第79章

A few items of information which I gleaned relative to this river may find a place here.The Madeira is navigable for about 480miles from its mouth; a series of cataracts and rapids then commences, which extends, with some intervals of quiet water, about 16o miles, beyond which is another long stretch of navigable stream.Canoes sometimes descend from Villa Bella, in the interior province of Matto Grosso, but not so frequently as formerly, and I could hear of very few persons who had attempted of late years to ascend the river to that point.It was explored by the Portuguese in the early part of the eighteenth century, the chief and now the only town on its banks, Borba, 150 miles from its mouth, being founded in 1756.Up to the year 1853, the lower part of the river, as far as about a hundred miles beyond Borba, was regularly visited by traders from Villa Nova, Serpa, and Barra, to collect sarsaparilla, copauba balsam, turtle-oil, and to trade with the Indians, with whom their relations were generally on a friendly footing.In that year many India-rubber collectors resorted to this region, stimulated by the high price (2s.6d.a pound) which the article was at that time fetching at Para; and then the Araras, a fierce and intractable tribe of Indians, began to be troublesome.They attacked several canoes and massacred everyone on board, the Indian crews as well as the white traders.Their plan was to lurk in ambush near the sandy beaches where canoes stop for the night, and then fall upon the people while asleep.Sometimes they came under pretence of wishing to trade, and then as soon as they could get the trader at a disadvantage, shot him and his crew from behind trees.Their arms were clubs, bows, and Taquara arrows, the latter a formidable weapon tipped with a piece of flinty bamboo shaped like a spear-head; they could propel it with such force as to pierce a man completely through the body.The whites of Borba made reprisals, inducing the warlike Mundurucus, who had an old feud with the Araras, to assist them.This state of things lasted two or three years, and made a journey up the Madeira a risky undertaking, as the savages attacked all corners.Besides the Araras and the Mundurucus, the latter a tribe friendly to the whites, attached to agriculture, and inhabiting the interior of the country from the Madeira to beyond the Tapajos, two other tribes of Indians now inhabit the lower Madeira, namely, the Parentintins and the Muras.Of the former I did not hear much;the Muras lead a lazy quiet life on the banks of the labyrinths of lakes and channels which intersect the low country on both sides of the river below Borba.The Araras are one of those tribes which do not plant mandioca; and indeed have no settled habitations.They are very similar in stature and other physical features to the Mundurucus, although differing from them so widely in habits and social condition.They paint their chins red with Urucu (Anatto), and have usually a black tattooed streak on each side of the face, running from the corner of the mouth to the temple.They have not yet learned the use of firearms, have no canoes, and spend their lives roaming over the interior of the country, living on game and wild fruits.When they wish to cross a river, they make a temporary canoe with the thick bark of trees, which they secure in the required shape of a boat by means of lianas.I heard it stated by a trader of Santarem, who narrowly escaped being butchered by them in 1854, that the Araras numbered 2000 fighting men.The number I think must be exaggerated, as it generally is with regard to Brazilian tribes.

When the Indians show a hostile disposition to the whites, Ibelieve it is most frequently owing to some provocation they have received at their hands; for the first impulse of the Brazilian red-man is to respect Europeans; they have a strong dislike to be forced into their service, but if strangers visit them with a friendly intention they are well treated.It is related, however, that the Indians of the Madeira were hostile to the Portuguese from the first; it was then the tribes of Muras and Torazes who attacked travellers.In 1855 I met with an American, an odd character named Kemp, who had lived for many years amongst the Indians on the Madeira, near the abandoned settlement of Crato.

He told me his neighbours were a kindly-disposed and cheerful people, and that the onslaught of the Araras was provoked by a trader from Bara, who wantonly fired into a family of them, killing the parents, and carrying off their children to be employed as domestic servants.