The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for one sees
scarcely any men about in the villages, and the canoes one meets are
mostly rowed by women.

I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it,
and this is by no means the only time that we have been indebted to
Indians for hospitality, seems to me enviable in comparison with that of
the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. The former has a healthful
out-of-door life; she has her canoe on the lake or river, and her paths
through the forest, with perfect liberty to come and go; she has her
appointed daily occupations, being busy not only with the care of her
house and children, but in making farinha or tapioca, or in drying and
rolling tobacco, while the men are fishing and turtle-hunting; and she
has her frequent festa days to enliven her working life. It is, on the
contrary, impossible to imagine anything more dreary and monotonous than
the life of the Brazilian senhora in any of the smaller towns. In the
northern provinces, especially, old Portuguese notions about shutting
women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered
nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest,
still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without
stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely even showing herself at the
door or window; for she is always in a careless dishabille, unless she
expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any
contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life,
without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian senhora in this part
of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless
life, or frets against her chains, and is as discontented as she is
useless.

On the day of our arrival the dinner had been interrupted by the
entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the
President; but on the second day it was enlivened by quite a number of
appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the
dinner-table, there had probably never before been gathered under the
palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons a party combining so many
different elements and objects. There was the President, whose interest
is, of course, in administering the affairs of the province, in which
the Indians come in for a large share of his attention;--there was the
young statesman, whose whole heart is in the gre