A small creek traversed the forest beyond Joad Aracti’s house, and entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place; I used to cross it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting-ground. One day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. This phenomenon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the creek became dry with the continued subsidence of the Cupari, the time of rising shifting a little from day to day. I pointed cut the circumstance to Joad Aracu, who had not noticed it before (it was only his second year of residence in the locality), but agreed with me that it must be the “maré.” Yes, the tide! the throb of the great oceanic pulse felt in this remote corner, 530 miles distant from the place where it first strikes the body of fresh water at the mouth of the Amazons. I ° hesitated at first at this conclusion, but on reflecting that the tide was known to be perceptible at Obydos, more than 400 miles from the sea; that at high water in the dry season a large flood from the Amazons enters the mouth of the Tapajos, and that there is but a very small difference of level between that point and the Cuparl, a fact shown by the absence of current in the dry season; I could have no doubt that this conclusion was a correct one.

The fact of the tide being felt 530 miles up the Amazons, passing from the main stream to one of its affluents 380 miles from its mouth, and thence to a branch in the third degree, is a proof of the extreme flatness of the land which forms the lower part of the Amazonian valley. This uniformity of level is shown also in the broad lake-like expanses of water formed, near their mouths, by the principal affluents which cross the valley to join the main river.

August 21st.—Joad Aracti consented to accompany me to the falls, with one of his men, to hunt and fish for me. One of my objects was to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts. We started on the roth, our direction on that day being generally south-west. On the 2oth our course was southerly and south-easterly. This morning (August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of Joao Aracu. The river at this place is from sixty to seventy yards wide, and runs in a zigzag course between steep clayey banks, twenty to fifty feet in height. The houses of the Munduructs, to the number of about thirty, are scattered along the banks for a distance of six or seven miles. The owners appear to have chosen all the most picturesque sites—tracts of level ground at the foot of wooded heights, or little havens with bits of white ‘sandy beach—as if they had an appreciation of natural beauty. Most of the dwellings are conical huts, with walls of framework filled in with mud and thatched with palm leaves, the broad eaves reaching half-way to the ground. Some are quadrangular, and do not differ in structure from those of the semi-civilised settlers in other parts; others are open sheds or ranchos. They seem generally to contain not more than one or two families each. At the first house we learnt that all the fighting men had this morning

returned from a two days’ pursuit of a wandering horde of savages of the Pardraudte tribe, who had strayed this way from the interior lands and robbed the plantations. A little further on we came to the house of the Tushatia, or chief, situated on the top of a high bank, which we had to ascend by wooden steps. There were four other houses in the neighbourhood, all filled with people. A fine old fellow, with face, shoulders, and breast tattooed all over in a crossbar pattern, was the first strange object that caught my eye. Most of the men lay lounging or sleeping in their hammocks. ‘The women were employed in an adjoining shed making farinha, many of them being quite naked, and rushing off to the huts to slip on their petticoats when they caught sight of us. Our entrance aroused the Tushatia from a nap; after rubbing his eyes he came forward and bade us welcome with the most formal politeness, and in very good Portuguese. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, well-made man, apparently about thirty years of age, with handsome regular features, not tattooed, and a quiet good-humoured expression of countenance. He had been several times to Santarem and once to Para, learning the Portuguese language during these journeys. He was dressed in shirt and trousers made of blue-checked cotton cloth, and there was not the slightest trace of the savage in his appearance or demeanour. I was told that he had come into the chieftainship by inheritance, and that the Cupari horde of Munduructs, over which his fathers had ruled before him, was formerly much more numerous, furnishing 300 bows in time of war. They could now scarcely muster forty; but the horde has no longer a close political connection with the main body of the tribe, which inhabits the banks of the Tapajos, six days’ journey from the Cupart settiement.

