Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/404

 36o ON THE ABORIGINES

Others, near the sources of the Tapajdz, make the girls undergo the same cruel initiation as has been already described as common among the Uaupes and Isanna Indians.

On the north banks of the Rio Negro are many uncivilised tribes, very little known.

On the south banks, the Manaos were formerly a very numerous nation. It appears to have been from these tribes that the various accounts of imaginary wealth prevalent soon after the discovery of America were derived ; the whole of them are now civilised, and their blood mingles with that of some of the best families in the Province of Pari; their language is said still to exist, and to be spoken by many old persons, but I was never fortunate enough to meet with any one under- standing it.

One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of the Amazon valley, is the resemblance which exists between some of their customs, and those of nations most remote from them. The gravatana, or blow-pipe, reappears in the sumpitan of Borneo ; the great houses of the Uaupes closely resemble those of the Dyaks of the same country ; while many small baskets and bamboo-boxes, from ' Borneo and New Guinea, are so similar in their form and construction to those of the Amazon, that they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes. Then again the Mundruais, like the Dyaks, take the heads of their enemies, smoke-dry them with equal care, preserving the skin and hair entire, and hang them up around their houses. In Australia the throwing-stick is used ; and, on a remote branch of the Amazon, we see a tribe of Indians differing from all around them, in substituting for the bow a weapon only found in such a remote portion of the earth, among a people differing from them in almost every physical character.

It will be necessary to obtain much more information on this subject, before we can venture to decide whether such similarities show any remote connection between these nations, or are mere accidental coincidences, produced by the same wants, acting upon people subject to the same conditions of climate and in an equally low state of civilisation ; and it offers additional matter for the wide-spreading speculations of the ethnographer.

The main feature in the personal character of the Indians