"At Pará the salt can be sold for three francs the alquiere; at Cuyabá, it is worth one hundred and fifty francs.
"They can descend the river in forty days; but it requires five months to ascend it.
"The forests that border the Tapajos are infested by savage Indians, who frequently attack the Monçãos; and dangerous fevers sometimes carry off those whom the Indian arrow has spared.
"I left the caravan at Sta. Ana dos Caxoeiras; it continued its route towards the source of the Tapajos, and I entered the country inhabited by the Mundrucus.
"The Mundrucus, the most warlike nation of the Amazon, do not number less than fifteen or twenty thousand warriors, and are the terror of all other tribes.
"They appear to have a deadly hatred to the negro, but a slight sympathy for the white man.
"During the rainy season they go to the plains to pull the sarsaparilla root, which they afterwards exchange for common hardware and rum; the other six months of the year are given to war.
"Each Malocca (village) has an arsenal, or fortress, where the warriors stay at night; in the day they live with their families.
"The children of both sexes are tattooed (when scarcely ten years old) with a pencil, or rather a kind of comb, made of the thorns of the palm-tree, called Muru-muru. The father (if the child is a boy) marks upon the body of the poor creature, who is not even permitted to complain, long bloody lines, from the forehead to the waist, which he afterwards sprinkles with the ashes or coal of some kind of resin.
"These marks are never effaced. But if this first tattooing, which is compulsory among the Mundrucus, sometimes suffices for woman's coquetry, that of the warriors is not satisfied. They must have at least a good layer of geni papo, (huitoc,) or of roucou, (annatto,) upon every limb, and decorate themselves moreover in feathers. Without that, they would consider themselves as indecent as a European would be considered who would put on his coat without his shirt.