g them. Instead of extensive tracts covered with pines, or
oaks, or beeches, we scarcely ever see two individuals of the same
species together.

The Brazil nuts are brought chiefly from the interior; the greater part
from the country around the junction of the Rio Negro and Madeira with
the Amazon. The tree takes more than a year to produce and ripen its
fruits, which, as large and as heavy as cannon balls, fall with
tremendous force from the height of a hundred feet, crashing through the
branches and undergrowth, and snapping off large boughs. Persons are
sometimes killed by them.

_VIII.--Splendid Native Races_

Comparing the accounts given by other travellers with my own
observations, the Indians of the Amazon valley appear to be much
superior, both physically and intellectually, to those of South Brazil
and of most other parts of South America. They more closely resemble the
intelligent and noble races inhabiting the western prairies of North
America.

I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels so striking and so
new, or that so well fulfilled all previous expectations, as my first
view of the real uncivilised inhabitants of the Uaupes. I felt that I
was in the midst of something new and startling, as if I had been
instantaneously transported to a distant and unknown country.

The Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries are of a countless variety
of tribes and nations; all of whom have peculiar languages and customs,
and many of them some distinct characteristics. In many individuals of
both sexes the most perfect regularity of features exists, and there are
numbers who in colour alone differ from a good-looking European.

Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much
pleasure in gazing at the finest statue, as at these living
illustrations of the beauty of the human form. The development of the
chest is such as I believe never exists in the best-formed European,
exhibiting a splendid series of convex undulations, without a hollow in
any part of it.

Among the tribes of the Uaupes the men have the hair carefully parted
and combed on each side, and tied in a queue behind. In the young men,
it hangs in long locks down their necks, and, with the comb, which is
invariably carried stuck in the top of the head, gives to them a most
feminine appearance. This is increased by the large necklaces and
bracelets of beads, and the careful extirpation of every symptom of
beard.

Takin