CLIMATE.

The climate of the Amazon valley seems remarkable for uniformity of temperature, and for a regular supply of moisture. There are, in most parts of it, six months’ wet, and six months’ dry season, neither of which are so severe as in some other tropical countries. From June to December is the dry, and from January to May the wet season. In the dry season there are a few occasional rains, especially about All Saints day, in November; and during the wet season there are intervals of fine weather, and often bright mornings, and many days of gentle misty rain.

This is the general character of the climate over the whole of the main stream of the Amazon and its im- mediate neighbourhood. There are however remarkable deviations from this general routine, in particular localities. Pará itself is one of these exceptional places. Here the seasons are so modified, as to render the climate one of the most agreeable in the world. During the whole of the dry season, scarcely ever more than three days or a week passes without a slight thunderstorm and heavy shower, which comes on about four in the afternoon, and by six has cleared off again, leaving the atmosphere delightfully pure and cool, and all vegetable and animal life refreshed and invigorated. Had I only judged of the climate of Pará from my first residence of a year, I might be thought to have been impressed by the novelty of the tropical climate; but on my return from a three years’ sojourn on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro, I was equally struck with the wonderful freshness and brilliancy of the atmosphere, and the balmy mildness of the evenings, which are certainly not equalled in any other part I have visited.

Plate III.

The three upper curves show the Means of the highest, lowest, and mean temperatures at Pará for four years.
The two lower curves show the highes and lowest monthly mean temperatures at London.

F. Reeve, imp.

The wet season has not so many stormy and cloudy days, as in other parts. Sunshine and rain alternate, and the days are comparatively bright and cheerful, even when rainy. Generally, the variation of the thermometer in any one day does not exceed 15°; 75° being the lowest, and 90° the highest. The greatest variation in one day is not, I think, ever more than 20°; and in four years, the lowest and highest temperatures were 70° and 95°, giving only an extreme variation of 25°. A more equable climate probably does not exist on the earth. (See Diagram, [Plate III.])

On the Guiana side of the Amazon, in the islands of Mexiana and Marajo, the seasons are more strongly marked than even higher up the river. In the dry season, for about three months, no rain ever falls; and in the wet it is almost continual.

But it is in the country about the falls of the Rio Negro, that the most curious modifications of the seasons occur. Here the regular tropical dry season has almost disappeared, and a constant alternation of showers and sunshine occurs, almost all the year round. In the months of June, July, August, and September, when the Amazon summer is in all its glory, we have here only a little finer weather about June, and then rain again as much as ever; till, in January or February, when the wet season in the Amazon commences, there is generally here a month or two of fine warm weather. It is then that the river, which has been very slowly falling since July, empties rapidly, and in March is generally at its lowest ebb. In the beginning of April it suddenly begins to rise, and by the end of May has risen twenty feet, and then continues slowly rising till July, when it reaches its highest point, and begins to fall with the Amazon. The district of the greatest quantity of rain, or rather of the greatest number of rainy days, seems to be very limited, extending only from a little below the falls of São Gabriel to Marabitanas, at the confines of Brazil, where the Pirapocó and Cocoí mountains, and the Serra of Tunuhy, seem to form a separation from the Venezuela district, where there is a more regular summer in the months of December, January, and February.

The water of the Rio Negro in the month of September did not vary in temperature more than two degrees. I unfortunately lost my thermometers, or had intended keeping a regular series of observations on the waters of the higher parts of the rivers I ascended.

Plate IV.

F. Reeve, imp.

The extreme variation of the barometer at Pará for three years was only three-tenths of an inch (see diagram, [Plate IV.]). The mean height, with all the necessary corrections, would seem to be almost exactly thirty inches; I have however already given my reasons for believing that there is a considerable difference in the pressure of the atmosphere in the interior of the country. In the month of May some very cold days are said to occur annually on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro; but I never experienced anything of the kind very remarkable myself. Many intelligent persons have assured me that they sometimes are so severe that the inhabitants suffer much, and, what is much more extraordinary, the fishes in the rivers die of it. Allowing this to be the fact, I am quite unable to account for it, as it is difficult to conceive that a diminution of temperature of five or ten degrees, which is as much as ever takes place, can produce any effect upon them.

I have an authentic account of hail having once fallen on the Upper Amazon, a remarkable occurrence at a place only three degrees south of the equator, and about two hundred feet above the level of the sea. The children were out at play, and brought it to their parents, astonished at a substance falling from the clouds quite new to them, and which was so remarkably cold. The person who told me was a Portuguese, and his information can be perfectly relied on.

CHAPTER XV.

VEGETATION OF THE AMAZON VALLEY.

Perhaps no country in the world contains such an amount of vegetable matter on its surface as the valley of the Amazon. Its entire extent, with the exception of some very small portions, is covered with one dense and lofty primeval forest, the most extensive and unbroken which exists upon the earth. It is the great feature of the country,—that which at once stamps it as a unique and peculiar region. It is not here as on the coasts of southern Brazil, or on the shores of the Pacific, where a few days’ journey suffices to carry us beyond the forest district, and into the parched plains and rocky serras of the interior. Here we may travel for weeks and months inland, in any direction, and find scarcely an acre of ground unoccupied by trees. It is far up in the interior, where the great mass of this mighty forest is found; not on the lower part of the river, near the coast, as is generally supposed.

A line from the mouth of the river Parnaíba, in long. 41° 30’ W., drawn due west towards Guayaquil, will cut the boundary of the great forest in long. 78° 30’, and, for the whole distance of about 2600 miles, will have passed through the centre of it, dividing it into two nearly equal portions.

For the first thousand miles, or as far as long. 56° W., the width of the forest from north to south is about four hundred miles; it then stretches out both to the north and south, so that in long. 67° W. it extends from 7° N., on the banks of the Orinooko, to 18° S., on the northern slope of the Andes of Bolivia, a distance of more than seventeen hundred miles. From a point about sixty miles south-east of Tabatinga, a circle may be drawn of 1100 miles in diameter, the whole area of which will be virgin forest.

Along the Andes of Quito, from Pasto to Guancabamba, it reaches close up to the eastern base of the mountains, and even ascends their lower slopes. In the moderately elevated country between the river Huallaga and Marañon, the forest extends only over the eastern portion, commencing in the neighbourhood of Moyobamba. Further on, to the east of Cuzco and La Paz, it spreads high up on the slopes of the Bolivian Andes, and passing a little to the west of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, turns off to the north-east, crossing the Tapajóz and Xingú rivers somewhere about the middle of their course, and the Tocantíns not far above its junction with the Araguáya, and then passes over to the river Parnaíba, which it follows to its mouth.

The Island of Marajó, at the mouth of the Amazon, has its eastern half open plains, while in the western commences the forest. On the north of the Amazon, from its mouth to beyond Montealegre, are open plains; but opposite the month of the Tapajóz at Santarem, the forest begins, and appears to extend up to the Serras of Carumaní, on the Rio Branco, and thence stretches west, to join the wooded country on the eastern side of the Orinooko. West of that river, it commences south of the Vicháda, and, crossing over the upper waters of the Guaviáre and Uaupés, reach the Andes east of Pasto, where we commenced our survey.

The forests of no other part of the world are so extensive and unbroken as this. Those of Central Europe are trifling in comparison; nor in India are they very continuous or extensive; while the rest of Asia seems to be a country of thinly wooded plains, and steppes, and deserts. Africa contains some large forests, situated on the east and west coasts, and in the interior south of the equator; but the whole of them would bear but a small proportion to that of the Amazon. In North America alone is there anything approaching to it, where the whole country east of the Mississippi and about the great lakes, is, or has been, an almost uninterrupted extent of woodland.

In a general survey of the earth, we may therefore look upon the New World as pre-eminently the land of forests, contrasting strongly with the Old, where steppes and deserts are the most characteristic features.

The boundaries of the Amazonian forest have not hitherto been ascertained with much accuracy. The open plains of Caguan have been supposed much more extensive than they really are; but I have very nearly determined their limits to the south and east, by the observations I made, and the information I obtained in my voyage up the Uaupés. Again, on the Uaycáli there is a district marked on the maps as the “Pampas del Sacramento,” which has been supposed to be an open plain; but the banks of the Amazon up to the mouth of the Uaycáli are clothed with thick forest, and Messrs. Smyth and Lowe, who crossed the Pampa in two places, found no open plains; and from their observations and those of Lieut. Mawe we must extend the forest district up to near Moyabamba, west of the Huallaga, and to the foot of the mountains east of Pasco and Tarma. I was informed by a native of Ecuador, well acquainted with the country, that the Napo, Tigre, Pastaza, and the adjacent rivers all flow through dense forest, which extends up even to Baéza and Canélos and over all the lower slopes of the Andes. Tschudi informs us that the forest districts commence on all the north and east slopes of the Andes of Peru, near Huánta, and at Urubámba north of Cúzco. I have learnt from a gentleman, a native of La Paz, that immediately on crossing the Bolivian Andes from that city and from Oropéssa and Santa Cruz, you enter the great forests, which extend over all the tributaries of the Madeira. Traders up the Purús and all the southern branches of the Upper Amazon, neither meet with, nor hear accounts of, any open land, so that there is little doubt but that the extent here pointed out is one vast, ever-verdant, unbroken forest.

The forests of the Amazon are distinguished from those of most other countries, by the great variety of species of trees composing them. Instead of extensive tracts covered with pines, or oaks, or beeches, we scarcely ever see two individuals of the same species together, except in certain cases, principally among the Palms. A great extent of flooded land about the mouth of the Amazon, is covered with the Mirití Palms (Mauritia flexuosa and M. vinifera), and in many places the Assaí (Euterpe edulis) is almost equally abundant. Generally however the same species of tree is repeated only at distant intervals. On a road for ten miles through the forest near Pará, there are only two specimens of the Masserandúba, or Cow-tree, and all through the adjoining district they are equally scarce. On the Javíta road, on the Upper Rio Negro, I observed the same thing. On the Uaupés, I once sent my Indians into the forest to obtain a board of a particular kind of tree; they searched for three days, and found only a few young trees, none of them of sufficient size.

Certain kinds of hard woods are used on the Amazon and Rio Negro, for the construction of canoes and the schooners used in the navigation of the river. The difficulty of getting timber of any one kind for these vessels is so great, that they are often constructed of half-a-dozen different sorts of wood, and not always of the same colours or degrees of hardness. Trees producing fruit, or with medicinal properties, are often so widely scattered, that two or three only are found within a reasonable distance of a village, and supply the whole population. This peculiarity of distribution must prevent a great trade in timber for any particular purpose, being carried on here. The India-rubber and Brazil-nut trees are not altogether exceptions to this rule, and the produce from them is collected over an immense extent of country, to which the innumerable lakes and streams offer a ready access.

The chief district from which India-rubber is procured, is in the country between Pará and the Xingú. On the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro it is also found, but is not yet collected.

The Brazil-nuts, from the Bertholletia excelsa, are brought chiefly from the interior; the greater part from the country around the junction of the Rio Negro and Madeira with the Amazon rivers. This tree takes more than a whole year to produce and ripen its fruits. In the month of January I observed the trees loaded at the same time with flowers and ripe fruits, both of which were falling from the tree; from these flowers would be formed the nuts of the following year; so that they probably require eighteen months for their complete development from the bud. The fruits, which are nearly as hard and heavy as cannon-balls, fall with tremendous force from the height of a hundred feet, crashing through the branches and undergrowth, and snapping off large boughs which they happen to strike against. Persons are sometimes killed by them, and accidents are not unfrequent among the Indians engaged in gathering them.

