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The crew consisted of three men: one a sturdy Indian, another a Cafuzo, godson of Penna, and the third, our best hand, a steady, good-natured mulatto, named Joaquim. My boy Luco was to assist in rowing and so forth. Penna was a timid middle-aged man, a white with a slight cross of Indian; when he was surly and obstinate, he used to ask me to excuse him on account of the Tapuyo blood in his veins.
The boy was about twelve years of age, and of an unusually dark colour of skin he had, in fact, the tint of a Cafuzo, the offspring of Indian and negro. It was thought he had belonged to some perfectly wild and houseless tribe, similar to the Pararauates of the Tapajos, of which there are several in different parts of the interior of South America.
The circumstance of the Cafuzo coming out armed to receive visitors very much astonished my companions, who talked it over at every place we visited for several days afterwards, the freest and most unsuspecting welcome in these retired places being always counted upon by strangers.
He had a little wooden image of Nossa Senora in his rough wooden clothes-chest, and to this he always had recourse when any squall arose, or when we ran aground on a shoal. Another of our sailors was a tawny white of Cameta; the rest were Indians, except the cook, who was a Cafuzo, or half- breed between the Indian and negro.
Mameluco denotes the offspring of White with Indian; Mulatto, that of White with Negro; Cafuzo, the mixture of the Indian and Negro; Curiboco, the cross between the Cafuzo and the Indian; Xibaro, that between the Cafuzo and Negro. These are seldom, however, well-demarcated, and all shades of colour exist; the names are generally applied only approximatively.
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