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-Tuctina, 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 indoors 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 spoilt by mould. But 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. ©

The principal residents at St. Paulo were the priest, a white from Parad, who spent his days and most of his nights in gambling and rum-drinking, corrupting the young fellows, and setting the vilest example to the Indians; the sub-delegado, an upright, open-hearted, and loyal negro, whom I have before mentioned, Senhor José Patricio; the Juiz de Paz, a half-caste named Geraldo, and lastly, Senhor Antonio Ribeiro, who was Director of the Indians. Geraldo and Ribeiro were my near neighbours, but they took offence at me after the first few days, because I would not join them in their drinking bouts, which took place about every third day. They used to begin early in the morning with cashag¢a mixed with grated ginger, a powerful drink which used to excite them almost to madness. Neighbour Geraldo, after these morning potations, used to station himself opposite my house and rave about foreigners, gesticulating in a threatening manner towards me, by the hour. After becoming sober in the evening, he usually came to offer me the humblest apologies, driven to it, I believe, by his wife, he himself being quite unconscious of this breach of good manners. The wives of the St. Paulo worthies, however, were generally as bad as their husbands; nearly all the women being hard drinkers, and corrupt to the last degree. Wife-beating naturally flourished under such a state of things. I found it always best to lock myself in-doors after sunset, and take no notice of the thumps and screams which used to rouse the village in different quarters throughout the night, especially at festival times.

The only companionable man I found in the place, except José Patricio, who was absent most part of the time, was the negro tailor of the village, a tall, thin, grave young man, named Mestre Chico (Master Frank), whose acquaintance I had made at Pard several years previously. He was a free negro by birth, but had had the advantage of kind treatment in his younger days, having been brought up by a humane and sensible man, one Captain Basilio, of Pernambuco, his padrinho, or godfather. He neither drank, smoked, nor gambled, and was thoroughly disgusted at the depravity of all classes in this wretched little settlement, which he intended to quit as soon as possible. When he visited me at night, he used to knock at my shutters in a manner we had agreed on, it being necessary to guard against admitting drunken neighbours, and we then spent the long evenings most pleasantly, working and conversing. His manners were courteous, and his talk well worth listening to, for the shrewdness and good sense of his remarks. I first met Mestre Chico at the house of an old negress of Parad, Tia Rufina (Aunt Rufina), who used to take charge of my goods when I was absent on a voyage, and this affords me an opportunity of giving a few further instances of the excellent qualities of free negroes in a country where they are not wholly condemned to a degrading position by the pride or hatred of the white race. This old woman was born a slave, but like many others in the large towns of Brazil, she had been allowed to trade on her own account, as market-woman, paying a fixed sum daily to her owner, and keeping for herself all her surplus gains. In a few years she had saved sufficient money to purchase her freedom, and that of her grown-up son. This done, the old lady continued to strive until she had earned enough to buy the house in which she lived, a considerable property situated in one of the principal streets. When I returned from the interior, after seven years’ absence from Parad, I found she was still advancing in prosperity, entirely through her own exertions (being a widow) and those of her son, who continued, with the most regular industry, his trade as blacksmith, and was now building a number of small houses on a piece of unoccupied land attached to her property. I found these and many other free negroes most trustworthy people, and admired the constancy of their friendships and the gentleness and cheerfulness of their manners towards each other. They showed great disinterestedness in their dealings with me, doing me many a piece of service without a hint at remuneration; but this may have been partly due to the name of Englishman, the knowledge of our national generosity towards the African race being spread far and wide amongst the Brazilian negroes.

I remained at St. Paulo five months; five years would not have been - suificient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and Botany. Although now a forest-ramblef 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 Zoology revealed plainly the nearer proximity of the locality to the eastern slopes of the Andes than any I had yet visited, by the first appearance of many of the peculiar and richly coloured forms (especially of insects), which are known only as inhabitants of the warm and moist valleys of New Granada and Peru. 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 towards 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 penetrates into the glooniy depths of this romantic spot, lighting up the leafy banks of the rivulet and its clean sandy margins, where numbers of scarlet, green, and black tanagers and brightly-coloured butterflies sport about in the stray beams. Sparkling brooks, large and small, traverse the glorious forest in almost every direction, and one is constantly meeting, whilst 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 vegetation 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 amongst 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 Tucinas 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 Tuctinas, 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 neighbourhood of these huts the “ realejo” or organ bird (Cyphorhinus cantans), the most remarkable songster, 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 whilst travelling in their small canoes along the shady by-streams, as if struck by the mysterious sounds.

The Tuctna Indians are a tribe resembling much the Shumanas, Passés, Jurfs, 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 Munduructs, 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 scroll 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 forest, all scampering off to the thicket when I approached, but on subsequent days they became more familiar, and I found them a harm. less, 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-labourers were doing. The walls as well as the roof are covered with thatch of palm-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 (g¢?vao) overhead, formed of split palm-stems. The Tuctnas excel most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars, for Tucupf sauce, caystma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours. These jars, with cooking-pots, smaller jars for holding water, blow-pipes, quivers, matirf 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 interred, the knees doubled up, in large jars under the floors of their huts.

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