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them of existence. Precisely because of this, life is not considered by them a great blessing, and death is indifferent to them. With death, all is over; only hatred and revenge survive, like tormenting specters. The bond of love is loose; instead of tenderness, heat; instead of inclination, necessity; the mysteries of generation, profaned and clear; the man, for convenience, half dressed; the woman, the naked slave; instead of modesty, vanity; marriage, a concubinage that falls apart at the whim of a partner; the father of the family more interested in satisfying the gross appetite of his stomach than the care of his family; the waste of time and the absolute inertia; their occupations, without any rule; the woman, a blind and neglected procreative; their pleasures, repugnant lasciviousness; the children, the burden of the parents, and, therefore, avoided; the paternal affection, only calculation, and the maternal, only instinct; and the father of the family, without authority, without supervision; the education, play and the mother's body painting, with fathers blind to all concerns; instead of filial obedience, fear; freedom reproached, even the very idea; for old age, instead of respect, arrogance; instead of friendship, camaraderie; loyalty, where there is no temptation; business deal, hesitant, second only to self-interest; instead of fairness, the voice of egoism; instead of patriotism, unconscious trust in relatives of the same language; hereditary hatred against strange tribes; mutism, because of the poverty of ideas, indecision, the impossibility of discernment;

Portrayal of a Bravos chief by a French artist

the dominion of the chief, for lack of anyone better, but all incapable of true moral obedience, as a coma in a command instead of an exclamation point: - this is how the primitive man lives in these jungles! In the crudest degree of humanity, and as a deplorable enigma for himself and for his civilized brothers from the East, in whose bosom he does not warm himself, but in whose arms he vanishes and perishes!

   
On February 12, we left Porto dos Miranhas,

a place whose dark influence on my soul was only cured on my return to Europe, in an atmosphere of human dignity and elevation. Our state of health, in fact, was much better; but I always feared some new exposure to the fever of my companion; and shared with him the narrow chamber; only during the night when I went to bed, I preferred to expose myself to the night mist on deck, because my attacks of fever appeared with the regularity. The new vessel, loaded with my collections, took on a lot of water on the first day, and I was uneasy about it, until I discovered, with happiness, some hidden cracks, which I ordered to be caulked. We paddled fast, but the emptying of the river had increased so much in those last eight days,

that we arrived at Manacaru only on the afternoon of the second day. Sailing at night is not wise, because of the shoals and reefs. Unlike the Miranhas, we found now the Juri-tabocas, of Manacaru, whose chief just returning from the woods, was the chief of a

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