August 2nd.—Left Aveyros, having resolved to ascend a branch river, the Cupari, which enters the Tapajos about eight miles above this village instead of going forward along the main stream. I should have liked to visit the settlements of the Munduruct tribe, which lie beyond the first cataract of the Tapajos, if it had been compatible with the other objects I had in view. But to perform this journey a lighter canoe than mine would have been necessary, and six or eight Indian paddlers, which in my case it was utterly impossible to obtain. There would be, however, an opportunity of seeing this fine race of people on the Cupari, as a horde was located towards the head waters of this stream. The distance from Aveyros to the last civilised settlement on the Tapajos, Itaituba, is about forty miles. The falls commence a short distance beyond this place. Ten formidable cataracts or rapids then succeed each other at intervals of a few miles; the chief of which are the Coaitd, the Buburé, the Salto Grande (about thirty feet high), and the Montanha. The canoes of Cuyaba tradesmen which descend annually to Santarem are obliged to be unloaded at each of these, and the cargoes carried by land on the backs of Indians, whilst the empty vessels are dragged by ropes over the obstructions. The Cupari was described to me as flowing through a rich moist clayey valley, covered with forests and abounding in game; whilst the banks of the Tapajos beyond Aveyros were barren sandy campos, with ranges of naked or scantily-wooded hills, forming a kind of country which I had always found very unproductive in Natural History objects in the dry season, which had now set in. We entered the mouth of the Cupari on the evening of the following day (August 3rd). It was not more than 100 yards wide, but very deep: we found no bottom in the middle with a line of eight fathoms. The banks were gloriously wooded; the familiar foliage of the cacao growing abundantly amongst the mass of other trees, reminding me of the forests of the main Amazons. We rowed for five or six miles, generally in a south-easterly direction, although the river had many abrupt bends, and stopped for the night at a settler’s house, situated on a high bank, and accessible only by a flight of rude wooden steps fixed in the clayey slope. The owners were two brothers, half-breeds, who with their families shared the large roomy dwelling; one of them was a blacksmith, and we found him working with two Indian lads at his forge, in an open shed under the shade of mango trees. They were the sons of a Portuguese immigrant, who had settled here forty years previously, and married a Munduruci woman. He must have been a far more industrious man than the majority of his countrymen who emigrate to Brazil now-a-days, for there were signs of former extensive cultivation at the back of the house, in groves of orange, lemon, and coffee trees, and a large plantation of cacao occupied the lower grounds.

The next morning one of the brothers brought me a beautiful opossum, which had been caught in the fowl house a little before sunrise. It was not so large as a rat, and had soft brown fur, paler beneath and on the face, with a black stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I had so far obtained: but the number of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the

shrews of Europe; shrew mice, and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent fromTropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, sleeping during the day in hollow trees, and coming forth at night to prey on birds in their roosting places. It is very difficult to rear poultry in this country, on account of these small opossums, scarcely a night passing, in some parts, in which the fowls are not attacked by them.

August 5th.—The river reminds me of some parts of the Jaburt channel, being hemmed in by two walls of forest, rising to the height of at least 100 feet, and the outlines of the trees being concealed throughout by a dense curtain of leafy creepers. The impression of vegetable profusion and overwhelming luxuriance increases at every step; the deep and narrow valley of the Cupari has a moister climate than the banks of the Tapajos. We have now frequent showers, whereas we left everything parched up by the sun at Aveyros.:

After leaving the last sitio we advanced about eight miles, and then stopped at the house of Senhor Antonio Malagueita, a mameluco settler, whom we had been recommended to visit. His house and outbuildings were extensive, the grounds well weeded, and the whole wore an air of comfort and well-being which is very uncommon in this country. A bank of indurated white clay sloped gently up from the tree-shaded port to the house, and beds of kitchen-herbs extended on each side, with (rare sight!) rose and jasmine trees in full bloom. — Senhor Antonio, a rather tall middle-aged man, with a countenance beaming with good nature, came down to the port as soon as we anchored. I was quite a stranger to him, but he had heard of my coming, and seemed to have made preparations. I never met with a heartier welcome. On entering the house, the wife, who had more of the Indian tint and features than her husband, was equally warm and frank in her greeting. Senhor Antonio had spent his younger days at Para, and had acquired a profound respect for Englishmen. I stayed here two days. My host accompanied me in my excursions; in fact, his attentions, with those of his wife and the host of relatives of all degrees who constituted his household, were quite troublesome, as they left me not a moment’s privacy from morning till night.

