Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/389

 OF THE AMAZON. 349

will not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter, or a husband his wife, on such an occasion.

They have many other prejudices with regard to women. They believe that if a woman, during her pregnancy, eats of any meat, any other animal partaking of it will suffer : if a domestic animal or tame bird, it will die ; if a dog, it will be for the future incapable of hunting ; and even a man will ever after be unable to shoot that particular kind of game. An Indian, who was one of my hunters, caught a fine cock of the rock, and gave it to his wife to feed, but the poor woman was obliged to live herself on cassava-bread and fruits, and abstain entirely from all animal food, peppers, and salt, which it was believed would cause the bird to die ; notwithstanding all precautions, however, the bird did die, and the woman got a beating from her husband, because he thought she had not been sufficiently rigid in her abstinence from the prohibited articles.

Most of these peculiar practices and superstitions are retained with much tenacity, even by those Indians who are nominally civilised and Christian, and many of them have been even adopted by the Europeans resident in the country : there are actually Portuguese in the Rio Negro who fear the power of the Indian pages, and who fully believe and act on all the Indian superstitions respecting women.

The river Uaupes is the channel by which European manu- factures find their way into the extensive and unknown regions between the Rio Guaviare on the one side, and the Japura on the other. About a thousand pounds worth of goods enter the Uaupes yearly, mosdy in axes, cutlasses, knives, fish-hooks, arrow-heads, salt, mirrors, beads, and a few cottons.

The articles given in exchange are salsaparilha, pitch, farinha, string, hammocks, and Indian stools, baskets, feather ornaments, and curiosities. The salsaparilha is by far the most valuable product, and is the only one exported. Great quantities of articles of European manufacture are exchanged by the Indians with those of remote districts, for the salsa which they give to the traders ; and thus numerous tribes, among whom no civilised man has ever yet penetrated, are well supplied with iron goods, and send the product of their labour to European markets.

In order to give some idea of the state of industry and the