The fruits are all procured as they fall from the tree. They are collected together in small heaps, where they are opened with an axe, an operation that requires some practice and skill, and the triangular nuts are taken out and carried to the canoes in baskets. Other trees of the same family (Lecythideæ) are very abundant, and are remarkable for their curious fruits, which have lids, and are shaped like pots or cups, whence they are called “pot-trees.” Some of the smaller ones are called by the natives “cuyas de macaco,”—monkeys’ calabashes.

The next most important vegetable product of the Amazon district, is the Salsaparilha, the roots of Smilax syphilitica, and perhaps of other allied species. This plant appears to occur over the whole forest-district of the Amazon, from Venezuela to Bolivia, and from the Lower Amazon to Peru. It is not generally found near the great rivers, but far in the interior, on the banks of the small streams, and on dry rocky ground. It is principally dug up by the Indians, often by the most uncivilized tribes, and is the means of carrying on a considerable trade with them.

The Brazilian nutmegs, produced by the Nectandrum Puchury, grow in the country between the Rio Negro and Japura.

The Cumarú, or Tonquin-beans, are very abundant on the Upper Rio Negro, and are also found near Santarem on the Amazon.

A highly odoriferous bark, called by the Portuguese “Cravo de Maranhão” (Cloves of Maranham), is produced by a small tree growing only on one or two small tributaries of the Rio Negro.

A peculiar transparent oil, with an odour of turpentine, called Sassafras by the Venezuelans, is abundantly obtained by tapping a tree, common on the Upper Rio Negro, whence it is exported to Barra, and used for mixing oil-colours. In the Lower Amazon, a bitter oil, called Andiróba, much used for lamps, is made from a forest fruit.

A whitish resin, with a strong camphorous smell, is produced very abundantly in the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and is commonly used as pitch for the canoes and all the larger vessels of the country; while the inner bark of young trees of the Bertholletia excelsa, or Brazil-nut tree, is used instead of oakum for caulking.

Among the forest-trees of the Amazon, the Leguminosæ are much the most abundant in species, and they also most attract attention from their curious bean-like fruits, often of extraordinary size or length. Some of the Ingás, and allied genera, have pods a yard long, and very slender; while others are short, and three or four inches wide. There are some curious fruits of this family, which grow on a stalk three to five feet long and very slender, appearing as if some one had suspended a number of pods from the branches by long strings.

The flowers of this family are among the most brilliant and conspicuous; and their often finely-cut pinnate foliage has a very elegant appearance.

The following is a list of the principal vegetable productions of the Amazon forests:—

In many parts of my Journal, I have expressed an opinion that travellers have exaggerated the beauty and brilliancy of tropical vegetation, and on a calm review of all I have seen in the districts I have visited, I must repeat it.

There is grandeur and solemnity in the tropical forest, but little of beauty or brilliancy of colour. The huge buttress trees, the fissured trunks, the extraordinary air roots, the twisted and wrinkled climbers, and the elegant palms, are what strike the attention and fill the mind with admiration and surprise and awe. But all is gloomy and solemn, and one feels a relief on again seeing the blue sky, and feeling the scorching rays of the sun.

It is on the roadside and on the rivers’ banks, that we see all the beauty of the tropical vegetation. There we find a mass of bushes and shrubs and trees of every height, rising over one another, all exposed to the bright light and the fresh air; and putting forth, within reach, their flowers and fruit, which, in the forest, only grow far up on the topmost branches. Bright flowers and green foliage combine their charms, and climbers with their flowery festoons cover over the bare and decaying stems. Yet, pick out the loveliest spots, where the most gorgeous flowers of the tropics expand their glowing petals, and for every scene of this kind, we may find another at home of equal beauty, and with an equal amount of brilliant colour.

Look at a field of buttercups and daisies,—a hill-side covered with gorse and broom,—a mountain rich with purple heather,—or a forest-glade, azure with a carpet of wild hyacinths, and they will bear a comparison with any scene the tropics can produce. I have never seen anything more glorious than an old crab-tree in full blossom; and the horse-chestnut, lilac, and laburnum will vie with the choicest tropical trees and shrubs. In the tropical waters are no more beautiful plants than our white and yellow water-lilies, our irises, and flowering rush; for I cannot consider the flower of the Victoria regia more beautiful than that of the Nymphæa alba, though it may be larger; nor is it so abundant an ornament of the tropical waters as the latter is of ours.

But the question is not to be decided by a comparison of individual plants, or the effects they may produce in the landscape, but on the frequency with which they occur, and the proportion the brilliantly coloured bear to the inconspicuous plants. My friend Mr. B. Spruce, now investigating the botany of the Amazon and Rio Negro, assures me that by far the greater proportion of plants gathered by him have inconspicuous green or white flowers; and with regard to the frequency of their occurrence, it was not an uncommon thing for me to pass days travelling up the rivers, without seeing any striking flowering tree or shrub. This is partly owing to the flowers of most tropical trees being so deciduous: they no sooner open, than they begin to fall; the Melastomas in particular, generally burst into flower in the morning, and the next day are withered, and for twelve months that tree bears no more flowers. This will serve to explain why the tropical flowering trees and shrubs do not make so much show as might be expected.

From the accounts of eye-witnesses, I believe that the forests of the southern United States present a more gay and brilliant appearance than those of tropical America.

Humboldt, in his ‘Aspects of Nature,’ repeatedly remarks on the contrast between the steppes of Tartary and the llanos of the Orinooko. The former, in the temperate zone, are gay with the most brilliant flowers; while the latter, in the tropics, produce little but grasses and sedges, and but few and inconspicuous flowering plants. Mr. Darwin mentions the brilliancy of the flowers adorning the plains of Monte Video, which, with the luxuriant thistles of the Pampas, seems hardly equalled in the campos of tropical Brazil, where, with some exceptions, the earth is brown and sterile. The countless beautiful geraniums and heaths of the Cape cease on entering the tropics, and we have no account of any plants equally striking and brilliant supplying their place.

What we may fairly allow of tropical vegetation is, that there is a much greater number of species, and a greater variety of forms, than in the temperate zones. Among this great variety occur, as we might reasonably expect, the most striking and brilliant flowers, and the most remarkable forms of stem and foliage. But there is no evidence to show that the proportion of species bearing brightly coloured, compared to those bearing inconspicuous flowers, is any greater in the tropics, than in the temperate regions; and with regard to individuals—which is, after all, what produces the effects of vegetation—it seems probable that there is a greater mass of brilliant colouring and picturesque beauty, produced by plants in the temperate, than in the tropical regions.

There are several reasons which lead us to this conclusion. In the tropics, a greater proportion of the surface is covered either with dense forests or with barren deserts, neither of which can exhibit many flowers. Social plants are less common in the tropics, and thus masses of colour are less frequently produced. Individual objects may be more brilliant and striking, but the general effect will not be so great, as that of a smaller number of less conspicuous plants, grouped together in masses of various colours, so strikingly displayed in the meadows and groves of the temperate regions.

The changing hues of autumn, and the tender green of spring, are particular beauties which are not seen in tropical regions, and which are quite unsurpassed by anything that exists there. The wide expanse of green meadows and rich pastures is also wanting; and, however much individual objects may please and astonish, the effect of the distant landscape is decidedly superior in the temperate parts of the world.

The sensations of pleasure we experience on seeing natural objects, depends much upon association of ideas with their uses, their novelty, or their history. What causes the sensations we feel on gazing upon a waving field of golden corn? Not, surely, the mere beauty of the sight, but the associations we connect with it. We look on it as a national blessing, as the staff of life, as the most precious produce of the soil; and this makes it beautiful in our eyes.

So, in the tropics, the broad-leaved banána, beautiful in itself, becomes doubly so, when looked upon as producing a greater quantity of food in a given time, and on a limited space, than any other plant. We take it as a type of the luxuriance of the tropics,—we look at its broad leaves, the produce of six months’ growth,—we think of its delicious and wholesome fruit: and all this is beauty, as we gaze upon it.

In the same manner, a field of sugar-cane or an extensive plantation of cotton produces similar sensations: we think of the thousands they will feed and clothe, and the thought clothes them with beauty.

Palms too are subject to the same influence. They are elegant and graceful in themselves; they are almost all useful to man; they are associated with the brightness and warmth of the tropics: and thus they acquire an additional interest, a new beauty.

To the naturalist everything in the tropics acquires this kind of interest, for some reason or another. One plant is a tropical form, and he examines it with curiosity and delight. Another is allied to some well-known European species, and this too attracts his attention. The structure of some are unknown, and he is pleased to examine them. The locality of another is doubtful, and he feels a great pleasure in determining it. He is ever examining individual objects, and confounds his own interest in them, from a variety of causes, with the sensations produced by their beauty, and thus is led to give exaggerated descriptions of the luxuriance and splendour of the vegetation.

As most travellers are naturalists, this supposition will account for the ideas of the tropics generally obtained from a perusal of their works.

If I have come to a different conclusion, it is not that I am incapable of appreciating the splendours of tropical scenery, but because I believe that they are not of the kind usually represented, and that the scenery of our own land is, of its own kind, unsurpassed: there is nothing approaching it in the tropics, nor is the scenery of the tropics to be found with us. There,—forms of stems and climbers, gigantic leaves, elegant palms, and individual plants with brilliant flowers, are the characteristic features. Here,—an endless carpet of verdure, with masses of gay blossoms, the varying hues of the foliage, and the constant variety of plain and forest, meadow and woodland, more than individual objects, are what fill the beholder with delight.

CHAPTER XVI.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE ZOOLOGY OF THE AMAZON DISTRICT.

A. Mammalia.

Notwithstanding the luxuriance of the vegetation, which might be supposed to afford sustenance, directly or indirectly, to every kind of animal life, the Amazon valley is remarkably deficient in large animals, and of Mammalia generally has a smaller number both of species and individuals, than any other part of the world of equal extent, except Australia. Three small species of deer, which occur but rarely, are the only representatives of the vast herds of countless species of deer and antelopes and buffaloes which swarm in Africa and Asia, and of the wild sheep and goats of Europe and North America. The tapir alone takes the place of the elephants and rhinoceroses of the Old World. Two or three species of large Felidæ, and two wild hogs, with the capybára and páca, comprise almost all its large game; and all these are thinly scattered over a great extent of country, and never occur in such large numbers as do the animals representing them in other parts of the world.

Those singular creatures, the sloths, the armadilloes, and the ant-eaters, are very generally distributed, but only occur singly and sparingly. The small agoutis are perhaps rather more plentiful; but almost the only animals found in any numbers are the monkeys, which are abundant, both in species and individuals, and are the only mammalia that give some degree of life to these trackless forests, which seem peculiarly fitted for their development and increase.

I met with twenty-one species of these animals, some of which I had no opportunity of examining. Several others exist; but it is necessary to reside for some years in each locality, in order to meet with all the different kinds. I subjoin a list of the species, with the localities in which they were found.

MONKEYS FOUND ON THE AMAZON AND RIO NEGRO.

