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Hordes of the same tribe living on the same branch rivers, speak mutually unintelligible languages; this happens with the Miranhas on the Japura, and with the Collinas on the Jurua; whilst Tupi is spoken with little corruption along the banks of the main Amazons for a distance Of 2500 miles.
The inhabitants are chiefly Indians of the Maraua tribe, whose original territory comprised all the small by-streams lying between the Jutahi and the Jurua, near the mouths of both these great tributaries. They live in separate families or small hordes, have no common chief, and are considered as a tribe little disposed to adopt civilised customs or be friendly with the whites.
At present the languages spoken by neighbouring tribes on the banks of the interior rivers are totally distinct; on the Jurua, even scattered hordes belonging to the same tribe are not able to understand each other. The civilised Tapuyo of Para differs in no essential point, in physical or moral qualities, from the Indian of the interior.
On the Putumayo, if a few Yuris are still met with, the Yahuas have abandoned the district to take refuge among some of the distant tributaries, and the Maoos have quitted its banks to wander in their diminished numbers among the forests of Japura. The Tunantins is almost depopulated, and there are only a few families of wandering Indians at the mouth of the Jurua.
On the 19th of July, at sunrise, the jangada left Fonteboa, and entered between the two completely deserted banks of the river, and breasted some islands shaded with the grand forests of cacao-trees. The sky was heavily charged with electric cumuli, warning them of renewed storms. The Rio Jurua, coming from the southwest, soon joins the river on the left.
Indeed, they are not limited to the main bed of the Amazons; they have been followed along the banks of its tributaries to the south and north as far as these have been ascended. They occur on the margins of the Huallaga and the Ucayall, on those of the Iça, the Jutahy, the Jurua, the Japura, and the Purus.
The only tribe known to live on its banks are the Catauishis, a people who perforate their lips all round, and wear rows of slender sticks in the holes: their territory lies between the Purus and the Jurua, embracing both shores of the Teffe.
The Siphonia elastica grows only on the lowlands in the Amazons region; hitherto, the rubber has been collected chiefly in the islands and swampy parts of the mainland within a distance of fifty to a hundred miles to the west of Para; but there are plenty of untapped trees still growing in the wilds of the Tapajos, Madeira, Jurua, and Jauari, as far as 1800 miles from the Atlantic coast.