Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/51

 ignorant people seem totally unable to profit by these advantages. The houses have no gardens or plantations near them. I was told it was useless to plant anything, because the cattle devoured the young shoots. In this country, grazing and planting are very rarely carried on together; for the people seem to have no notion of enclosing patches of ground for cultivation. They say it is too much trouble to make enclosures. The construction of a durable fence is certainly a difficult matter, for it is only two or three kinds of tree which will serve the purpose in being free from the attacks of insects, and these are scattered far and wide through the woods.

In one place, where there was a pretty bit of pasture surrounded by woods, I found a grazier established, who supplied Santarem daily with milk. He was a strong, wiry half-breed, a man endowed with a little more energy than his neighbours, and really a hard-working fellow. The land was his own, and the dozen or so well-conditioned cows which grazed upon it. It was melancholy, however, to see the miserable way in which the man lived. His house, a mere barn, scarcely protecting its owner from the sun and rain, was not much better built or furnished than an Indian's hut. He complained that it was impossible to induce any of the needy free people to work for wages. The poor fellow led a dull, solitary life; he had no family, and his wife had left him for some cause or other. He was up every morning by four o'clock, milked his cows with the help of a neighbour, and carried the day's yield to the town in stone bottles packed in leather