1. Mycetes seniculus, Geoff.; on the Rio Negro and the north bank of the Amazon.

2. Mycetes caraya, Gray; on the Upper Amazon.

3. Mycetes beelzebub, Br. Mus.; Pará.

4. Lagothrix Humboldtii, Geoff.; Upper Amazon and west of Rio Negro.

5. Ateles paniscus, Geoff.; Guiana, north bank of Amazon and east of Rio Negro.

6. Cebus apella, Erxl. (?); Amazon and Rio Negro.

7. Cebus gracilis, Spix; Rio Negro and Upper Amazon.

8. Callithrix sciureus, Geoff.; the whole Amazon valley.

9. Callithrix torquatus (amictus, Geoff.); Upper Rio Negro.

10. Callithrix personatus, Geoff.; south bank of Upper Amazon.

11. Nyctipithecus trivirgatus, Humb.; Upper Rio Negro.

12. Nyctipithecus felinus, Spix ; Upper Amazon.

13. Pithecia irrorata (hirsuta, Spix); south bank of Upper Amazon.

14. Pithecia ——, north of Upper Amazon.

15. Brachiurus satanas, Br. Mus.; Guiana, east bank of Rio Negro.

16. Brachiurus oakary, Spix; Upper Rio Negro.

17. Brachiurus rubicundus, Isid.; Upper Amazon.

18. Brachiurus ——, south side of Upper Amazon.

19. Jacchus bicolor, Spix; north of the Amazon and Rio Negro.

20. Jacchus tamarin, Br. Mus.; Pará.

21. Jacchus n.s., Upper Rio Negro.

Of the above, the first seven have prehensile tails, a character only found among the monkeys of America. The howlers, forming the genus Mycetes, are the largest and most powerful. They have a bony vessel situated beneath the chin, and a strong muscular apparatus in the throat, which assists in producing the loud rolling noise from which they derive their name, and which appears as if a great number of animals were crying in concert. This however is not the case; a full-grown male alone makes the howling, which is generally heard at night, or on the approach of rain.

The annexed list of the other larger mammalia of the Amazon district, will serve to confirm the statement of the extreme poverty of these regions in that class of animals. Owing to the loss of my notes and specimens, many of the specific names are doubtful: such are marked thus—?

Phyllostoma hastatum.—This is a common bat on the Amazon, and is, I believe, the one which does much injury to the horses and cattle, by sucking their blood; it also attacks men, when it has opportunity. The species of blood-sucking bats seem to be numerous in the interior. They do not inhabit houses, like many of the frugivorous bats, but enter at dusk through any aperture they may find. They generally attack the tip of the toe, or sometimes any other part of the body that may be exposed. I have myself been twice bitten, once on the toe, and the other time on the tip of the nose; in neither case did I feel anything, but awoke after the operation was completed: in what way they effect it is still quite unknown. The wound is a small round hole, the bleeding of which it is very difficult to stop. It can hardly be a bite, as that would awake the sleeper; it seems most probable that it is either a succession of gentle scratches with the sharp edge of the teeth, gradually wearing away the skin, or a triturating with the point of the tongue, till the same effect is produced. My brother was frequently bitten by them, and his opinion was, that the bat applied one of its long canine teeth to the part, and then flew round and round on that as a centre, till the tooth, acting as an awl, bored a small hole; the wings of the bat serving, at the same time, to fan the patient into a deeper slumber. He several times awoke while the bat was at work, and though of course the creature immediately flew away, it was his impression that the operation was conducted in the manner above described. Many persons are particularly annoyed by bats, while others are free from their attacks. An old Mulatto at Guia, on the Upper Rio Negro, was bitten almost every night, and though there were frequently half-a-dozen other persons in the room, he would be the party favoured by their attentions. Once he came to us with a doleful countenance, telling us, he thought the bats meant to eat him up quite, for, having covered up his hands and feet in a blanket, they had descended beneath his hammock of open net-work, and, attacking the most prominent part of his person, had bitten him through a hole in his trowsers! We could not help laughing at the catastrophe, but to him it was no laughing matter.

Senhor Brandão, of Manaquery, informed me that he had once an Indian girl in his house, who was much subject to the attacks of the bats. She was at length so much weakened by loss of blood, that fears were entertained of her life, if they continued their attacks; and it was found necessary to send her to a distance, where these bloodthirsty animals did not abound.

The wound made by them is very difficult to heal, especially in its usual locality—the tip of the great toe, as it generally renders a shoe unbearable for a day or two, and forces one to the conclusion that, after the first time, for the curiosity of the thing, to be bitten by a bat is very disagreeable. They will however very rarely enter a lighted room, and for this reason the practice of burning a lamp all night is almost universal.

Tapirus Americanus.—The Tapir is common over the whole Amazon district, but is nowhere very abundant. It feeds on leaves and a great many different kinds of fruits, and sometimes does much injury in the mandiocca-fields of the Indians. Its flesh is very good eating, and is considered very wholesome, and is even said to be a remedy for the ague. It is a very shy and timid animal, wandering about principally at night. When the Indian discovers a feeding-place, he builds a stage between two trees, about eight feet above the ground, and there stations himself soon after dusk, armed with a gun, or with his bow and arrow. Though such a heavy animal, the tapir steps as lightly as a cat, and can only be heard approaching by the gentle rustling of the bushes; the slightest sound or smell will alarm it, and the Indian lies still as death for hours, till the animal approaches sufficiently near to be shot, or until scenting its enemy it makes off in another direction. I have accompanied the Indians on these expeditions, but always without success.

Coassus nemorivagus.

C. rufus.—These are the small white and red deer of the forests, found in all parts of the Amazon. They have very small unbranched horns.

Mazama campestris?—The “Viado galera,” or horned deer of the Rio Branco, is probably of this species. It has small branched horns, and inhabits the open plains, never the thick forests.

Dicotyles taiaçu. The smaller wild Hog. Taititú of the Indians.

D. labiatus?—The larger species, called by the natives “Taiaçu.”

There seems to be also a third species, of the same size as the last.

Arctopithecus flaccidus? Preguiça real. Ai, L. G. The great Sloth.

Bradypus torquatus. Ai, L. G.—These and some other species of sloths are not uncommon. They feed entirely on leaves, preferring those of the Cecropias. They are frequently attacked by the harpy eagle, and are also eaten by the Indians. For their habits see pages 48 and 52.

Myrmecophaga jubata. Tamanduá assu, L. G. “The great Anteater.”—This animal is rare, but widely distributed. During rain it turns its long bushy tail up over its back and stands still; the Indians, when they meet with one, rustle the leaves, and it thinks rain is falling, and turning up its tail, they take the opportunity of killing it by a blow on the head with a stick. It feeds on the large termites, or white ants, tearing up with its powerful claws the earth and rotten wood in which their nests are made. The Indians positively assert that it sometimes kills the jaguar, embracing it and forcing in its enormous claws, till they mutually destroy each other. They also declare that these animals are all females, and believe that the male is the “curupíra,” or demon of the forests: the peculiar organization of the animal has probably led to this error. It lives entirely on the ground.

Tamandua tetradactylus? The smaller Prehensile-tailed Anteater.—This animal is entirely arboreal, feeding on the tree termites; it has no nest, and sleeps in a fork of a tree with its head bent under its body.

Cyclothurus didactylus. Tamanduái, L. G. The small Silky-haired Anteater,—is arboreal, and rather abundant. There is another species much smaller, and as white as cotton; but it is rare, and I never met with it.

Priodonta gigas? Tatuassú, L. G. The great Armadillo.—Rather scarce.

Tatusia septemcinctus? Tatu, L. G.—This and another very small species are the most abundant in the Amazon district, but can seldom be procured except by hunting with dogs. All the kinds are eaten, and their flesh is very white and delicate.

Didelphis ——. Opossum. Mucúra, L. G.—Several species are found. They frequent the neighbourhood of houses, and attack poultry. The young are carried in an abdominal pouch, like the kangaroos, and have their little prehensile tails twisted round that of the mother.

Hydrochærus capybara. Capywára, L. G.—This animal is found on all the river-banks. It feeds on grass, and takes to the water and dives when pursued. It is sometimes eaten, but is not considered very good.

Cœlogenis paca. Páca, L. G.—This animal is generally abundant. It is nocturnal, and is much esteemed for its meat, which is the very best the country produces, being fat, delicate, and very tender.

Dasyprocta nigricans, Natt. Black Agouti. Cotía, L. G.—This species is found on the Rio Negro.

D. punctata? Yellow Agouti.—This is probably the common Amazon species.

D. agouti? Cotiwya, L. G.—A smaller species, very widely distributed. All are eaten, but the meat is rather dry and tasteless.

Cercolabes prehensilis. The Brazilian Porcupine.—This animal is scarce. It is eaten by the Indians.

Echimys ——. Several species of these curious, spinous, rat-like animals are found on the Upper Rio Negro.

Cercoleptes caudivolvus. The Potto.—It is a nocturnal animal, and inhabits the banks of the Upper Amazon.

Nasua olivacea? Coatí.—Two species, the “Coati” and “Coati mondi” of the Indians, are found on the Amazon.

Lontra Brasiliensis? The Brazilian Otter,—is abundant on the Rio Negro.

Galera barbara. Irára, L. G. Teeth, I. 6/6 C. 1–1/1–1 M. 4–4/4–4. This is a curious animal, somewhat allied to the bears. It lives in trees, and eats honey, whence probably its Indian name,—from Irá, in the Lingoa Geral, “honey.”

Vulpes ——? A wild dog, or fox, of the forests; it hunts in small packs; it is easily domesticated, but is very scarce.

Leopardus concolor. The Puma. In the Lingoa Geral, Sasurána, “the false deer,” from its colour.

L. onça. The Jaguar. Jauarité, L. G.—“The Great Dog.”

L. onça, var. nigra. The Black Jaguar. Jauarité pixuna, L. G. Tigre (Spaniards).

L. pictus and L. griseus. Tiger Cats. Maracajá, L. G.

The jaguar, or onça, appears to approach very nearly in fierceness and strength to the tiger of India. Many persons are annually killed or wounded by these animals. When they can obtain other food, they will seldom attack man. The Indians however assert that they often face a man boldly, springing forward till within a few feet of him, and then, if the man turns, they will attack him; the hunters will sometimes meet them thus face to face, and kill them with a cutlass. They also destroy them with the bow and arrow, for which purpose an old knife-blade is used for the head of the arrow; and they say it is necessary not to pull too strong a bow, or the arrow will pass completely through the body of the animal, and not do him so much injury as if it remains in the wound. For the same reason, in shooting with a gun, they use rough leaden cylinders instead of bullets, which make a larger and rougher wound, and do not pass so readily quite through the body. I heard of one case, of a jaguar entering an Indian’s house, and attacking him in his hammock.

The jaguar, say the Indians, is the most cunning animal in the forest: he can imitate the voice of almost every bird and animal so exactly, as to draw them towards him: he fishes in the rivers, lashing the water with his tail to imitate falling fruit, and when the fish approach, hooks them up with his claws. He catches and eats turtles, and I have myself found the unbroken shells, which he has cleaned completely out with his paws; he even attacks the cow-fish in its own element, and an eye-witness assured me he had watched one dragging out of the water this bulky animal, weighing as much as a large ox.

A young Portuguese trader told me he had seen (what many persons had before assured me often happened) an onça feeding on a full-grown live alligator, tearing and eating its tail. On leaving off, and retiring a yard or two, the alligator would begin to move towards the water, when the onça would spring upon it, and again commence eating at the tail, during which time the alligator lay perfectly still. We had been observing a cat playing with a lizard, both behaving in exactly the same manner, the lizard only attempting to move when the cat for a moment left it; the cat would then immediately spring upon it again: and my informant assured me that he had seen the jaguar treating the alligator in exactly the same way.

The onça is particularly fond of dogs, and will carry them off in preference to any other animal. When one has been committing any depredations, it is a common thing to tie a dog to a tree at night, the howling of which attracts the onça, who comes to seize it, and is then shot by a person concealed for the purpose.

