Gti

Blow-pipe, quiver, and arrow.

Zarabatana, or blow-pipe. This instrument is used by all the Indian tribes on the Upper Amazons. It is generally nine or ten feet long, and is made of two separate lengths of wood, each scooped out so as to form one-half of the tube. To do this with the necessary accuracy requires an enormous amount of patient labour, and considerable mechanical ability, the tools used being simply the incisor teeth of the Paca and Cutia. The two half-tubes when finished are secured together by a very close and tight spirally-wound strapping, consisting of long flat strips of Jacitara, or the wood of the climbing palm-tree; and the whole is smeared afterwards with black wax, the production of a Melipona bee. The pipe tapers towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouth-piece, made of wood, is fitted in the broad end. A full-sized Zaradbatana is heavy, and can only be used by an adult Indian who has had great practice. The young lads learn to shoot with smaller and lighter tubes. When Mr. Wallace and I had lessons at Barra in the use of the blowpipe, of Julio, a Juri Indian, then in the employ of Mr. Hauxwell, an English bird-collector, we found it very difficult to hold steadily the long tubes. The arrows are made from the hard rind of the leaf-stalks of certain palms, thin strips being cut, and rendered as sharp as needles by scraping the ends with a knife or the tooth of an animal. They are

Co-mother; the term expressing the relationship of a mother to the godfather of her child.

winged with a little oval mass of samaiima silk (from the seed-vessels or the silk-cotton tree, Eriodendron samaiima), cotton being too heavy. The ball of samatima should fit to a nicety the bore of the blow-pipe; when it does so, the arrow can be propelled with such force by the breath, that it makes a noise, almost as loud as a pop-gun, on flying from the muzzle. My little companion was armed witha quiver full of these little missiles, a small number of which, sufficient for the day’s sport, were tipped with the fatal Urari poison. The quiver was an ornamental affair, the broad rim being made of highly-polished wood of a rich cherry-red colour (the Moira-piranga, or red-wood of the Japurd). The body was formed of neatly-plaited strips of Maranta stalks, and the belt by which it was suspended from the shoulder was decorated with cotton fringes and tassels. We walked about two miles along a well-trodden pathway, through high caapoeira (second-growth forest). A large proportion of the trees were Melastomas, which bore a hairy yellow fruit, nearly as large and as well flavoured as our gooseberry. The season, however, was nearly over for them. The road was bordered every inch of the way bya thick bed of elegant Lycopodiums. ‘An artificial arrangement of trees and bushes could scarcely have been made to wear so finished an appearance as this naturally decorated avenue. The path at length terminated at a plantation of mandioca, the largest I had yet seen since I left the neighbourhood of Pard. There were probably ten acres of cleared land, and part of the ground was planted with Indian corn, water-melons, and sugar-cane. Beyond this field there was only a faint hunter’s track, leading towards the untrodden interior. My companion told me he had never heard of there being any inhabitants in that direction (the south). We crossed the forest from this place to another smaller clearing, and then walked, on our road home, through about two miles of cadpoeira of various ages, the sites of old plantations. The only fruits of our ramble were a few rare insects and a Japu (Cassicus cristatus), a handsome bird with chestnut and saffron-coloured plumage, which wanders through the tree-tops in large flocks. My little companion brought this down from a height which I calculated at thirty yards. The blow-pipe, however, in the hands of an expert adult Indian, can be made to propel arrows so as to kill at a distance of fifty and sixty yards. The aim is most certain when the tube is held vertically, or nearly so. It is a far more useful weapon in the forest than a gun, for the report of a firearm alarms the whole flock of birds or monkeys feeding on a tree, whilst the silent poisoned dart brings the animals down one by one, until the sportsman has a heap of slain by his side. None but the stealthy Indian can use it effectively. The poison, which must be fresh to kill speedily, is obtained only of the Indians who live beyond the cataracts of the rivers flowing from the north, especially the Rio Negro and the Japura. Its principal ingredient is the wood of the Strychnos toxifera, a tree which does not grow in the humid forests of the river plains. A most graphic account of the Urari, and of an_ expedition undertaken in search of the tree in Guiana, has been given by Sir Robert Schomburgk.*

« Annals and Magazine of Natural History,” vol. vii., p. 411.

