passés, Jurís, and Mauhés in their physical appearance and customs. They lead, like those tribes, a settled agricultural life, each horde obeying a chief of more or less influence, according to his energy and ambition, and possessing its pajé or medicine man, who fosters its superstitions; but they are much more idle and debauched than other Indians belonging to the superior tribes. They are not so warlike and loyal as the Mundurucús, although resembling them in many respects, nor have they the slender figures, dignified mien, and gentle disposition of the Passés: there are, however, no trenchant points of difference to distinguish them from these highest of all the tribes. Both men and women are tattooed, the pattern being sometimes a scroil on each cheek, but generally rows of short straight lines on the face. Most of the older people wear bracelets anklets, and garters of tapir hide or tough bark; in their homes they wear no other dress except on festival days, when they ornament themselves with feathers or masked cloaks made of the inner bark of a tree. They were very shy when I made my first visits to their habitations in the for est, all scampering off to the thicket when I approached, but on subsequent days they became more familiar, and I found them a harmless, good-natured people. A great part of the horde living at the first Maloca or village dwell in a common habitation, a large oblong hut built and arranged inside with such a disregard of all symmetry that it appeared as though constructed by a number of hands, each working independently, stretching a rafter or fitting in a piece of thatch, without reference to what his fellow-laborers were doing. The walls as well as the roof are covered with thatch of paln leaves, each piece consisting of leaflets plaited and attached in a row to a lath many feet in length. Strong upright posts support the roof, hammocks being slung between them, leaving a free space for passage and for fires in the middle, and on one side is an elevated stage (girao) overhead, formed of split palmsteins. The Tucúnas excel most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupí sauce, caysúma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colors. These jars, with cookingpots, smaller jars for holding water, blowguns, quivers, matirí bags full of small articles, baskets, skins of animals, and so forth, form the principal part of the furniture of their huts, both large and small. The dead bodies of their chiefs are interied, the knees doubled up, in large jars under the floors of their huts. The semi-religious dances and drinking bouts usual among the settled tribes of Amazonian Indians are indulged in to greater excess by the Tucfinas than they are by most other tribes. The Juruparí or Demon is the ouly superior being they have any concep tion of, and his name is mixed up with all their ceremonies, but it is difficult to ascertain what they consider to be his attributes. He seems to be believed in simply as a mischievous imp, who is at the bottom of all with great spirit for three or four days, flagging during the heats of mid-day, but renewjng itself with increased vigor every evening. During the whole time the bride, decked out with feather ornaments, was under the charge of the older squaws, whose busiuess seemed to be sedulously to keep the bridegroom at a safe distance until the end of the dreary period of dancing and boosing. The Tucúnas have the singular custom, in common with the Collíuas and Mauhés, of treating their young girls, on their showing the first signs of womanhood, as if they had committed some crime. They are sent up to the girao under the smoky and filthy roof, and kept there on very meagre diet, sometimes for a whole month. I heard of one poor girl dying under this treatment. The only other tribe of this neighborhood concerning which I obtained any information where the Majerónas, whose territory embraces several hundred miles of the western bank of the River Jauarí, an affluent of the Solimoens, 120 miles beyond St. Paulo. These are a fierce, indomitable, and hostile people, like the Aráras of the River Madeira; they are also cannibals. The navigation of the Jauarí is rendered impossible on account of the Majerónas lying in wait on its banks to intercept and murder all travellers, especially whites. those mishaps of their daily life, the causes of which are not very immediate or obvious to their dull understandings. It is vain to try to get information out of a Tucúna on this subject; they affect great mystery when the name is mentioned, and give very confused answers to questions. It was clear, however, that the idea of a spirit as a beneficent God or Creator had not entered the minds of these Indians. There is great similarity in all their ceremonies and mummeies, whether the object is a wedding, the celebration of the feast of fruits, the plucking of the hair from the heads of their children, or a holiday got up simply out of a love of dissipation. Some of the tribe on these occasions deck themselves with the bright-colored feathers of parrots and macaws. The chief wears a head-dress or cap made by fixing the breast-feathers of the Toucan on a web of Bromelia twine, with erect tailplumes of macaws rising from the crown. The ciuctures of the arms and legs are also then ornamented with bunches of feathers. Others wear masked dresses. These are long cloaks reaching below the knee, and made of the thick whitish-colored inner bark of a tree, the fibres of which are interlaced in so regular a manner, that the material looks like artificial cloth. The cloak covers the head; two holes are cut out for the eyes, a large round piece of the Four months before my arrival at St. Paucloth stretched on a rim of flexible wood lo, two young half-castes (nearly white) of is stitched on each side to represent ears, the village went to trade on the Jauarí, the and the features are painted in exag- Majerónas having shown signs of abating gerated style with yellow, red, and black their hostility for a year or two previously. Streaks. The dresses are sewn into the proper They had not been long gone, when their shapes with thread made of the inner bark canoe returned with the news that the two of the Uaissíma tree. Sometimes grotesque young fellows had been shot with arrows, head-dresses, representing monkeys' busts or roasted, and eaten by the savages. José Paheads of other animals, made by stretching tricio, with his usual activity in the cause of cloth or skin over a basket-work frame, are law and order, despatched a party of ained worn at these holidays. The biggest and men of the National Guard to the place to ugliest mask represents the Juruparí. In make inquiries, and, if the murder should these festival habiliments the Tucínas go appear to be unprovoked, to retaliate. When through their monotonous see-saw and stamp. they reached the settlement of the horde who ing dances, accompanied by singing and had eaten the two men, it was found evacudrumming, and keep up the sport often for ated, with the exception of one girl, who had three or four days and nights in succession, been in the woods when the rest of her peodrinking enormous quantities of caysúma, ple had taken flight, and whom the guards smoking tobacco, and snuffing paricá powder. brought with them to St. Paulo. It was I could not learn that there was any deep gathered from her, and from other Indians symbolical meaning in these masked dances, on the Jauarí, that the young men had or that they commemorated any past event brought their fate on themselves through in the history of the tribe. Some of them improper conduct toward the Majeróna seem vaguely intended as a propitiation of women. The girl, on arriving at St. Paulo, the Jurupari, but the masker who represents was taken care of by Senhor José Patricio, the demon sometimes gets drunk along with baptized under the name of Maria, and taught the rest, and is not treated with any rever. Portuguese. I saw a good deal of her, for ence. From all I could make out, these In- my friend sent her daily to my house to fill thians preserve no memory of events going the water jars, make the fire, and so forth. I beyond the times of their fathers or grand also gained her good will by extracting the fathers. Almost every joyful event is made grub of an Estrus fly from her back, and the occasion of a festival-weddings among thus cured her of a painful tumor. She was the rest. A young man who wishes to wed decidedly the best-humored and, to all apa Tucúna girl has to demand her hand of her pearance, the kindest-hearted specimen of parents, who arrange the rest of the affair her race I had yet seen. She was tall and and fix a day for the marriage ceremony. A very stout; in color much lighter than the wedding which took place in the Christmas ordinary Indian tint, and her ways altoweek while I was at St. Paulo, was kept up gether were more like those of a careless, |