It is a general belief among the Indians and the white inhabitants of Brazil, that the onça has the power of fascination. Many accounts are given to prove this; among others, a person informed me, that he had seen an onça standing at the foot of a high tree, looking up into it: on the top was a guariba, or howling-monkey, looking down at the onça, and jumping about from side to side, crying piteously; the onça stood still; the monkey continued descending lower and lower on the branches, still uttering its cries, till at length it fell down at the very feet of the onça, which seized and devoured it. Many incidents of this kind are related by persons who have witnessed them; but whether they are exaggerated, or are altogether imaginary, it is difficult to decide. The belief in them, by persons best acquainted with the habits of the animal, is universal.

Of the smaller Tiger-cats, there are several kinds, but having lost my collection of skins, I cannot ascertain the species. The Puma is considered much less fierce than the jaguar, and is very little feared by the inhabitants. There are several varieties of the jaguar, distinguished by the Indians by different names. The black variety is rarer than the others, and is generally thought to be quite distinct; in some localities it is unknown, while in others it is as abundant as the ocellated variety.

Many small rodent animals—squirrels, rats, etc.—complete the terrestrial mammalia of the Amazon district.

The waters of the Amazon, up even to the base of the Andes, are inhabited by several species of true Cetacea, of which however we have as yet but very scanty information.

Two, if not more, species of Dolphins are common in every part of the Amazon, and in almost all of its tributaries. They are found above the falls of the Rio Negro, and in the Cassiquiare and Upper Orinooko. They vary in size and colour, and two of them have distinct Indian names,—Piraiowára (Fish-dog), and Tucuxí.

D’Orbigny mentions their being killed by the inhabitants of Bolivia to make oil. In the Lower Amazon and Rio Negro they are scarcely ever caught, and I was unable ever to obtain a specimen. The species described by D’Orbigny is probably distinct, as he mentions their being twenty feet long, whereas none I have seen could have exceeded six or seven.

Herbivorous Cetacea are also found in the Amazon; they are called by the Brazilians, Peixe boi, or cow-fish, and by the Indians, Juarouá.

It has not yet been ascertained, whether the cow-fish of the Amazon is the same as the Manatus of the West Indies and the coasts of Guiana, or a distinct species. All the accounts of the Manatus Americanus mention it as being twelve or fifteen feet long on the average, and sometimes reaching twenty. Those of the Amazon appear to average seven or eight feet only; of five or six specimens I have myself seen, none have exceeded this; Lieutenant Smyth saw one on the Upper Uaycali, of the same size; and Condamine describes the one he saw as not being larger.

The inhabitants of the Amazon give accounts of three kinds, which they seem to consider distinct, one smaller, and one larger than the common kind, and differing also in the shape of the tail and fins, and in the colour.

The West Indian species is always described as having external nails on the edge of the fin, or fore-arm. This I never observed in the Amazon species; though in cutting the edge of the fin to take out the bones entire, I must have noticed them, had they been at all so prominent as usually described; neither does Lieutenant Smyth mention them, though he could hardly have overlooked so singular an external character.

I am therefore inclined to think that the Amazon possesses one or two distinct species. Having carefully prepared a skin and skeleton of a fine male (which, with the rest of my collections, was lost on the voyage home), I did not describe it so minutely as I otherwise should have done, but have some notes, referring to male and female specimens, which I will now give:—

Dimensions of full-grown male and female specimens from the Rio Negro and Amazon.

FT.IN.
Total length of male and female70
Snout to the base of the fins16
Snout to the penis in the male29½
Snout to the testicles in the male41
Snout to the vagina in the female41
Snout to the anus47
Snout to the root of the tail53
Circumference at the fins38
Circumference in middle of body54
Circumference at the anus49½
Circumference at the root of the tail26
Breadth of the tail19
Length of the fins12
Opening for exsertion of penis, in length02
Teeth, M. 6–6/6–6

The mammæ of the female, one close to the base of each fin behind. The muzzle is blunt, fleshy, and covered with numerous stiff bristles; the nostrils are on the upper part of it, and lunate. The lips, thick, fleshy, and bristly, and the tongue rough. The skin is lead-colour, with a few pinkish-white marblings on the belly; others have the whole of the neck and fore-part of the body beneath cream-colour, and another spot of the same colour on the underside of the tail. The skin is entirely smooth, resembling India-rubber in appearance, and there are short hairs scattered over it, about an inch apart; it is an inch thick on the back, and a quarter of an inch on the belly; beneath it, is a layer of fat, of an inch or more in thickness, enveloping every part of the body, and furnishing from five to ten gallons of oil.

The intestines are very voluminous. The lungs are two feet long, and six or seven inches wide, very cellular, and when blown up, much resemble a Macintosh air-belt. The ribs are each nearly semicircular, arching back from the spine, so as to form a ridge or keel inside, and on the back there is a great depth of flesh. The bone is excessively hard and heavy, and can scarcely be broken. The dung resembles that of a horse.

The cow-fish feeds on grass on the margins of the rivers and lakes. It is captured either with the harpoon, or with strong nets, placed at the mouth of some lake, whence it comes at night to feed.

Though it has very small eyes, and minute pores for ears, its senses are very acute; and the fishermen say there is no animal can hear, see, and smell better, or which requires greater skill and caution to capture. When caught, it is killed by driving a wooden plug up its nostrils. The Indian fills his canoe full of water, and sinks it beneath the body; he then bales out the water, and paddles home with a load which requires a dozen men to move on shore. The meat is very good, and both for it and for the oil the animal is much sought after. It ascends most of the tributaries of the Amazon, but does not pass the falls or rapids.

B. Birds.

The birds of the Amazon district are so numerous and striking, that it is impossible here to do more than mention a few of the most interesting and beautiful, so as to give some general idea of the ornithology of the district.

Among the birds of prey, the most conspicuous are the King Vulture (Sarcorhamphus papa), and the Harpy Eagle (Thrasaëtos harpyia), both of which are found in the whole district of the lower Amazon. There is also a great variety of eagles, hawks, kites, and owls, and probably between twenty and thirty species may be obtained in the country around Pará.

Those two fine eagles, the Spizaëtus ornatus and the Morphnus Guianensis, inhabit the Upper Amazon.

Among the smaller perching-birds, the yellow-breasted tyrant shrikes immediately attract attention, perched upon dead trees in the open grounds. In the forests the curious notes of the bush-shrikes (Thamnophilinæ) are often heard, and the ever-recurring vociferous cries of the great grey flycatcher (Lipaugus simplex).

Several pretty little tanagers are found about Pará; but the exquisite little seven-coloured tanager (Calospiza tatao), and the scarcely less beautiful scarlet and black one (Rhamphocelis nigrogularis), do not occur till we reach the Rio Negro and the Upper Amazon.

The Chatterers form one of the most splendid families of birds, and we have on the Amazon some of the finest species, such as the Cotinga cayana, C. cærulea, Phœnicurus carnifex, and P. militaris, which are found at Pará, and the C. Pompadour a and P. nigrogularis on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro.

The hang-nest Orioles, species of Cassicus, are numerous, and by their brilliant plumage of yellow or red and black, and their curious pendulous nests, give a character to the ornithology of the country.

Woodpeckers, kingfishers, and splendid metallic jacamars and trogons, are numerous in species and individuals. But of all the families of birds that inhabit this country, the parrots and the toucans are perhaps the most characteristic; they abound in species and individuals, and are much more frequently seen than any other birds.

From Pará to the Rio Negro I met with sixteen species of toucans, the most curious and beautiful of which is the Pteroglossus Beauharnasii, or “curl-crested Araçari,” whose glossy crest of horny black curls is unique among birds.

Of parrots and paroquets I found at least thirty distinct species, varying in size from the little Psittaculus passerinus, scarcely larger than a sparrow, to the magnificent crimson macaws. In ascending the Amazon, large flocks of parrots are seen, every morning and evening, crossing the river to their feeding- or resting-places; and however many there may be, they constantly fly in pairs, as do also the macaws,—while the noisy little paroquets associate indiscriminately in flocks, and fly from tree to tree with a rapidity which few birds can surpass.

Though humming-birds are almost entirely confined to tropical America, they appear to abound most in the hilly and mountainous districts, and the level forests of the Amazon have comparatively few and inconspicuous ones. The whole number of species I met with in the Lower Amazon and Rio Negro, does not exceed twenty, and few of them are very handsome. The beautiful little Lophornis Gouldi, found rarely at Pará, and the magnificent Topaza pyra, which is not uncommon on the Upper Rio Negro, are however exceptions, and will bear comparison with any species in this wonderful family.

Probably no country in the world contains a greater variety of birds than the Amazon valley. Though I did not collect them very assiduously, I obtained upwards of five hundred species, a greater number than can be found all over Europe; and I have little hesitation in saying that any one collecting industriously for five or six years might obtain near a thousand different kinds.

C. Reptiles and Fishes.

Like all tropical countries, the Amazon district abounds in reptiles, and contains many of the largest size and most singular structure. The lizards and serpents are particularly abundant, and among the latter are several very venomous species; but the most remarkable are the boa and the anaconda, which reach an enormous size. The former inhabits the land, and though it is often found very large, yet the most authentic and trustworthy accounts of monstrous serpents refer to the latter, the Eunectes murinus of naturalists, which lives in or near the water. The Indians are aware of the generic distinction of these creatures, for while they call the former “Jiboa,” the latter is the “Sucurujú.”

The largest specimens I met with myself were not more than from fifteen to twenty feet long, but I have had several accounts of their having been killed, and measured, of a length of thirty-two feet. They have been seen very much larger, but, as may be supposed, are then very difficult to kill or secure, owing to their tenacity of life and their aquatic habits. It is an undisputed fact that they devour cattle and horses, and the general belief in the country is that they are sometimes from sixty to eighty feet long.

Alligators of three or four distinct species abound in the Amazon, and in all its tributary streams. The smaller ones are eaten by the natives, the larger often devour them in return. In almost every village some persons may be seen maimed by these creatures, and many children are killed every year. The eggs of all the different kinds are eaten, though they have a very strong musky odour. The largest species (Jacare nigra) reaches a length of fifteen, or rarely of twenty feet.

The most interesting and useful reptiles of the Amazon are however the various species of fresh-water turtles, which supply an abundance of wholesome food, and from whose eggs an excellent oil is made. The largest and most abundant of these is the Tataruga, or great turtle of the Amazon, the Jurará of the Indians. It grows to the length of three feet, and has an oval flattish shell of a dark colour and quite smooth; it abounds in all parts of the Amazon, and in most places is the common food of the inhabitants.

In the month of September, as soon as the sand-banks begin to be uncovered, the females deposit their eggs, scraping hollows of a considerable depth, covering them over carefully, smoothing and beating down the sand, and then walking across and across the place in various directions for the purpose of concealment. There are such numbers of them, that some beaches are almost one mass of eggs beneath the surface, and here the Indians come to make oil. A canoe is filled with the eggs, which are all broken and mashed up together. The oil rises to the top, and is skimmed off and boiled, when it will keep, and is used both for light and for cooking. Millions of eggs are thus annually destroyed, and the turtles have already become scarce in consequence. There are some extensive beaches which yield two thousand pots of oil annually; each pot contains five gallons, and requires about two thousand five hundred eggs, which would give five millions of eggs destroyed in one locality.

But of those that remain, a very small portion only can arrive at maturity. When the young turtles issue from the egg, and run to the water, many enemies are awaiting them. Great alligators open their jaws and swallow them by hundreds; the jaguars from the forest come and feed upon them; eagles and buzzards, and the great wood ibises attend the feast; and when they have escaped all these, there are many ravenous fishes which seize them in the stream.

