The Naturalist on the River Amazons [115]
Those Brazilians who are old enough to remember the times of warfare between Indians and settlers, retain a great horror of the ture, its loud, harsh note heard in the dead of the night having been often the prelude to an onslaught of bloodthirsty Muras on the outlying settlements. The rest of the men in the procession carried bows and arrows, bunches of javelins, clubs, and paddles. The older children brought with them the household pets; some had monkeys or coatis on their shoulders, and others bore tortoises on their heads. The squaws carried their babies in aturas, or large baskets, slung on their backs, and secured with a broad belt of bast over their foreheads. The whole thing was accurate in its representation of Indian life, and showed more ingenuity than some people give the Brazilian red man credit for. It was got up spontaneously by the Indians, and simply to amuse the people of the place.
The people seem to be thoroughly alive to the advantages of education for their children. Besides the usual primary schools, one for girls, and another for boys, there is a third of a higher class, where Latin and French, amongst other accomplishments, are taught by professors, who, like the common schoolmasters, are paid by the provincial government. This is used as a preparatory school to the Lyceum and Bishop's seminary, well-endowed institutions at Para, whither it is the ambition of traders and planters to send their sons to finish their studies. The rudiments of education only are taught in the primary schools, and it is surprising how quickly and well the little lads, both coloured and white, learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. But the simplicity of the Portuguese language, which is written as it is pronounced, or according to unvarying rules, and the use of the decimal system of accounts, make these acquirements much easier than they are with us. Students in the superior school have to pass an examination before they can be admitted at the colleges in Para, and the managers once did me the honour to make me one of the examiners for the year. The performances of the youths, most of whom were under fourteen years of age, were very creditable, especially in grammar; there was a quickness of apprehension displayed which would have gladdened the heart of a northern schoolmaster. The course of study followed at the colleges of Para must be very deficient; for it is rare to meet with an educated Paraense who has the slightest knowledge of the physical sciences, or even of geography, if he has not travelled out of the province. The young men all become smart rhetoricians and lawyers; any of them is ready to plead in a law case at an hour's notice; they are also great at statistics, for the gratification of which taste there is ample field in Brazil, where every public officer has to furnish volumes of dry reports annually to the government; but they are woefully ignorant on most other subjects.
I do not recollect seeing a map of any kind at Santarem. The quick-witted people have a suspicion of their deficiencies in this respect, and it is difficult to draw them out on geography; but one day a man holding an important office betrayed himself by asking me, "On what side of the river was Paris situated? " This question did not arise, as might be supposed, from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from the idea, that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he had heard of must lie on one shore or the other. The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks.
Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is glorious; during six months of the year, from August to February, very little rain falls, and the sky is cloudless for weeks together, the fresh breezes from the sea, nearly 400 miles distant, moderating the
The people seem to be thoroughly alive to the advantages of education for their children. Besides the usual primary schools, one for girls, and another for boys, there is a third of a higher class, where Latin and French, amongst other accomplishments, are taught by professors, who, like the common schoolmasters, are paid by the provincial government. This is used as a preparatory school to the Lyceum and Bishop's seminary, well-endowed institutions at Para, whither it is the ambition of traders and planters to send their sons to finish their studies. The rudiments of education only are taught in the primary schools, and it is surprising how quickly and well the little lads, both coloured and white, learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. But the simplicity of the Portuguese language, which is written as it is pronounced, or according to unvarying rules, and the use of the decimal system of accounts, make these acquirements much easier than they are with us. Students in the superior school have to pass an examination before they can be admitted at the colleges in Para, and the managers once did me the honour to make me one of the examiners for the year. The performances of the youths, most of whom were under fourteen years of age, were very creditable, especially in grammar; there was a quickness of apprehension displayed which would have gladdened the heart of a northern schoolmaster. The course of study followed at the colleges of Para must be very deficient; for it is rare to meet with an educated Paraense who has the slightest knowledge of the physical sciences, or even of geography, if he has not travelled out of the province. The young men all become smart rhetoricians and lawyers; any of them is ready to plead in a law case at an hour's notice; they are also great at statistics, for the gratification of which taste there is ample field in Brazil, where every public officer has to furnish volumes of dry reports annually to the government; but they are woefully ignorant on most other subjects.
I do not recollect seeing a map of any kind at Santarem. The quick-witted people have a suspicion of their deficiencies in this respect, and it is difficult to draw them out on geography; but one day a man holding an important office betrayed himself by asking me, "On what side of the river was Paris situated? " This question did not arise, as might be supposed, from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from the idea, that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he had heard of must lie on one shore or the other. The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks.
Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is glorious; during six months of the year, from August to February, very little rain falls, and the sky is cloudless for weeks together, the fresh breezes from the sea, nearly 400 miles distant, moderating the