I remained at Obydos from the 11th of October to the 19th of November.I spent three weeks here, also, in 1859, when the place was much changed through the influx of Portuguese immigrants and the building of a fortress on the top of the bluff.It is one of the pleasantest towns on the river.The houses are all roofed with tiles, and are mostly of substantial architecture.The inhabitants, at least at the time of my first visit, were naive in their ways, kind and sociable.Scarcely any palm-thatched huts are to be seen, for very few Indians now reside here.It was one of the early settlements of the Portuguese, and the better class of the population consists of old-established white families, who exhibit however, in some cases, traces of cross with the Indian and negro.Obydos and Santarem have received, during the last eighty years, considerable importations of negro slaves; before that time, a cruel traffic was carried on in Indians for the same purpose of forced servitude, but their numbers have gradually dwindled away, and Indians now form an insignificant element in the population of the district.
Most of the Obydos townsfolk are owners of cacao plantations, which are situated on the low lands in the vicinity.Some are large cattle proprietors, and possess estates of many square leagues' extent in the campo, or grass-land districts, which border the Lago Grande, and other similar inland lakes, near the villages of Faro and Alemquer.These campos bear a crop of nutritious grass; but in certain seasons, when the rising of the Amazons exceeds the average, they are apt to be flooded, and then the large herds of half wild cattle suffer great mortality from drowning, hunger, and alligators.Neither in cattle-keeping nor cacao-growing are any but the laziest and most primitive methods followed, and the consequence is that the proprietors are generally poor.A few, however, have become rich by applying a moderate amount of industry and skill to the management of their estates.People spoke of several heiresses in the neighbourhood whose wealth was reckoned in oxen and slaves; a dozen slaves and a few hundred head of cattle being considered a great fortune.
Some of them I saw had already been appropriated by enterprising young men, who had come from Para and Maranham to seek their fortunes in this quarter.
The few weeks I spent here passed away pleasantly.I generally spent the evenings in the society of the townspeople, who associated together (contrary to Brazilian custom) in European fashion; the different families meeting at one another's houses for social amusement, bachelor friends not being excluded, and the whole company, married and single, joining in simple games.
The meetings used to take place in the sitting-rooms, and not in the open verandas--a fashion almost compulsory on account of the mosquitoes; but the evenings here are very cool, and the closeness of a room is not so much felt as it is in Para.Sunday was strictly observed at Obydos--at least all the shops were closed, and almost the whole population went to church.The Vicar, Padre Raimundo do Sanchez Brito, was an excellent old man, and I fancy the friendly manners of the people, and the general purity of morals at Obydos, were owing in great part to the good example he set to his parishioners.
The forest at Obydos seemed to abound in monkeys, for I rarely passed a day without seeing several.I noticed four species: the Coaita (Ateles paniscus), the Chrysothrix sciureus, the Callithrix torquatus, and our old Para friend, Midas ursulus.The Coaita is a large black monkey, covered with coarse hair, and having the prominent parts of the face of a tawny flesh-coloured hue.It is the largest of the Amazonian monkeys in stature, but is excelled in bulk by the "Barrigudo" (Lagothrix Humboldtii) of the Upper Amazons.It occurs throughout the lowlands of the Lower and Upper Amazons, but does not range to the south beyond the limits of the river plains.At that point an allied species, the White-whiskered Coaita (Ateles marginatus) takes its place.The Coaitas are called by zoologists spider monkeys, on account of the length and slenderness of their body and limbs.In these apes the tail, as a prehensile organ, reaches its highest degree of perfection; and on this account it would, perhaps, be correct to consider the Coaitas as the extreme development of the American type of apes.As far as we know, from living and fossil species, the New World has progressed no farther than the Coaita towards the production of a higher form of the Quadrumanous order.The tendency of Nature here has been, to all appearance, simply to perfect those organs which adapt the species more and more completely to a purely arboreal life; and no nearer approach has been made towards the more advanced forms of anthropoid apes, which are the products of the Old World solely.The flesh of this monkey is much esteemed by the natives in this part of the country, and the Military Commandant of Obydos, Major Gama, every week sent a negro hunter to shoot one for his table.One day Iwent on a Coaita hunt, borrowing a negro slave of a friend to show me the way.When in the deepest part of a ravine we heard a rustling sound in the trees overheard, and Manoel soon pointed out a Coaita to me.There was something human-like in its appearance, as the lean, dark, shaggy creature moved deliberately amongst the branches at a great height.I fired, but unfortunately only wounded it in the belly.It fell with a crash headlong about twenty or thirty feet, and then caught a bough with its tail, which grasped it instantaneously, and then the animal remained suspended in mid-air.Before I could reload, it recovered itself and mounted nimbly to the topmost branches out of the reach of a fowling-piece, where we could perceive the poor thing apparently probing the wound with its fingers.
