Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/372

 332 ON THE ABORIGINES

tations, as my first view of the real uncivilised inhabitants of the river Uaupes. Though I had been already three years in the country, and had seen Indians of almost every shade of colour and every degree of civilisation, I felt that I was as much in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country.

The Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries are of a countless variety of tribes and nations ; all of whom have peculiar languages and customs, and many of them some dis- tinct physical characteristics. Those now found in the city of Para, and all about the country of the Lower Amazon, have long been civilised, — have lost their own language, and speak the Portuguese, and are known by the general name of Tapuyas, which is applied to all Indians, and seems to be a corruption of " Tupis," the name applied to the natives of the coast-districts, on the first settlement of the country. These Indians are short, stout, and well made. They learn all trades quickly and well, and are a quiet, good-natured, inoffensive people. They form the crews of most of the Para trading canoes. Their main peculiarity consists in their short stature, which is more observable than in any other tribe I am acquainted with. It may be as well, before proceeding further, to mention the general characteristics of the Amazon Indians, from which the particular tribes vary but very slightly.

They are, a skin of a coppery or brown colour of various shades, often nearly the tint of smooth Honduras mahogany, — jet-black straight hair, thick, and never curled, — black eyes, and very little or no beard. With regard to their features, it is impossible to give any general characteristics. In some the whole face is wide and rather flattened, but I never could dis- cern an unusual obliquity of the eyes, or projection of the cheek-bones ; in many, of both sexes, the most perfect regu- larity of features exists, and there are numbers who in colour alone differ from a good-looking European.

Their figures are generally superb ; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue, as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form. The develop- ment of the chest is such as I believe never exists in the best-formed European, exhibiting a splendid series of convex undulations, without a hollow in any part of it.