Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/350

 as frequently pursuing their prey on trees and herbage as on the ground. The typical tiger-beetles, or Cicindelæ, inhabit only open and sunny situations, and are wholly terrestrial in their habits. They are the sole forms of the family which occur in the Northern and Central parts of Europe and North America. In the Amazons region, the shade-loving and semi-arboreal Odontocheilæ outnumber in species the Cicindelæ as twenty-two to six; all but one of this number are exclusively peculiar to the Amazonian forests, and this affords another proof of the adaptation of the Fauna to a forest-clad country, pointing to a long and uninterrupted existence of land covered by forests on this part of the earth's surface.

We left this place on the 8th of January, and on the afternoon of the 9th, arrived at Matarí, a miserable little settlement of Múra Indians. Here we again anchored and went ashore. The place consisted of about twenty slightly-built mud-hovels, and had a most forlorn appearance, notwithstanding the luxuriant forest in its rear. A horde of these Indians settled here many years ago, on the site of an abandoned missionary station, and the government had lately placed a resident director over them, with the intention of bringing the hitherto intractable savages under authority. This, however, seemed to promise no other result than that of driving them to their old solitary haunts on the banks of the interior waters, for many families had already withdrawn themselves. The absence of the usual cultivated trees and plants, gave the place a naked and poverty-stricken aspect. I entered one of the hovels, where several women were employed cooking a meal. Portions of a