We had together several long and successful rambles, along a narrow pathway which extended several miles into the forest. I here met with a new insect pest, one which the natives may be thankful is not spread more widely over the country; it was a large brown fly of the Tabanidz family (genus Pangonia), with a proboscis half an inch long and sharper than the finest needle. It settled on our backs by twos and threes at a time, and pricked us through our thick cotton shirts, making us start and cry out with the sudden pain. I secured a dozen or two as specimens. As an instance of the extremely confined ranges of certain species, it may be mentioned that I did not find this insect in any other part of the country, except along half a mile or so of this gloomy forest road. We were amused at the excessive and almost absurd tameness of a fine Mutum or Curassow turkey that ran about the house. It was a

large glossy-black species (the Mitu tuberosa), having an orange-coloured beak, surmounted by a bean-shaped excrescence of the same hue. It seemed to consider itself as one of the family: attended at all the meals, passing from one person to another round the mat to be fed, and rubbing the sides of its head in a coaxing way against their cheeks or shoulders. At night it went to roost on a chest in a sleeping-room beside the hammock of one of the little girls, to whom it seemed particularly attached, following her wherever she went about the grounds. I found this kind of Curassow bird was very common in the forests of the Cupari; but it is rare on the Upper Amazons, where an allied species, which has a round instead of a bean-shaped waxen excrescence on the beak (Crax globicera), is the prevailing kind. These birds in their natural state never descend from the tops of the loftiest trees, where they live in small flocks and build their nests. The Mitu tuberosa lays two rough-shelled white eggs; it is fully as large a bird as the common turkey, but the flesh when cooked is drier and not so well-flavoured. It is difficult'to find the reason why these superb birds have not been reduced to domestication by the Indians, seeing that they so readily become tame. The obstacle offered by their not breeding in confinement, which is probably owing to their arboreal habits, might perhaps be overcome by repeated experiment; but for this the Indians probably had not sufficient patience or intelligence. The reason cannot lie in their insensibility to the value of such birds; for the common turkey, which has been introduced into the country, is much prized by them. We had an unwelcome visitor whilst at anchor in the port of Joad Malagueita. I was awoke a little after midnight, as I lay in my little cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head, which was succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging in the water. I got up; but all was again quiet, except the cackle of fowls in our hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel, about three feet from the cabin door. I could find no explanation of the circumstance, and, my men being all ashore, I turned in again and slept till morning. I then found my poultry loose about the canoe, and a large rent at the bottom of the hen-coop, which was about two feet from the surface of the water: a couple of fowls were missing. Senhor Antonio said the depredator was a Sucurujui (the Indian name for the Anaconda, or great water serpent, Eunectes murinus), which had for months past been haunting this part of the river, and had carried off many ducks and fowls from the ports of various houses. I was inclined to doubt the fact of a serpent striking at its prey from the water, and thought an alligator more likely to be the culprit, although we had not yet met with alligators in the river. Some days afterwards the young men belonging to the different sitios agreed together to go in search of the serpent. They began in a systematic manner, forming two parties, each embarked in three or four canoes, and starting from points several miles apart, whence they gradually approximated, searching all the little inlets on both sides the river. The reptile was found at last, sunning itself on a log at the mouth of a muddy rivulet, and despatched with harpoons. I saw it the day after it was killed; it

was not a very large specimen, measuring only eighteen feet nine inches in length and sixteen inches in circumference at the widest part of the body. I measured skins of the Anaconda afterwards, twenty-one feet in length and two feet in girth. The reptile has a most hideous appearance, owing to its being very broad in the middle, and tapering abruptly at both ends. It is very abundant in some parts of the country, nowhere more so than in the Lago Grande, near Santarem, where it is often seen coiled up in the corners of farmyards, and is detested for its habit of carrying off poultry, young calves, or whatever animal it can get within reach of.

At Ega a large Anaconda was once near making a meal of a young lad about ten years of age, belonging to one of my neighbours. The father and his son went one day in their montaria a few miles up the Teffé to gather wild fruit; landing on a sloping sandy shore, where the boy was left to mind the canoe whilst the man entered the forest. The beaches of the Teffé form groves of wild guava and myrtle trees, and during most months of the year are partly overflown by the river. Whilst the boy was playing in the water under the shade of these trees, a huge reptile of this species stealthily wound its coils around him, unperceived until it was too late to escape. His cries brought the father quickly to the rescue, who rushed forward, and seizing the Anaconda boldly by the head, tore his jaws asunder. ‘There appeared to be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous bulk, and lives to a great age, for I heard of specimens having been killed which measured forty-two feet in length, or double the size of the largest I had an opportunity of examining. The natives of the Amazons country universally believe in the existence of a monster water-serpent, said to be many score fathoms in length, which appears successively in different parts of the river. They call it the Mai d’agoa—the mother, or spirit, of the water. This fable, which was doubtless suggested by the occasional appearance of Sucurujtis of unusually large size, takes a great variety of forms, and the wild legends form the subject of conversation amongst old and young, over the wood fires in lonely settlements.

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