The order in which they are met with on ascending the river is as follows:—

I. Marauas.—2. Catauishis.—3. Canamarés.—4. Aratas.—5. Collinas (rivers Shiruan and Invira, affluents of the right bank).—6. Catoquinos (R. Shiruan).— 7. Naiias.—8. Conibos, with their hordes Mauishis, Zaminaiias, and true Conibos.

or be friendly with the whites. One of the houses belonged to a Juri family, and we saw the owner, an erect, noble-looking old fellow, tattooed, as customary with his tribe, in a large patch over the middle of his face, fishing under the shade of a colossal tree in his port with hook and line. He saluted us in the usual grave and courteous manner of the better sort of Indians as we passed by.

We reached the last house, or rather two houses, about ten o’clock, and spent there several hours during the great heat of mid-day. The houses, which stood on a high clayey bank, were of quadrangular shape, partly open like sheds, and partly enclosed with rude mud-walls, forming one or more chambers. The inhabitants, a few families of Marauds, comprising about thirty persons, received us in a frank, smiling manner: a reception which may have been due to Senhor Raiol being an old acquaintance and somewhat of a favourite. None of them were tattooed; but the men had great holes pierced in their ear-lobes, in which they insert plugs of wood, and their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One of the younger men, a fine strapping fellow nearly six feet high, with a large aquiline nose, who seemed to wish to be particularly friendly with me, showed me the use of these lip-holes, by fixing a number of little white sticks in them, and then twisting his mouth about and going through a pantomime to represent defiance in the presence of an enemy. Nearly all the people were disfigured by dark blotches on the skin, the effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in this part of the country. The face of one old man was completely blackened, and looked as though it had been smeared with blacklead, the blotches having coalesced to form one large patch. Others were simply mottled; the black spots were hard and rough, but not scaly, and were margined with rings of a colour paler than the natural hue of the skin. I had seen many Indians and a few half-castes at Tunantins, and afterwards saw others at Fonte Boa blotched in the same way. This disease would seem to be contagious, for I was told that a Portuguese trader became disfigured with it after cohabiting some years with an Indian woman. It is curious that, although prevalent in many places on the Solimoens, no resident of Ega exhibited signs of the disease: the early explorers of the country, on noticing spotted skins to be very frequent in certain localities, thought they were peculiar to a few tribes of Indians. The younger children in these houses on the Sapo were free from spots; but two or three of them, about ten years of age, showed signs of their commencement in rounded yellowish patches on the skin, and these appeared languid and sickly, although the blotched adults seemed not to be affected in their general health. A middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told me he had cured himself of the disorder by strong doses of salsaparilla; the black patches had caused the hair of his beard and eyebrows to fall off, but it had grown again since his cure.

When my tall friend saw me, after dinner, collecting insects along the paths near the houses, he approached, and, taking me by the arm, led me to a mandioca shed, making signs, as he could speak very little Tupi, that he had something to show. I was not a little surprised when, having mounted the girao, or stage of split palm-stems, and taken down an object transfixed to a post, he exhibited, with an air of great mystery,

a large chrysalis suspended from a leaf, which he placed carefully in my hands, saying, “‘ Pana-pand curi” (Tupi: butterfly by-and-by). Thus I found that the metamorphoses of insects were known to these savages; but being unable to talk with my new friend, I could not ascertain what ideas such a phenomenon had given rise to in his mind. The good fellow did not leave my side during the remainder of our stay; but, thinking apparently that I had come here for information, he put himself to considerable trouble to give me all he could. He made a quantity of Hypadt powder, that I might see the process; going about the task with much action and ceremony, as though he were a conjurer performing some wonderful trick.

We left these friendly people about four o’clock in the afternoon, and in descending the umbrageous river, stopped, about half-way down, at another house, built in one of the most charming situations I had yet seen in this country. A clean, narrow, sandy pathway led from the shady port of the house, through a tract of forest of indescribable luxuriance. The buildings stood on an eminence in the middle of a level cleared space; the firm sandy soil, smooth as a floor, forming a broad terrace around them. ‘The owner was a semi-civilised Indian, named Manoel; a dull, taciturn fellow, who, together with his wife and children, seemed by no means pleased at being intruded on in their solitude. The family must have been very industrious; for the plantations were very extensive, and included a little of almost all kinds of cultivated tropical productions: fruit trees, vegetables, and even flowers for ornament. ‘The silent old man had surely a fine appreciation of the beauties of nature: for the site he had chosen commanded a view of surprising magnificence over the summits of the forest; and, to give finish to the prospect, he had planted a large quantity of banana trees in the foreground, thus concealing the charred and dead stumps which would otherwise have marred the effect of the rolling sea of greenery. The only information I could get out of Manoel was, that large flocks of richly-coloured birds came down in the fruit season and despoiled his trees. I collected here a great number of insects, including several new species. The sun set over the tree tops before we left this little Eden, and the remainder of our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, under the chequered shades of the river banks, by the light of the moon.

December 7th.—Arrived at Fonte Boa; a wretched, muddy, and dilapidated village, situated two or three miles within the mouth of a narrow by-stream called the Cayhiar-hy, which runs almost as straight as an artificial canal between the village and the main Amazons. The ~ character of the vegetation and soil here was different from that of all other localities I had hitherto examined; I had planned, therefore, to devote six weeks to the place. Having written beforehand to one of the principal inhabitants, Senhor Venancio, a house was ready for me on landing. The only recommendation of the dwelling was its coolness. It was, in fact, rather damp; the plastered walls bore a crop of green mould, and a slimy moisture oozed through the black, dirty floor; the rooms were large, but lighted by miserable little holes in place of windows. The village is built on a clayey plateau, and the ruinous

houses are arranged round on a large square, which is sochoked up with tangled bushes that it is quite impassable, the lazy inhabitants having allowed the fine open space to relapse into jungle. The stiff clayey eminence is worn into deep gullies which slope towards 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 all fours. 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 advancing 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 half-dozens 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 any 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 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 piims; 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; for, on our side of the square, the causeway, was only two feet broad, and to step over the boundary, formed by a line of slippery stems of palms, was to sink up to the knees in a sticky swamp.

Notwithstanding damp and mosquitoes, I had capital health, and enjoyed myself much at Fonte Boa; swampy and weedy places being generally more healthy than drysones on the Amazons, probably owing to the absence 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 fiowed 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 amongst the most beautiful of the birds. The Indians and half-castes of the village have made their little plantations, and built huts for summer residence on the banks of the rivulets, and my rambles generally terminated at one or other 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 amongst them on the mat.

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