I spent the remainder of the day here, sending Aracti and the men to fish, whilst I amused myself with the Tushatia and his people. A few words served to explain my errand on the river; he comprehended at once why white men should admire, and travel to collect, the beautiful birds and animals of his country, and neither he nor his people spoke a single word about trading, or gave us any trouble by coveting the things we had brought. He related to me the events of the preceding three days. The Pardraudtes were a tribe of intractable savages, with whom the Munduructis have been always at war. They had no fixed abode, and of course made no plantations, but passed their lives like the wild beasts, roaming through the forest, guided by the sun: wherever they found themselves at night-time, there they slept, slinging their bast hammocks, which are carried by the women, to the trees. They ranged over the whole of the interior country, from the head waters of the Itapacura (a branch of the Tapajos flowing from the east, whose sources lie in about 7° south latitude) to the banks of the Curua (about 3° south latitude), and from the Munduruct settlements on the ‘T'apajos (55° west longitude) to the Pacajaz (50° west longitude). They cross the streams which lie in their course in bark canoes, which they make on reaching the water, and cast away after landing on the opposite side. The tribe is very numerous, but the different hordes obey only their own chieftains. The Munduructs of the upper Tapajos have an expedition on foot against them at the present time, and the Tushatia

supposed that the horde which had just been chased from his maloca were fugitives from that direction. There were about a hundred of them —including men, women, and children. Before they were discovered the hungry savages had uprooted all the macasheira, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane, which the industrious Munduructs had planted for the season, on the east side of the river. As soon as they were seen they made off, but the Tushatia quickly got together all the young men of the settlement, about thirty in number, who armed themselves with guns, bows and arrows, and javelins, and started in pursuit. They tracked them, as before related, for two days through the forest, but lost their traces on the further bank of the Cuparitinga, a branch stream flowing from the north-east. The pursuers thought, at one time, they were close upon them, having found the inextinguished fire of their last encampment. The footmarks of the chief could be distinguished from the rest by their great size and the length of the stride. A small necklace made of scarlet beans was the only trophy of the expedition, and this the Tushatia gave to me.

I saw very little of the other male Indians, as they were asleep in their huts all the afternoon. There were two other tattooed men lying under an open shed, besides the old man already mentioned. One of them presented a strange appearance, having a semicircular black patch in the middle of his face, covering the bottom of the nose and mouth; crossed lines on his back and breast, and stripes down his arms and legs. It is singular that the graceful curved patterns used by the South Sea Islanders are quite unknown among the Brazilian red men; they being all tattooed either in simple lines or patches. The nearest approach to elegance of design which I saw, was amongst the Tuctinas of the Upper Amazons, some of whom have a scroll-like mark on each cheek proceeding from the corner of the mouth. The taste, as far as form is concerned, of the American Indian, would seem to be far less refined than that of the Tahitian and New Zealander.

To amuse the Tushata, I fetched from the canoe the two volumes of Knight’s Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature. The engravings quite took his fancy, and he called his wives, of whom, as I afterwards learnt from Aract, he had three or four, to look at them; one of them was a handsome girl, decorated with necklace and bracelets of blue beads. In a short time others left their work, and I then had a crowd of women and children around me, who all displayed unusual curiosity for Indians. It was no light task to go through the whole of the illustrations, but they would not allow me to miss a page, making me turn back when I tried to skip. The pictures of the elephant, camels, orang-otangs, and tigers, seemed most to astonish them; but they were interested in almost everything, down even to the shells and insects. They recognised the portraits of the most striking birds and mammals which are found in their own country; the jaguar, howling monkeys, parrots, trogons, and toucans. The elephant was settled to be a large kind of tapir; but they made but few remarks, and those in the Munduruct language, of which I understood only two or three words. Their way of expressing surprise was a clicking sound made with the teeth, similar to the one we ourselves use, or a subdued exclamation, Hm! hm! Before I

finished, from fifty to sixty had assembled; there was no pushing or rudeness, the grown-up women letting the young girls and children stand before them, and all behaved in the most quiet and orderly manner possible. The great difference in figure, shape of head, and arrangement of features amongst these people struck me forcibly, and showed how little uniformity there is in these respects amongst the Brazilian Indians, even when belonging to the same tribe. The only points in which they all closely resembled each other were the long, thick, straight, jet-black hair, the warm, coppery-brown tint of the skin and the quiet, rather dull, expression of countenance. I saw no countenance so debased in expression as many seen amongst the Mira tribe, and no head of the Mongolian type—broad, with high cheek bones, and oblique position of the eyes—of which single examples occur amongst the semi-civilised canoemen on the river. Many of them had fine oval faces, with rather long and well-formed features, moderately thin lips, and arched forehead. One little girl, about twelve years of age, had quite a European cast of features, and a remarkably slim figure. They were all clean in their persons; the petticoats of the women being made of coarse cotton cloth obtained from traders, and their hair secured in a knot behind by combs made of pieces of bamboo. The old men had their heads closely cropped, with the exception of a long fringe, which hung down in front over their foreheads.

Page 80 of 120