The Indians catch the full-grown turtles, either with the hook, net, or arrow. The last is the most ingenious method, and requires the most skill. The turtle never shows its back above water, only rising to breathe, which it does by protruding its nostrils almost imperceptibly above the surface: the Indian’s keen eyes perceive this, even at a considerable distance; but an arrow shot obliquely would glance off the smooth flat shell, so he shoots up into the air with such accurate judgment, that the arrow falls nearly vertically upon the shell, which it penetrates, and remains securely fixed in the turtle’s back. The head of the arrow fits loosely on to the shaft, and is connected with it by a long fine cord, carefully wound round it; as the turtle dives, they separate, the light shaft forming a float or buoy, which the Indian secures, and by the attached cord draws the prize up into his canoe. In this manner almost all the turtles sold in the cities have been procured, and the little square vertical hole of the arrow-head may generally be seen in the shell.

Besides the great tataruga (Podocnemis expansa), there are several smaller kinds, also much used for food. The Tracaxa (Emys tracaxa, Spix) and the Cabeçudo (E. macrocephala, Spix) have been described by the French naturalists, Duméril and Bibron, as one species, under the name of Peltocephalus tracaxa; but they are quite distinct, and though their characters are perhaps not easy to define, they could never be confounded by any one who had examined them in the living state. They are found too in different localities. The tracaxa is abundant in the Amazon, in the Orinooko, and in the Guaviare, all white-water rivers, and very scarce in the Rio Negro. The cabeçudo is very abundant in the Rio Negro and in the Atabapo, but is not found in the Guaviare or the Amazon, appearing to be confined to the black-water streams. I obtained ten distinct kinds of river tortoises, or Chelydidæ, and there are also two or three kinds of land-tortoises inhabiting the adjacent district.

As might be expected in the greatest river in the world, there is a corresponding abundance and variety of fish. They supply the Indians with the greater part of their animal food, and are at all times more plentiful, and easier to be obtained, than birds or game from the forest.

During my residence on the Rio Negro I carefully figured and described every species I met with; and at the time I left, fresh ones were every day occurring. The soft-finned fishes are much the most numerous, and comprise some of the best kinds for food. Of the Siluridæ I obtained fifty-one species, of Serrasalmo twenty-four, of Chalceus twenty-six, of Gymnotus ten, and of spinous-finned fishes (Acanthopterygia) forty-two. Of all kinds of fishes I found two hundred and five species in the Rio Negro alone, and these, I am sure, are but a small portion of what exist there. Being a black-water river, most of its fishes are different from those found in the Amazon. In fact, in every small river, and in different parts of the same river, distinct kinds are found. The greater part of those which inhabit the Upper Rio Negro are not found near its mouth, where there are many other kinds equally unknown in the clearer, darker, and probably colder waters of its higher branches. From the number of new fishes constantly found in every fresh locality and in every fisherman’s basket, we may estimate that at least five hundred species exist in the Rio Negro and its tributary streams. The number in the whole valley of the Amazon, it is impossible to estimate with any approach to accuracy.

D. Insects.

To describe the countless tribes of insects that swarm in the dense forests of the Amazon, would require volumes. In no country in the world is there more variety and beauty; nowhere are there species of larger size or of more brilliant colours. Here are found the extraordinary harlequin-beetle, the gigantic Prioni and Dynastes; but these are exceptions to the great mass of the Coleoptera, which, though in immense variety, are of small size and of little brilliancy of colour, offering a great contrast to the generally large-sized and gorgeous species of tropical Africa, India, and Australia. In the other orders the same rule holds good, except in the Hymenoptera, which contain many gigantic and handsome species. It is in the lovely butterflies that the Amazonian forests are unrivalled, whether we consider the endless variety of the species, their large size, or their gorgeous colours. South America is the richest part of the world in this group of insects, and the Amazon seems the richest part of South America. This continent is distinguished from every other, by having a most extensive and peculiar family, the Heliconiidæ, of which not a single species is found in either Europe, Asia, Africa, nor even North America (excepting Mexico). Another family, still more extensive, of exquisitely beautiful small butterflies, the Erycinidæ, is also almost peculiar to it, a few species only, being found in tropical Asia and Africa. In both these peculiar families the Amazon is particularly rich, so that we may consider it as the head-quarters of South American Lepidoptera.

Pará itself, for variety of species, is perhaps the best locality for diurnal Lepidoptera; six hundred distinct kinds may be obtained within a day’s journey of the city. At Santarem I had increased my collection to seven hundred species, at Barra to eight hundred, and I should have brought home with me nine hundred species had my collections arrived in safety. Mr. Bates, who has paid more exclusive attention to insects, states that he has now obtained twelve hundred species,—a wonderful collection to be made by one person, in a country without any variation of climate or of physical features, and no part of it elevated five hundred feet above the level of the sea.

E. Geographical Distribution of Animals.

There is no part of natural history more interesting or instructive, than the study of the geographical distribution of animals.

It is well known that countries possessing a climate and soil very similar, may differ almost entirely in their productions. Thus Europe and North America have scarcely an animal in common in the temperate zone; and South America contrasts equally with the opposite coast of Africa; while Australia differs almost entirely in its productions from districts under the same parallel of latitude in South Africa and South America. In all these cases there is a wide extent of sea separating the countries, which few animals can pass over; so that, supposing the animal productions to have been originally distinct, they could not well have become intermixed.

In each of these countries we find well-marked smaller districts, appearing to depend upon climate. The tropical and temperate parts of America and Africa have, generally speaking, distinct animals in each of them.

On a more minute acquaintance with the animals of any country, we shall find that they are broken up into yet smaller local groups, and that almost every district has peculiar animals found nowhere else. Great mountain-chains are found to separate countries possessing very distinct sets of animals. Those of the east and west of the Andes differ very remarkably. The Rocky Mountains also separate two distinct zoological districts; California and Oregon on the one side, possessing plants, birds, and insects, not found in any part of North America east of that range.

But there must be many other kinds of boundaries besides these, which, independently of climate, limit the range of animals. Places not more than fifty or a hundred miles apart, often have species of insects and birds at the one, which are not found at the other. There must be some boundary which determines the range of each species; some external peculiarity to mark the line which each one does not pass.

These boundaries do not always form a barrier to the progress of the animal, for many birds have a limited range, in a country where there is nothing to prevent them flying in every direction,—as in the case of the nightingale, which is quite unknown in some of our western counties. Rivers generally do not determine the distribution of species, because, when small, there are few animals which cannot pass them; but in very large rivers the case is different, and they will, it is believed, be found to be the limits, determining the range of many animals of all orders.

With regard to the Amazon and its larger tributaries, I have ascertained this to be the case, and shall here mention the facts which tend to prove it.

On the north side of the Amazon, and the east of the Rio Negro, are found the following three species of monkeys, Ateles paniscus, Brachiurus satanas, and Jacchus bicolor. These are all found close up to the margins of the Rio Negro and Amazon, but never on the opposite banks of either river; nor am I able to ascertain that either of them have ever been found in any other part of South America than Cayenne or Guiana, and the eastern part of Venezuela, a district which is bounded on the south and west by the Amazon and Rio Negro.

The species of Pithecia, No. 14 of my list, is found on the west side of the Rio Negro for several hundred miles, from its mouth up to the river Curicuriarí, but never on the east side, neither is it known on the south side of the Upper Amazon, where it is replaced by an allied species, the P. irrorata (P. hirsuta, Spix), which, though abundant there, is never found on the north bank. These facts are, I think, sufficient to prove that these rivers do accurately limit the range of some species, and in the cases just mentioned, the evidence is the more satisfactory, because monkeys are animals so well known to the native hunters, they are so much sought after for food, and all their haunts are so thoroughly searched, and the localities for the separate kinds are so often the subject of communication from one hunter to another, that it is quite impossible that any well-known species can exist in a particular district, unknown to men whose lives are occupied in forming an acquaintance with the various tenants of the forests.

On the south side of the Lower Amazon, in the neighbourhood of Pará, are found two monkeys, Mycetes beelzebub and Jacchus tamarin, which do not pass the river to the north. I have never heard of monkeys swimming over any river, so that this kind of boundary might be expected to be more definite in their case than in that of other quadrupeds, most of which readily take to the water.

Towards their sources, rivers do not form a boundary between distinct species; but those found there, though ranging on both sides of the stream, do not often extend down to the mouth.

Thus on the Upper Rio Negro and its branches, are found the Callithrix torquatus, Nyctipithecus trivirgatus, and Jacchus (No. 21), none of which inhabit the Lower Río Negro or Amazon; they are probably confined to the granitic districts which extend from Guiana across the sources of the Rio Negro towards the Andes.

Among birds it cannot be expected that we should find many proofs of rivers limiting their range; but there is one very remarkable instance of a genus, the three known species of which are separated by rivers, namely, the three species of the genus Psophia, P. crepitans (Linn.), P. viridis (Spix), and P. leucoptera (Spix). The P. crepitans is the common trumpeter of Guiana; it extends into the interior all over the country, beyond the sources of the Rio Negro and Orinooko, towards the Andes, and down to the Amazon, both east and west of the Rio Negro, but is never found on the south side of the Amazon.

The P. viridis is found in the forests of Pará, at Villa Nova, on the south bank of the Amazon, and up to the Madeira, where it is found at Borba, on the east bank.

The P. leucoptera, a most beautiful white-backed species, is found also on the south bank of the Amazon, at São Paulo, at Ega, at Coarí, and opposite the mouth of the Rio Negro, but not east of the Madeira, where the green-backed species commences. These birds are all great favourites in the houses of the Brazilians, and all three may sometimes be seen domesticated at Barra, where they are brought by the traders from the different districts in which they are found. They are inhabitants of the dense forests, and scarcely ever fly; so that we see the reason why the rivers should so sharply divide the species, which, spreading towards each other from different directions, might otherwise become intermingled. It is not improbable that, if the two Brazilian species extend as far as the sources of the Madeira, they may be found inhabiting the same district.

Of the smaller perching-birds and insects, which doubtless would have afforded many interesting facts corroborative of those already mentioned, I have nothing to say, as my extensive collection of specimens from the Rio Negro and Upper Amazon, all ticketed for my own use, have been lost; and of course in such a question as this, the exact determination of species is everything.

The two beautiful butterflies, Callithea sapphira and C. Leprieuri, which were originally found, the former in Brazil, and the latter in Guiana, have been taken by myself on the opposite banks of the Amazon, within a few miles of each other, but neither of them on both sides of that river.

Mr. Bates has since discovered another species, named after himself, on the south side of the Amazon; and a fourth, distinct from either of them, was found by me high up in one of the north-western tributaries of the Rio Negro, so that it seems probable that distinct species of this genus inhabit the opposite shores of the Amazon.

The cock of the rock, Rupicola cayana, is, on the other hand, an example of a bird having its range defined by a geological formation, and by the physical character of the country. Its range extends in a curving line along the centre of the mountainous district of Guiana, across the sources of the Rio Negro and Orinooko, towards the Andes; it is thus entirely comprised in the granite formation, and in that part of it where there are numerous peaks and rocks, in which the birds make their nests.

Whether it actually reaches the Andes, or occurs in the same district with the allied R. Peruviana, is not known, but personal information obtained in the districts it inhabits, shows that it is confined to the narrow tract I have mentioned, between 1° south and 6° north latitude, and from the mountains of Cayenne to the Andes, south of Bogotá.

Another bird appears bounded by a geological formation. The common red-backed parrot, Psittacus festivus, is found all over the Lower Amazon, but, on ascending the Rio Negro, has its northern limit about St. Isabel, or just where the alluvial country ends and the granite commences; it also extends up the Japura, but does not pass over to the Uaupés, which is all in the granite district.

