On the 27th we reached an elevated wooded promontory, called Parentins, which now forms the boundary between the provinces of Para and the Amazons.Here we met a small canoe descending to Santarem.The owner was a free negro named Lima, who, with his wife, was going down the river to exchange his year's crop of tobacco for European merchandise.The long shallow canoe was laden nearly to the water level.He resided on the banks of the Abacaxi, a river which discharges its waters into the Canoma, a broad interior channel which extends from the river Madeira to the Parentins, a distance of 180 miles.Penna offered him advantageous terms, so a bargain was struck, and the man saved his long journey.The negro seemed a frank, straightforward fellow; he was a native of Pernambuco, but had settled many years ago in this part of the country.He had with him a little Indian girl belonging to the Mauhes tribe, whose native seat is the district of country lying in the rear of the Canoma, between the Madeira and the Tapajos.The Mauhes are considered, I think with truth, to be a branch of the great Mundurucu nation, having segregated from them at a remote period, and by long isolation acquired different customs and a totally different language, in a manner which seems to have been general with the Brazilian aborigines.The Mundurucus seem to have retained more of the general characteristics of the original Tupi stock than the Mauhes.Senor Lima told me, what I afterwards found to be correct, that there were scarcely two words alike in the languages of the two peoples, although there are words closely allied to Tupi in both.
The little girl had not the slightest trace of the savage in her appearance.Her features were finely shaped, the cheekbones not at all prominent, the lips thin, and the expression of her countenance frank and smiling.She had been brought only a few weeks previously from a remote settlement of her tribe on the banks of the Abacaxi, and did not yet know five words of Portuguese.The Indians, as a general rule, are very manageable when they are young, but it is a general complaint that when they reach the age of puberty they become restless and discontented.
The rooted impatience of all restraint then shows itself, and the kindest treatment will not prevent them running away from their masters; they do not return to the malocas of their tribes, but join parties who go out to collect the produce of the forests and rivers, and lead a wandering semi-savage kind of life.
We remained under the Serra dos Parentins all night.Early the next morning a light mist hung about the tree-tops, and the forest resounded with the yelping of Whaiapu-sai monkeys.I went ashore with my gun and got a glimpse of the flock, but did not succeed in obtaining a specimen.They were of small size and covered with long fur of a uniform grey colour.I think the species was the Callithrix donacophilus.The rock composing the elevated ridge of the Parentins is the same coarse iron-cemented conglomerate which I have often spoken of as occurring near Para and in several other places.Many loose blocks were scattered about.The forest was extremely varied, and inextricable coils of woody climbers stretched from tree to tree.Throngs of cacti were spread over the rocks and tree-trunks.The variety of small, beautifully-shaped ferns, lichens, and boleti, made the place quite a museum of cryptogamic plants.I found here two exquisite species of Longicorn beetles, and a large kind of grasshopper (Pterochroza) whose broad fore-wings resembled the leaf of a plant, providing the insect with a perfect disguise when they were closed; while the hind wings were decorated with gaily-coloured eye-like spots.
The negro left us and turned up a narrow channel, the Parana-mirim dos Ramos (the little river of the branches, i.e., having many ramifications), on the road to his home, 130 miles distant.
We then continued our voyage, and in the evening arrived at Villa Nova, a straggling village containing about seventy houses, many of which scarcely deserve the name, being mere mud-huts roofed with palm-leaves.We stayed here four days.The village is built on a rocky bank, composed of the same coarse conglomerate as that already so often mentioned.In some places a bed of Tabatinga clay rests on the conglomerate.The soil in the neighbourhood is sandy, and the forest, most of which appears to be of second growth, is traversed by broad alleys which terminate to the south and east on the banks of pools and lakes, a chain of which extends through the interior of the land.As soon as we anchored I set off with Luco to explore the district.We walked about a mile along the marly shore, on which was a thick carpet of flowering shrubs, enlivened by a great variety of lovely little butterflies, and then entered the forest by a dry watercourse.
About a furlong inland this opened on a broad placid pool, whose banks, clothed with grass of the softest green hue, sloped gently from the water's edge to the compact wall of forest which encompassed the whole.The pool swarmed with water-fowl; snowy egrets, dark-coloured striped herons, and storks of various species standing in rows around its margins.Small flocks of macaws were stirring about the topmost branches of the trees.
