Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/18

 days to commence my Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood.

I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from the other settlements on the Amazons. At Cametá, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as on the Rio Negro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well with the aborigines. In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending of the two races has not been here on a large scale. I did not find the inhabitants the pleasant, easy-going, and blunt-spoken country folk that are met with in other small towns of the interior. The whites, Portuguese and Brazilians, are a relatively more numerous class here than in other settlements, and make great pretensions to civilisation; they are the merchants and shopkeepers of the place; owners of slaves, cattle estates, and cacao plantations. Amongst the principal residents must also be mentioned the civil and military authorities, who are generally well-bred and intelligent people from other provinces. Few Indians live in the place; it is too civilised for them, and the lower class is made up (besides the few slaves) of half-breeds, in whose composition negro blood predominates. Coloured people also exercise the different handicrafts; the town supports two goldsmiths, who are mulattoes and have each several apprentices; the blacksmiths are chiefly Indians, as is the case generally throughout the province. The manners of the upper class (copied from those of Pará), are