The fine blue macaw (Macrocercus Maximilianus?) inhabits the borders of the hilly country south of the Amazon, from the sea-coast probably up to the Madeira. Below Santarem, it is sometimes found close up to the banks of the Amazon, but is said never to cross that river. Its head-quarters are the upper waters of the Tocantíns, Xingú, and Tapajoz rivers.

As another instance of a bird not crossing the Amazon, I may mention the beautiful curl-crested Araçarí (Pteroglossus Beauharnasii), which is found on the south side of the Upper Amazon, opposite the Rio Negro, and at Coarí and Ega, but has never been seen on the north side. The green Jacamar of Guiana also (Galbula viridis) occurs all along the north bank of the Amazon, but is not found on the south, where it is replaced by the G. cyanocollis and G. maculicauda, both of which occur in the neighbourhood of Pará.

CHAPTER XVII.

ON THE ABORIGINES OF THE AMAZON.

Comparing the accounts given by other travellers with my own observations, the Indians of the Amazon valley appear to be much superior, both physically and intellectually, to those of South Brazil and of most other parts of South America; they more closely resemble the intelligent and noble races inhabiting the western prairies of North America. This view is confirmed by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who first saw the uncivilized Indians of South Brazil, and afterwards those of the Amazon; and records his surprise and admiration at the vast superiority of the latter in strength and beauty of body, and in gentleness of disposition.

I have myself had opportunities of observing the Aborigines of the interior, in places where they retain all their native customs and peculiarities. These truly uncivilized Indians are seen by few travellers, and can only be found by going far beyond the dwellings of white men, and out of the ordinary track of trade. In the neighbourhood of civilization the Indian loses many of his peculiar customs,—changes his mode of life, his house, his costume, and his language,—becomes imbued with the prejudices of civilization, and adopts the forms and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic religion. In this state he is a different being from the true denizen of the forests, and it may be doubted, where his civilization goes no further than this, if he is not a degenerate and degraded one; but it is in this state alone that he is met with by most travellers in Brazil, on the banks of the Amazon, in Venezuela, and in Peru.

I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels so striking and new, or that so well fulfilled all previous expectations, as my first view of the real uncivilized inhabitants of the river Uaupés. Though I had been already three years in the country, and had seen Indians of almost every shade of colour and every degree of civilization, I felt that I was as much in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country.

The Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries, are of a countless variety of tribes and nations; all of whom have peculiar languages and customs, and many of them some distinct physical characteristics. Those now found in the city of Pará, and all about the country of the Lower Amazon, have long been civilized,—have lost their own language, and speak the Portuguese, and are known by the general names of Tapúyas, which is applied to all Indians, and seems to be a corruption of “Tupis,” the name applied to the natives of the coast-districts, on the first settlement of the country. These Indians are short, stout, and well made. They learn all trades quickly and well, and are a quiet, good-natured, inoffensive people. They form the crews of most of the Pará trading canoes. Their main peculiarity consists in their short stature, which is more observable than in any other tribe I am acquainted with. It may be as well, before proceeding further, to mention the general characteristics of the Amazon Indians, from which the particular tribes vary but very slightly.

They are, a skin of a coppery or brown colour of various shades, often nearly the tint of smooth Honduras mahogany,—jet-black straight hair, thick, and never curled,—black eyes, and very little or no beard. With regard to their features, it is impossible to give any general characteristics. In some the whole face is wide and rather flattened, but I never could discern an unusual obliquity of the eyes, or projection of the cheek-bones; in many, of both sexes, the most perfect regularity of features exists, and there are numbers who in colour alone differ from a good-looking European.

Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue, as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form. The development of the chest is such as I believe never exists in the best-formed European, exhibiting a splendid series of convex undulations, without a hollow in any part of it.

Some native tribes exist in the rivers Guamá, Capím, and Acarrá, just above the city of Pará, but I could learn little definite about them. High up the rivers Tocantíns and Araguáya, there are numerous tribes of tall well-formed Indians, some of whom I have seen in Pará, where they arrive in canoes from the interior. Most of them have enormously elongated ears hanging down on their shoulders, produced probably by weights suspended from the lobe in youth. On the Xingú are many native tribes, some of whom were visited by Prince Adalbert. On the next river, the Tapajóz, dwell the Mundrucus, and they extend far into the interior, across to the Madeira and to the river Purús; they are a very numerous tribe, and portions of them are now civilized. The Múras, another of the populous tribes, are also partly civilized, about the mouths of the Madeira and Rio Negro; but in the interior, and up the river Purús, many yet live in a totally wild and savage state.

All along the banks of the main streams of the Amazon, Solimões, Madeira, and Rio Negro, live Indians of various races, in a semi-civilized state, and with their peculiar habits and languages in a great measure lost. Traces of these peculiarities are however still to be found, in the painted pottery manufactured at Breves, the elegant calabashes of Montealegre, the curious baskets of some tribes on the Rio Negro, and the calabashes of Ega, always painted in geometrical patterns.

Commencing near Santarem, and extending among all the half-civilized Indians of the Amazon, Rio Negro, and other rivers, the Lingoa Geral, or general Indian language, is spoken. Near the more populous towns and villages, it is used indiscriminately with the Portuguese; a little further, it is often the only language known; and far up in the interior it exists in common with the native language of the tribe to which the inhabitants belong. Thus on the Lower Amazon, all the Indians can speak both Portuguese and Lingoa Geral; on the Solimões and Rio Negro, Lingoa Geral alone is generally spoken; and in the interior, on the lakes and tributaries of the Solimões, the Múra and Jurí tongues are in common use, with the Lingoa Geral as a means of communication with the traders. Near the sources of the Rio Negro, in Venezuela, the Barré and Baníwa languages are those used among the Indians themselves.

The Lingoa Geral is the Tupi, an Indian language found in the country by the Jesuits, and modified and extended by them for use among all the tribes included in their missions. It is now spread over all the interior of Brazil, and even extends into Peru and Venezuela, as well as Bolivia and Paraguay, and is the general vehicle of communication between the Brazilian traders and the Indians. It is a simple and euphonious language, and is often preferred by Europeans who get thoroughly used to it. I knew a Frenchman who had been twenty years in the Solimões, who always conversed with his wife and children in Lingoa Geral, and could speak it with more ease than either French or Portuguese; and, in many cases, I have seen Portuguese settlers whose children were unable to speak any other language.

I shall now proceed to give some account of the various tribes that still exist, in all their native integrity, among the trackless forests of the Purús, Rio Branco, Japurá, and rivers Uaupés and Isánna, near the sources of the Rio Negro.

As I am best acquainted with the Indians of the river Uaupés, I shall first state all I know of them, and then point out the particulars in which other nations differ from them. The tribes which inhabit the Uaupés, as far as any of the traders ascend, and of which I can get any information, are the following:—

Up the main stream.

  1. Queianás, at São Joaquim.
  2. Tariánas, about São Jeronymo.
  3. Ananás (Pine-apples), below Jauarité.
  4. Cobéus, about Carurú caxoeira.
  5. Piraiurú (Fish’s mouth).
  6. Pisá (Net).
  7. Carapaná (Mosquito), Jurupuri caxoeira.
  8. Tapüra (Tapir).
  9. Uaracú (a Fish), above Jukeira Paraná.
  10. Cohídias.
  11. Tucundéra (an Ant).
  12. Jacamí (Trumpeter).
  13. Mirití (Mauritia Palm), Baccate Paraná.
  14. Omáuas.

On the river Tiquié.

  1. Macunás.
  2. Taiassú (Pig Indians).
  3. Tijúco (Mud Indians).

On Japoó Paraná.

  1. Arapásso (Woodpeckers).

On the river Apaporís.

  1. Tucános (Toucans).
  2. Uacarrás (Herons).
  3. Pirá (Fish).
  4. Desannas.

On the river Quiriri.

  1. Ipécas (Ducks).
  2. Gi (Axe).
  3. Coúa (Wasp).

On the river Codaiarí.

  1. Corócoró (Green Ibis).
  2. Bauhúnas.
  3. Tatús (Armadillos).

On Canísi Paraná.

  1. Tenimbúca (Ashes).

On Jukeíra Paraná.

  1. Mucúra (Opossum).

These tribes have almost all of them some peculiarities of language and customs, but they all go under the general name of “Uaupés,” and distinguish themselves, as a body, from the inhabitants of other rivers. Hence the river is called “Rio dos Uaupés” (the River of the Uaupés), though the proper name of it is “Uacaiarí,” and it is always so termed by the Indians.

The Uaupés are generally rather tall, five feet nine or ten inches being not an uncommon height, and they are very stout and well formed. Their hair is jet-black and straight, only turning grey with extreme old age. The men do not cut their hair, but gather it behind into a long tail, bound round with cord, and hanging down to the middle of the back, and often to the thighs; the hair of the women hangs loose down their backs, and is cut to a moderate length. The men have very little beard, and that little they eradicate by pulling it out; men and women also eradicate the hair of the eyebrows, the arm-pits, and the private parts. The colour of the skin is a light, uniform, glossy reddish-brown.

They are an agricultural people, having a permanent abode, and cultivating mandiocca (Jatropha Manihot), sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum), sweet potatoes (Convolvulus Batatas), carrá, or yam (Dioscorea sp.), pupunha palms (Guilielma speciosa), cocura (a fruit like grapes), pine-apples (Ananassa sativa), maize (Zea Mays), urucú or arnotto (Bixa Orellana), plantains and banánas (Musa sp.), abios (Lucuma Caimito), cashews (Anacardium occidentale), ingás (Inga sp.), peppers (Capsicum sp.), tobacco (Nicotiana Tabacum), and plants for dyes and cordage. All, even in the most remote districts, have now iron axes and knives, though the stone axes which they formerly used are still to be found among them. The men cut down the trees and brush-wood, which, after they have lain some months to dry, are burnt; and the mandiocca is then planted by the women, together with little patches of cane, sweet potatoes, and various fruits. The women also dig up the mandiocca, and prepare from it the bread which is their main subsistence. The roots are brought home from the field in large baskets called aturás, made of a climber, and only manufactured by these tribes; they are then washed and peeled, this last operation being generally performed with the teeth, after which they are grated on large wooden graters, about three feet long and a foot wide, rather concave, and covered all over with small sharp pieces of quartz, set in in a regular diagonal pattern. These graters are an article of trade in all the Upper Amazon, as they are cheaper than the copper graters used in other parts of Brazil. The pulp is placed to drain on a large sieve made of the bark of a water-plant. It is then put into a long elastic cylinder made of the outer rind, or bark, of a climbing palm, a species of Desmoncus: this is filled with the half-dry pulp, and, being hung on a crossbeam between two posts, is stretched by a lever, on the further end of which the woman sits, and thus presses out the remaining liquid. These cylinders, called “tipitis,” are also a considerable article of trade, and the Portuguese and Brazilians have not yet introduced any substitute for this rude Indian press. The pulp is then turned out, a dry compact mass, which is broken up, and the hard lumps and fibres picked out, when it is at once roasted on large flat ovens from four to six feet in diameter, with a sloping rim about six inches high. These ovens are well made, of clay mixed with the ashes of the bark of a tree called “caripé,” and are supported on walls of mud about two feet high, with a large opening on one side, to make a fire of logs of wood beneath them. The mandiocca cakes, or “beijú,” thus prepared, are sweet and agreeable to the taste; but the Indians generally first soak the roots some days in water, which softens and ferments them, and gives the bread a sour taste, much relished by the natives, but not generally so agreeable to Europeans. The bread is made fresh every day, as when it gets cold and dry it is far less palatable. The women thus have plenty to do, for every other day at least they have to go to the field, often a mile or two distant, to fetch the root, and every day to grate, prepare, and bake the bread; as it forms by far the greater part of their food, and they often pass days without eating anything else, especially when the men are engaged in clearing the forest. For the greater part of the year however the men go daily to fish, and at these times they have a good supply of this their favourite food. Meat and game they only eat occasionally; they prefer jabutís, or land-tortoises, monkeys, inambus (Tinamus sp.), toucans, and the smaller species of wild pig (Dicotyles torquatus). But they will not eat the large wild pig (D. labiatus), the anta (Tapirus Americanus), or the white-rumped mutun (Crax globicera?). They consume great quantities of peppers (species of Capsicum), preferring the small red ones, which are of excessive pungency: when they have no fish, they boil several pounds of these peppers in a little water, and dip their bread into the fiery soup thus formed.