Cuap. XI. THE PASSES. 29)

When we returned to the house after mid-day, Cardozo was still sipping cauim, and now looked exceedingly merry. It was fearfully hot: the good fellow sat in his hammock with a cuya full of grog in his hands; his broad honest face all of a glow, and the perspiration streaming down his uncovered breast, the unbuttoned shirt having slipped half-way over his broad shoulders. Pedro-uasst had not drunk much; he was noted, as I afterwards learnt, for his temperance. But he was standing up as I had left him two hours previously, talking to Cardozo in the same monotonous tones, the conversation apparently not having flagged all the time. I had never heard so much talking amongst Indians. The widower was asleep: the stirring, managing old lady with her daughter, were preparing dinner. This, which was ready soon after I entered, consisted of boiled fowls and rice, seasoned with large green peppers and lemon juice, and piles of new, fragrant farinha and raw. bananas. It was served on plates of English manufacture on a tupé, or large plaited rush mat, such as is made by the natives pretty generally on the Amazons. Three or four other Indians, men and women of middle age, now made their appearance, and joined in the meal. We all sat round on the floor: the women, according to custom, not eating until after the men had done. Before sitting down our host apologised, in his usual quiet, courteous manner, for not having knives and forks; Cardozo and I ate by the aid of wooden spoons, the Indians using their fingers. The old man waited until we were all served before he himself commenced. At the end of the meal one of the women brought us water in a painted clay basin of Indian manufacture, and a clean but coarse cotton napkin, that we might wash our hands. The horde of Passés of which Pedro-uassti was Tushatia or chieftain, was at this time reduced to a very small number of individuals. The disease mentioned in the last chapter had for several generations made great havoc amongst them; many also had entered the service of whites at Ega, and, of late years, intermarriages with whites, half-castes, and civilised Indians had been frequent The old man bewailed the fate of his race to Cardozo with tears in his eyes. ‘The people of my nation,” he said, “have always been good friends to the Cariwas (whites), but before my grandchildren are old like me the name of Passé will be forgotten.” In so far as the Passés have amalgamated with European immigrants or their descendants, and become civilised Brazilian citizens, there can scarcely be ground for lamenting their extinction as a nation; but it fills one with regret to learn how many die prematurely of a disease which seems to arise on their simply breathing the same air as the whites. The original territory of the tribe must have been of large extent, for Passés are said to have been found by the early Portuguese colonists on the Rio Negro; an ancient settlement on that river, Barcellos, having been peopled by them when it was first established; and they formed also part of the original population of Fonte-boa on the Solimoens. ‘Their hordes were therefore spread over a region 400 miles in length from east to west. It is probable, however, that they have been confounded by the colonists with other neighbouring tribes who tattoo their faces in a similar

manner; such as the Juris, Uainumds, Shumdnas, Aratias, and Tucunas. The extinct tribe of Yurimatias, or Soriméas, from which the river Solimoens derives its name, according to traditions extant at Ega, resembled the Passés in their slender figures and friendly disposition. These tribes (with others lying between them) peopled the banks of the main river and its by-streams from the mouth of the Rio Negroto Peru. True Passés existed in their primitive state on the banks of the Issé, 240 miles to the west of Ega, within the memory of living persons. The only large body of them now extant are located on the Japurd, at a place distant about 150 miles from Ega: the population of this horde, however, does not exceed, from what I could learn, 300 or 400 persons. I think it probable that the lower part of the Japurd and its extensive delta lands formed the original home of this gentle tribe of Indians. The Passés are always spoken of in this country as the most advanced of all the Indian nations in the Amazons region. I saw altogether about thirty individuals of the tribe, and found them generally distinguishable from other Indians by their lighter colour, sharper features, and more open address. But these points of distinction were not invariable, for I saw individuals of the Juri and Mirdnha tribes from the Upper Japura; of the Catoquinos, who inhabit the banks of the Jurtia, 300 miles from its mouth; and of the Tuctinas of St. Paulo, who were scarcely distinguishable from Passés in all the features mentioned. It is remarkable that a small tribe, the Caishanas, who live in the very midst of all these superior tribes, are almost as debased physically and mentally as the Muras, the lowest of all the Indian tribes on the Amazons. Yet were they seen separately, many Caishanas could not be distinguished from Miranhas or Juris, although none have such slender figures or are so frank in their ways as to be mistaken for Passés. I make these remarks to show that the differences Detween the nations or tribes of Indians are not absolute, and therefore that there is no ground for supposing any of them to have had an origin entirely different from the rest. Under what influences certain tribes, such as the Passés, have become so strongly modified in mental, social, and bodily features it is hard to divine. ‘The industrious habits, fidelity, and mildness of disposition of the Passés, their docility, and, it may be added, their personal beauty, especially of the children and women, made them from the first very attractive to the Portuguese colonists. They were, consequently, enticed in great numbers from their villages, and brought to Barra and other settlements of the whites. The wives of governors and military officers from Europe were always eager to obtain children for domestic servants: the girls being taught to sew, cook, weave hammocks, manufacture pillow-lace, and so forth. They have been generally treated with kindness, especially by the educated families in the settlements. It is pleasant to have to record that I never heard of a deed of violence perpetrated, on the one side or the other, in the dealings between European settlers and this noble tribe of savages. Very little is known of the original customs of the Passés. The mode of life of our host Pedro-uasst did not differ much from that of

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