In the afternoon we went ashore.The population seemed to consist chiefly of semi-civilised Indians, living as usual in half-finished mud hovels.The streets were irregularly laid out, and overrun with weeds and bushes swarming with "mocuim," a very minute scarlet acarus, which sweeps off to one's clothes in passing, and attaching itself in great numbers to the skin causes a most disagreeable itching.The few whites and better class of mameluco residents live in more substantial dwellings, white-washed and tiled.All, both men and women, seemed to me much more cordial, and at the same time more brusque in their manners, than any Brazilians I had yet met with.One of them, Captain Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time afterwards; a lively, intelligent, and thoroughly good-hearted man, who had quite a reputation throughout the interior of the country for generosity, and for being a firm friend of foreign residents and stray travellers.Some of these excellent people were men of substance, being owners of trading vessels, slaves, and extensive plantations of cacao and tobacco.
We stayed at Serpa five days.Some of the ceremonies observed at Christmas were interesting, inasmuch as they were the same, with little modification, as those taught by the Jesuit missionaries more than a century ago to the aboriginal tribes whom they had induced to settle on this spot.In the morning, all the women and girls, dressed in white gauze chemises and showy calico print petticoats, went in procession to church, first going the round of the town to take up the different "mordomos," or stewards, whose office is to assist the Juiz of the festa.These stewards carried each a long white reed, decorated with coloured ribbons;several children also accompanied, grotesquely decked with finery.Three old squaws went in front, holding the "saire," a large semi-circular frame, clothed with cotton and studded with ornaments, bits of looking-glass, and so forth.This they danced up and down, singing all the time a monotonous whining hymn in the Tupi language, and at frequent intervals turning round to face the followers, who then all stopped for a few moments.I was told that this saire was a device adopted by the Jesuits to attract the savages to church, for these everywhere followed the mirrors, in which they saw as it were magically reflected their own persons.
In the evening good-humoured revelry prevailed on all sides.The negroes, who had a saint of their own colour--St.Benedito--had their holiday apart from the rest, and spent the whole night singing and dancing to the music of a long drum (gamba) and the caracasha.The drum was a hollow log, having one end covered with skin, and was played by the performer sitting astride upon it, and drumming with his knuckles.The caracasha is a notched bamboo tube, which produces a harsh rattling noise by passing a hard stick over the notches.Nothing could exceed in dreary monotony this music and the singing and dancing, which were kept up with unflagging vigour all night long.The Indians did not get up a dance--for the whites and mamelucos had monopolised all the pretty coloured girls for their own ball, and the older squaws preferred looking on to taking a part themselves.Some of their husbands joined the negroes, and got drunk very quickly.It was amusing to notice how voluble the usually taciturn redskins became under the influence of liquor.The negroes and Indians excused their own intemperance by saying the whites were getting drunk at the other end of the town, which was quite true.
We left Serpa on the 29th of December, in company of an old planter named Senor Joao (John) Trinidade, at whose sitio, situated opposite the mouth of the Madeira, Penna intended to spend a few days.Our course on the 29th and 30th lay through narrow channels between islands.On the 31st we passed the last of these, and then beheld to the south a sea-like expanse of water, where the Madeira, the greatest tributary of the Amazons, after 2000 miles of course, blends its waters with those of the king of rivers.I was hardly prepared for a junction of waters on so vast a scale as this, now nearly 900 miles from the sea.While travelling week after week along the somewhat monotonous stream, often hemmed in between islands, and becoming thoroughly familiar with it, my sense of the magnitude of this vast water system had become gradually deadened; but this noble sight renewed the first feelings of wonder.One is inclined, in such places as these, to think the Paraenses do not exaggerate much when they call the Amazons the Mediterranean of South America.Beyond the mouth of the Madeira, the Amazons sweeps down in a majestic reach, to all appearance not a whit less in breadth before than after this enormous addition to its waters.The Madeira does not ebb and flow simultaneously with the Amazons; it rises and sinks about two months earlier, so that it was now fuller than the main river.Its current therefore, poured forth freely from its mouth, carrying with it a long line of floating trees and patches of grass which had been torn from its crumbly banks in the lower part of its course.The current, however, did not reach the middle of the main stream, but swept along nearer to the southern shore.