The poisonous juice expressed from the mandiocca root, when fermented and boiled in various ways, forms sauces and peculiarly flavoured drinks, of which they are very fond. In making their bread they have a peculiarity, not noticed among the neighbouring tribes, of extracting pure tapioca from the mandiocca, and, by mixing this with the ordinary pulp, forming a very superior cake.

They use plantains extensively, eating them as a fruit, and making a mingau, or gruel, by boiling and beating them up into a pulp, which is a very agreeable food. From the fruits of the Baccába, Patawá, and Assai palms (Œnocarpus Baccaba, Œ. Batawa, and Euterpe oleracea and allied species), they produce wholesome and nourishing drinks.

Besides these they make much use of sweet potatoes, yams, roasted corn, and many forest fruits, from all of which, and from mandiocca cakes, they make fermented drinks, which go under the general name of “caxirí.” That made from the mandiocca is the most agreeable, and much resembles good table-beer. At their feasts and dances they consume immense quantities of it, and it does not seem to produce any bad effects. They also use, on these occasions, an intensely exciting preparation of the root of a climber,—it is called capí, and the manner of using it I have described in my Narrative ([page 298]).

The weapons of these Indians are bows and arrows, gravatánas, lances, clubs, and also small hand-nets, and rods and lines, for catching fish.

Their bows are of different kinds of hard elastic wood, well made, and from five to six feet long. The string is either of the “tucum” leaf fibre (Astrocaryum vulgare), or of the inner bark of trees called “tururi.” The arrows are of various kinds, from five to seven feet long. The shaft is made of the flower-stalk of the arrow-grass (Gynerium saccharinum). In the war-arrows, or “curubís,” the head is made of hard wood, carefully pointed, and by some tribes armed with the serrated spine of the rayfish: it is thickly anointed with poison, and notched in two or three places so as to break off in the wound. Arrows for shooting fish are now almost always made with iron heads, sold by the traders, but many still use heads made of monkeys’ bones, with a barb, to retain a hold of the fish: the iron heads are bent at an angle, so that the lower part projects and forms a barb, and are securely fastened on with twine and pitch. Lighter arrows are made for shooting birds and other small game, and these alone are feathered at the base. The feathers generally used are from the wings of the macaw, and, in putting them on, the Indian shows his knowledge of the principle which is applied in the spirally-grooved rifle-barrel: three feathers are used, and they are all secured spirally, so as to form a little screw on the base of the arrow, the effect of which of course must be, that the arrow revolves rapidly in its onward progress, and this no doubt tends to keep it in a direct course.

The gravatána and small poisoned arrows are made and used exactly as I have already described in my Narrative ([page 215]).

The small hand-nets used for catching fish are of two kinds,—a small ring-net, like a landing-net, and one spread between two slender sticks, just like the large folding-nets of entomologists: these are much used in the rapids, and among rocks and eddies, and numbers of fish are caught with them. They also use the rod and line, and consume an enormous quantity of hooks: there are probably not less than a hundred thousand fishhooks sold every year in the river Uaupés; yet there are still many of their own hooks, ingeniously made of palm-spines, to be found among them. They have many other ways of catching fish: one is by a small cone of wicker, called a “matapí,” which is placed in some little current in the gapó; the larger end is entirely open, and it appears at first sight quite incapable of securing the fish, yet it catches great quantities, for when the fish get in they have no room to turn round, and cannot swim backwards, and three or four are often found jammed in the end of these little traps, with the scales and skin quite rubbed off their heads by their vain endeavours to proceed onwards. Other matapís are larger and more cylindrical, with a reversed conical mouth (as in our wire rat-traps), to prevent the return of the fish: these are often made of a very large size, and are placed in little forest-streams, and in narrow channels between rocks, where the fish, in passing up, must enter them. But the best method of procuring fish, and that which has been generally adopted by the Europeans in the country, is with the Cacoaries, or fish-weirs. These are principally used at high-water, when fish are scarce: they are formed at the margin of rivers, supported by strong posts, which are securely fixed at the time of low-water, when the place of the weir is quite dry; to these posts is secured a high fence of split palm-stems, forming an entering angle, with a narrow opening into a fenced enclosure. Fish almost always travel against the stream, and generally abound more at the sides where the current is less rapid: they are guided by the side-wings of the weir into the narrow opening, from which they cannot find their way out. They are obtained by diving into the weir, and then catching them with the pisá (small net), or with the hand, or sticking them with a knife. In these cacoaries every kind of fish is caught, from the largest to the smallest, as well as river tortoises and turtles. The Indian generally feels about well with a rod before entering a cacoarí, to ascertain if it contains an electrical eel, in which case he gets it out first with a net. The Piránhas, species of Serrasalmo, are also rather dangerous, for I have seen an Indian boy return from the cacoary with his finger bitten off by one of them.

The “Geraú,” is yet on a larger scale than the Cacoarí. It is used only in the cataracts, and is very similar to the eel-traps used at mills and sluices in England. It is a large wooden sieve, supported in the midst of a cataract, so that the full force of the water dashes through it. All the fish which are carried down by the violence of the current are here caught, and their numbers are often so great as to supply a whole village with food. At many of the falls on the Uaupés, they make these geraús, which require the united exertions of the inhabitants to construct them; huge timbers having to be planted in every crevice of the rocks, to withstand the strength of the torrent of water brought down by the winter’s floods.

All the fish not used at the time are placed on a little platform of sticks, over the fire, till they are so thoroughly dried and imbued with smoke, as to keep good any length of time. They are then used for voyages, and to sell to travellers, but, having no salt, are a very tasteless kind of food.

Salt is not so much sought after by these Indians as by many other tribes; for they will generally prefer fishhooks and beads in payment for any articles you may purchase of them. Peppers seem to serve them in place of salt. They do however extract from the fruits of the Inajá palm (Maximiliana regia) and the Jará palm (Leopoldinia major), and also from the Carurú (a species of Lacis very common on the rocks in the falls), a kind of flour which has a saline taste, and with which they season their food. The Carurú indeed has quite the smell of salt water, and is excellent eating, both boiled as a vegetable, or with oil and vinegar as a salad.

All the tribes of the Uaupés construct their dwellings after one plan, which is peculiar to them. Their houses are the abode of numerous families, sometimes of a whole tribe. The plan is a parallelogram, with a semicircle at one end. The dimensions of one at Jauarité were one hundred and fifteen feet in length, by seventy-five broad, and about thirty high. This house would hold about a dozen families, consisting of near a hundred individuals. In times of feasts and dances, three or four hundred are accommodated in them. The roof is supported on fine cylindrical columns, formed of the trunks of trees, and beautifully straight and smooth. In the centre a clear opening is left, twenty feet wide, and on the sides are little partitions of palm-leaf thatch, dividing off rooms for the separate families: here are kept the private household utensils, weapons, and ornaments; while the rest of the space contains, on each side, the large ovens and gigantic pans for making caxirí, and, in the centre, a place for the children to play, and for their dances to take place. These houses are built with much labour and skill; the main supporters, beams, rafters, and other parts, are straight, well proportioned to the strength required, and bound together with split creepers, in a manner that a sailor would admire. The thatch is of the leaf of some one of the numerous palms so well adapted to the purpose, and is laid on with great compactness and regularity. The walls, which are very low, are formed also of palm thatch, but so thick and so well bound together, that neither arrow nor bullet will penetrate it. At the gable-end is a large doorway, about six feet wide and eight or ten high: the door is a large palm-mat, hung from the top, supported by a pole during the day, and let down at night. At the semicircular end is a smaller door, which is the private entrance of the Tushaúa, or chief, to whom this part of the house exclusively belongs. The lower part of the gable-end, on each side of the entrance, is covered with the thick bark of a tree unrolled, and standing vertically. Above this is a loose hanging of palm-leaves, between the fissures of which the smoke from the numerous fires within finds an exit. In some cases this gable-end is much ornamented with symmetrical figures painted in colours, as at Carurú caxoeira.

The furniture consists principally of maqueiras, or hammocks, made of string, twisted from the fibres of the leaves of the Mauritia flexuosa: they are merely an open network of parallel threads, crossed by others at intervals of a foot; the loops at each end have a cord passed through them, by which they are hung up. The Uaupés make great quantities of string of this and other fibres, twisting it on their breasts or thighs, with great rapidity.

They have always in their houses a large supply of earthen pots, pans, pitchers, and cooking utensils, of various sizes, which they make of clay from the river and brooks, mixed with the ashes of the caripé bark, and baked in a temporary furnace. They have also great quantities of small saucer-shaped baskets, called “Balaios,” which are much esteemed down the river, and are the subject of a considerable trade.

Two tribes in the lower part of the river, the Tariános and Tucános, make a curious little stool, cut of a solid block of wood, and neatly painted and varnished; these, which take many days to finish, are sold for about a pennyworth of fish-hooks.

Their canoes are all made out of a single tree, hollowed and forced open by the cross-benches; they are very thick in the middle, to resist the wear and tear they are exposed to among the rocks and rapids; they are often forty feet long, but smaller ones are generally preferred. The paddles are about three feet long, with an oval blade, and are each cut out of one piece of wood.

These people are as free from the encumbrances of dress as it is possible to conceive. The men wear only a small piece of tururí passed between the legs, and twisted on to a string round the loins. Even such a costume as this is dispensed with by the women: they have no dress or covering whatever, but are entirely naked. This is the universal custom among the Uaupés Indians, from which, in a state of nature, they never depart. Paint, with these people, seems to be looked upon as a sufficient clothing; they are never without it on some part of their bodies, but it is at their festivals that they exhibit all their art in thus decorating their persons: the colours they use are red, yellow, and black, and they dispose them generally in regular patterns, similar to those with which they ornament their stools, their canoes, and other articles of furniture.

They pour the juice of a tree, which stains a deep blue-black, on their heads, and let it run in streams all down their backs; and the red and yellow are often disposed in large round spots upon the cheeks and forehead.

The use of ornaments and trinkets of various kinds is almost confined to the men. The women wear a bracelet on the wrists, but none on the neck, and no comb in the hair; they have a garter below the knee, worn tight from infancy, for the purpose of swelling out the calf, which they consider a great beauty. While dancing in their festivals, the women wear a small tanga, or apron, made of beads, prettily arranged: it is only about six inches square, but is never worn at any other time, and immediately the dance is over, it is taken off.

