it is only the settled agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi
stock who practise it.

September 27th-30th.--After passing Breves, we continued our way
slowly along a channel, or series of channels, of variable width.
On the morning of the 27th we had a fair wind, the breadth of the
stream varying from about 150 to 400 yards. About midday we
passed, on the western side, the mouth of the Aturiazal, through
which, on account of its swifter current, vessels pass in
descending from the Amazons to Para. Shortly afterwards we
entered the narrow channel of the Jaburu, which lies twenty miles
above the mouth of the Breves. Here commences the peculiar
scenery of this remarkable region. We found ourselves in a narrow
and nearly straight canal, not more than eighty to a hundred
yards in width, and hemmed in by two walls of forest, which rose
quite perpendicularly from the water to a height of seventy or
eighty feet. The water was of great and uniform depth, even close
to the banks. We seemed to be in a deep gorge, and the strange
impression the place produced was augmented by the dull echoes
wakened by the voices of our Indians and the splash of their
paddles. The forest was excessively varied. Some of the trees,
the dome-topped giants of the Leguminous and Bombaceous orders,
reared their heads far above the average height of the green
walls. The fan-leaved Miriti palm was scattered in some numbers
amidst the rest, a few solitary specimens shooting up their
smooth columns above the other trees. The graceful Assai palm
grew in little groups, forming feathery pictures set in the
rounder foliage of the mass. The Ubussu, lower in height, showed
only its shuttlecock shaped crowns of huge undivided fronds,
which, being of a vivid pale-green, contrasted forcibly against