the
field with their men, and each can raise about forty, able to carry
arms. A few of these Indians have gnns of their own, which they use in
hunting, and their powder is a coarse kind, manufactured by themselves.
Some of the shopkeepers in the towns to the south-west, every year go
down by the Rio Tocantins to Para to sell hides and purchase European
goods; very frequently some of the young men belonging to Duro
hire themselves to work the canoes, and with the money wliich they
receive for their services, purchase at Para axes and other iron tools;
a party of them returned from one of these trips during our visit.
During
the fortnight we remained in the Aldea do Duro, I was principally
occupied in drying the immense collection of specimens obtained in the
latter part of the journey across the Geriies and the Chapada da
Mangabeira, and in packing ,up all those which had been procured
between Santa Eosa and Duro. I also made many excursions in the
neighbourhood of the Aldea, and notwithstanding it was then the end of
the dry season, I found it an excellent field for my researches. The
sandy marshes yielded me many curious Eriocaulom, and beautiful Melastomacece ; while the upland eampos produced several species of Diplusodon, many Com-positce, Labiatce, &c.; but the most common, as well as the most beautiful of the productions of the eampos, were a small Biynonia growing in tufts, and scarcely a foot high, bearing numerous large lemon-coloured trumpet-shaped flowers, an Ipomcea, similar in habit and about the same size, producing large violet-coloured blossoms (Ipomcea kirsutisslma, Gardn.) and two erect kinds of Echites ;* in dry rocky places Amaryllis Solandrcejlora, Lindl., was very common, producing abundantly its large yellow flowers.
We
left Duro on the thirteenth of October, and slept at the house of one
of the Indians, about two leagues distant from the Aldea : the owner of
it, hearing on what day I was to leave, arrived the night before, and
begged of me to call at his house, which was but a little way off the
road, to see his wife who had been blind for some years, and was then
suffering from ophthalmia. I, of
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