The men, on the other hand, have the hair carefully parted and combed on each side, and tied in a queue behind. In the young men, it hangs in long locks down their necks, and, with the comb, which is invariably carried stuck in the top of the head, gives to them a most feminine appearance: this is increased by the large necklaces and bracelets of beads, and the careful extirpation of every symptom of beard. Taking these circumstances into consideration, I am strongly of opinion that the story of the Amazons has arisen from these feminine-looking warriors encountered by the early voyager. I am inclined to this opinion, from the effect they first produced on myself, when it was only by close examination I saw that they were men; and, were the front parts of their bodies and their breasts covered with shields, such as they always use, I am convinced any person seeing them for the first time would conclude they were women. We have only therefore to suppose that tribes having similar customs to those now existing on the river Uaupés, inhabited the regions where the Amazons were reported to have been seen, and we have a rational explanation of what has so much puzzled all geographers. The only objection to this explanation is, that traditions are said to exist among the natives, of a nation of “women without husbands.” Of this tradition however I was myself unable to obtain any trace, and I can easily imagine it entirely to have arisen from the suggestions and inquiries of Europeans themselves. When the story of the Amazons was first made known, it became of course a point with all future travellers to verify it, or if possible get a glimpse of these warlike ladies. The Indians must no doubt have been overwhelmed with questions and suggestions about them, and they, thinking that the white men must know best, would transmit to their descendants and families the idea that such a nation did exist in some distant part of the country. Succeeding travellers, finding traces of this idea among the Indians, would take it as a proof of the existence of the Amazons; instead of being merely the effect of a mistake at the first, which had been unknowingly spread among them by preceding travellers, seeking to obtain some evidence on the subject.

In my communications and inquiries among the Indians on various matters, I have always found the greatest caution necessary, to prevent one’s arriving at wrong conclusions. They are always apt to affirm that which they see you wish to believe, and, when they do not at all comprehend your question, will unhesitatingly answer, “Yes.” I have often in this manner obtained, as I thought, information, which persons better acquainted with the facts have assured me was quite erroneous. These observations however must only be taken to apply to those almost uncivilized nations who do not understand, at all clearly, any language in which you can communicate with them. On what is obtained from Indians speaking Portuguese readily, I have always been able to rely, and I believe that much trustworthy information can be obtained from them. Such however is not the case with the wild tribes, who are totally incapable of understanding any connected sentence of the language in which they are addressed; and I fear the story of the Amazons must be placed with those of the wild man-monkeys, which Humboldt mentions and which tradition I also met with, and of the “curupíra,” or demon of the woods, and “carbunculo,” of the Upper Amazon and Peru; but of which superstitions we have no such satisfactory elucidations as I think has been now given of the warlike Amazons.

To return to our Uaupés Indians and their toilet. We find their daily costume enlivened with a few other ornaments; a circlet of parrots’ tail-feathers is generally worn round the head, and the cylindrical white quartz-stone, already described in my Narrative ([p. 278]), is invariably carried on the breast, suspended from a necklace of black seeds.

At festivals and dances they decorate themselves with a complicated costume of feather head-dresses, cinctures, armlets, and leg ornaments, which I have sufficiently described in the account of their dances ( [p. 296]).

We will now describe some peculiarities connected with their births, marriages, and deaths.

The women are generally delivered in the house, though sometimes in the forest. When a birth takes place in the house, everything is taken out of it, even the pans and pots, and bows and arrows, till the next day; the mother takes the child to the river and washes herself and it, and she generally remains in the house, not doing any work, for four or five days.

The children, more particularly the females, are restricted to a particular food: they are not allowed to eat the meat of any kind of game, nor of fish, except the very small bony kinds; their food principally consisting of mandiocca-cake and fruits.

On the first signs of puberty in the girls, they have to undergo an ordeal. For a month previously, they are kept secluded in the house, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. All relatives and friends of the parents are then assembled, bringing, each of them, pieces of “sipó” (an elastic climber); the girl is then brought out, perfectly naked, into the midst of them, when each person present gives her five or six severe blows with the sipó across the back and breast, till she falls senseless, and it sometimes happens, dead. If she recovers, it is repeated four times, at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. During this time numerous pots of all kinds of meat and fish have been prepared, when the sipós are dipped in them and given to her to lick, and she is then considered a woman, and allowed to eat anything, and is marriageable.

The boys undergo a somewhat similar ordeal, but not so severe; which initiates them into manhood, and allows them to see the Juruparí music, which will be presently described.

Tattooing is very little practised by these Indians; they all however have a row of circular punctures along the arm, and one tribe, the Tucános, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the chin; and they also pierce the lower lip, through which they hang three little threads of white beads. All the tribes bore their ears, and wear in them little pieces of grass, ornamented with feathers. The Cobeus alone expand the hole to so large a size, that a bottle-cork could be inserted: they ordinarily wear a plug of wood in it, but, on festas, insert a little bunch of arrows.

The men generally have but one wife, but there is no special limit, and many have two or three, and some of the chiefs more; the elder one is never turned away, but remains the mistress of the house. They have no particular ceremony at their marriages, except that of always carrying away the girl by force, or making a show of doing so, even when she and her parents are quite willing. They do not often marry with relations, or even neighbours,—preferring those from a distance, or even from other tribes. When a young man wishes to have the daughter of another Indian, his father sends a message to say he will come with his son and relations to visit him. The girl’s father guesses what it is for, and, if he is agreeable, makes preparations for a grand festival: it lasts perhaps two or three days, when the bridegroom’s party suddenly seize the bride, and hurry her off to their canoes; no attempt is made to prevent them, and she is then considered as married.

Some tribes, as the Uacarrás, have a trial of skill at shooting with the bow and arrow, and if the young man does not show himself a good marksman, the girl refuses him, on the ground that he will not be able to shoot fish and game enough for the family.

The dead are almost always buried in the houses, with their bracelets, tobacco-bag, and other trinkets upon them: they are buried the same day they die, the parents and relations keeping up a continual mourning and lamentation over the body, from the death to the time of interment; a few days afterwards, a great quantity of caxirí is made, and all friends and relatives invited to attend, to mourn for the dead, and to dance, sing, and cry to his memory. Some of the large houses have more than a hundred graves in them, but when the houses are small, and very full, the graves are made outside.

The Tariánas and Tucános, and some other tribes, about a month after the funeral, disinter the corpse, which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan, or oven, over the fire, till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most horrible odour, leaving only a black carbonaceous mass, which is pounded into a fine powder, and mixed in several large couchés (vats made of hollowed trees) of caxirí: this is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished; they believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers.

The Cobeus alone, in the Uaupés, are real cannibals: they eat those of other tribes, whom they kill in battle, and even make war for the express purpose of procuring human flesh for food. When they have more than they can consume at once, they smoke-dry the flesh over the fire, and preserve it for food a long time. They burn their dead, and drink the ashes in caxirí, in the same manner as described above.

Every tribe and every “malocca” (as their houses are called) has its chief, or “Tushaúa,” who has a limited authority over them, principally in war, in making festivals, and in repairing the malocca and keeping the village clean, and in planting the mandiocca-fields; he also treats with the traders, and supplies them with men to pursue their journeys. The succession of these chiefs is strictly hereditary in the male line, or through the female to her husband, who may be a stranger: their regular hereditary chief is never superseded, however stupid, dull, or cowardly he may be. They have very little law of any kind; but what they have is of strict retaliation,—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; and a murder is punished or revenged in the same manner and by the same weapon with which it was committed.

They have numerous “Pagés,” a kind of priests, answering to the “medicine-men” of the North American Indians. These are believed to have great power: they cure all diseases by charms, applied by strong blowing and breathing upon the party to be cured, and by the singing of certain songs and incantations. They are also believed to have power to kill enemies, to bring or send away rain, to destroy dogs or game, to make the fish leave a river, and to afflict with various diseases. They are much consulted and believed in, and are well paid for their services. An Indian will give almost all his wealth to a pagé, when he is threatened with any real or imaginary danger.

They scarcely seem to think that death can occur naturally, always imputing it either to direct poisoning or the charms of some enemy, and, on this supposition, will proceed to revenge it. This they generally do by poisons, of which they have many which are most deadly in their effects: they are given at some festival in a bowl of caxirí, which it is good manners always to empty, so that the whole dose is sure to be taken. One of the poisons often used is most terrible in its effects, causing the tongue and throat, as well as the intestines, to putrefy and rot away, so that the sufferer lingers some days in the greatest agony: this is of course again retaliated, on perhaps the wrong party, and thus a long succession of murders may result from a mere groundless suspicion in the first instance.

I cannot make out that they have any belief that can be called a religion. They appear to have no definite idea of a God; if asked who they think made the rivers, and the forests, and the sky, they will reply that they do not know, or sometimes that they suppose it was “Tupánau,” a word that appears to answer to God, but of which they understand nothing. They have much more definite ideas of a bad spirit, “Juruparí,” or Devil, whom they fear, and endeavour through their pagés to propitiate. When it thunders, they say the “Juruparí” is angry, and their idea of natural death is that the Juruparí kills them. At an eclipse they believe that this bad spirit is killing the moon, and they make all the noise they can to frighten him away.

One of their most singular superstitions is about the musical instruments they use at their festivals, which they call the Juruparí music. They consist of eight or sometimes twelve pipes, or trumpets, made of bamboos or palm-stems hollowed out, some with trumpet-shaped mouths of bark and with mouth-holes of clay and leaf. Each pair of instruments gives a distinct note, and they produce a rather agreeable concert, something resembling clarionets and bassoons. These instruments however are with them such a mystery, that no woman must ever see them, on pain of death. They are always kept in some igaripé, at a distance from the malocca, whence they are brought on particular occasions: when the sound of them is heard approaching, every woman retires into the woods, or into some adjoining shed, which they generally have near, and remains invisible till after the ceremony is over, when the instruments are taken away to their hiding-place, and the women come out of their concealment. Should any female be supposed to have seen them, either by accident or design, she is invariably executed, generally by poison, and a father will not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter, or a husband his wife, on such an occasion.

They have many other prejudices with regard to women. They believe that if a woman, during her pregnancy, eats of any meat, any other animal partaking of it will suffer: if a domestic animal or tame bird, it will die; if a dog, it will be for the future incapable of hunting; and even a man will be unable to shoot that particular kind of game for the future. An Indian, who was one of my hunters, caught a fine cock of the rock, and gave it to his wife to feed, but the poor woman was obliged to live herself on cassava-bread and fruits, and abstain entirely from all animal food, peppers, and salt, which it was believed would cause the bird to die; notwithstanding all precautions however the bird did die, and the woman got a beating from her husband, because he thought she had not been sufficiently rigid in her abstinence from the prohibited articles.

Most of these peculiar practices and superstitions are retained with much tenacity, even by those Indians who are nominally civilized and Christian, and many of them have been even adopted by the Europeans resident in the country: there are actually Portuguese in the Rio Negro who fear the power of the Indian pagés, and who fully believe and act on all the Indian superstitions respecting women.

The river Uaupés is the channel by which European manufactures find their way into the extensive and unknown regions between the Rio Guaviare on the one side, and the Japurá on the other. About a thousand pounds’ worth of goods enter the Uaupés yearly, mostly in axes, cutlasses, knives, fish-hooks, arrow-heads, salt, mirrors, beads, and a few cottons.

The articles given in exchange are salsaparilha, pitch, farinha, string, hammocks, and Indian stools, baskets, feather ornaments, and curiosities. The salsaparilha is by far the most valuable product, and is the only one exported. Great quantities of articles of European manufacture are exchanged by the Indians with those of remote districts, for the salsa, which they give to the traders; and thus numerous tribes, among whom no civilized man has ever yet penetrated, are well supplied with iron goods, and send the product of their labour to European markets.

Plate V.

  1. Mandiocca grater.
  2. Oven.
  3. Fire place.
  4. Basket.

A. R. Wallace, del. et. lith.

F. Reeve, imp.

In order to give some idea of the state of industry and the arts among these people, I subjoin a list of articles which I collected when among them, to illustrate their manners, customs, and state of civilization, but which were unfortunately all lost on my passage home.