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I found here a native poet, who had written some pretty verses, showing an appreciation of the natural beauties of the country, and was told that the Archbishop of Bahia, the primate of Brazil, was a native of Cameta. It is interesting to find the mamelucos displaying talent and enterprise, for it shows that degeneracy does not necessarily result from the mixture of white and Indian blood.
When the nearer land became depopulated, however, it began to be necessary to extend the expeditions farther afield from São Paolo, and it was then that the Mamelucos came into contact with the growing numbers of the Spanish settlers, and with the Indians who now resided beneath the protection of the Spanish power.
Nothing could exceed in dreary monotony this music and the singing and dancing, which were kept up with unflagging vigour all night long. The Indians did not get up a dance for the whites and mamelucos had monopolised all the pretty coloured girls for their own ball, and the older squaws preferred looking on to taking a part themselves.
The sounds of pipe and tabor were heard, and presently a procession of villagers emerged from a pathway through the mandioca fields. They were on a begging expedition for St. Thome, the patron saint of Indians and Mamelucos. One carried a banner, on which was crudely painted the figure of St. Thome with a glory round his head. The pipe and tabor were of the simplest description.
The house was substantially built; the walls formed of strong upright posts, lathed across, plastered with mud and whitewashed, and the roof tiled. The family were mamelucos, and seemed to be an average sample of the poorer class of cacao growers. All were loosely dressed and bare-footed.
At the time of my visit there were few pure-blood Indians at Fonte Boa, and no true whites. The inhabitants seemed to be nearly all Mamelucos, and were a loose-living, rustic, plain- spoken and ignorant set of people.
The head man was a tall, well- made, civilised Tapuyo, named Marcellino, who, with his wife, a thin, active, wiry old squaw, did the honours of their house, I thought, admirably. The company consisted of fifty or sixty Indians and Mamelucos; some of them knew Portuguese, but the Tupi language was the only one used amongst themselves.
More than half the inhabitants of Ega are Mamelucos; there are not more than forty or fifty pure whites; the number of negroes and mulattos is probably a little less, and the rest of the population consists of pure blood Indians.
The mode of life of our host Pedro-uassu did not differ much from that of the civilised Mamelucos; but he and his people showed a greater industry, and were more open, cheerful, and generous in their dealings than many half-castes. The authority of Pedro, like that of the Tushauas, generally was exercised in a mild manner.
At Cameta, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as on the RioNegro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well with the aborigines. In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending of the two races has not been here on a large scale.
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