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Updated: June 13, 2025
The flesh of this monkey is much esteemed by the natives in this part of the country, and the Military Commandant of Obydos, Major Gama, every week sent a negro hunter to shoot one for his table. One day I went on a Coaita hunt, borrowing a negro slave of a friend to show me the way.
A few remarks on some of the more interesting of these must suffice. The forests are very different in their general character from those of Para, and in fact those of humid districts generally throughout the Amazons. The same scarcity of large-leaved Musaceous and Marantaceous plants was noticeable here as at Obydos.
From information obtained here, I fixed upon the next town, Obydos, as the best place to stay for a few weeks, in order to investigate the natural productions of the north side of the Lower Amazons. We started at sunrise on the 10th, and being still favoured by wind and weather, made a pleasant passage, reaching Obydos, which is nearly fifty miles distant from Santarem, by midnight.
I may as well mention here, that a moral and zealous priest is a great rarity in this province the only ministers of religion in the whole country who appeared sincere in their calling being the Bishop of Para and the Vicars of Ega on the Upper Amazons and Obydos. Very few of them had wooden doors and locks. Altar de Chao was originally a settlement of the aborigines, and was called Burari.
On the 6th, after passing a large island in mid-river, we arrived at a place where a line of perpendicular clay cliffs, called the Barreiros de Cararaucu, diverts slightly the course of the main stream, as at Obydos. A little below these cliffs were a few settlers' houses; here Penna remained ten days to trade, a delay which I turned to good account in augmenting very considerably my collections.
Such are the hills of Monte Alegre, of Obydos, Almeyrim, and Cupati, as well as the lower ridges of Santarem. This escape of the waters did not, however, entirely empty the whole basin; for the period of denudation was again followed by one of quiet accumulation, during which was deposited the ochraceous sandy clay resting upon the denudated surfaces of the underlying sandstone.
At this point the river bends a little towards the south, and the hilly country recedes from its shores to reappear at Obydos, greatly decreased in height, about a hundred miles further west. We crossed the river three times between Monte Alegre and the next town, Santarem.
They took their meals together; and it was remarked on such occasions, when the friendship of animals is put to a hard test, that they never quarrelled or disputed the possession of a favourite fruit with each other. The neighbourhood of Obydos was rich also in insects.
I hesitated at first at this conclusion, but in reflecting that the tide was known to be perceptible at Obydos, more than 400 miles from the sea, that at high water in the dry season a large flood from the Amazons enters the mouth of the Tapajos, and that there is but a very small difference of level between that point and the Cupari, a fact shown by the absence of current in the dry season.
One of these is a sister form to the Morpho Hecuba, which I have mentioned as occurring at Obydos. The Villa Nova kind differs from Hecuba sufficiently to be considered a distinct species, and has been described under the name of M. Cisseis; but it is clearly only a local variety of it, the range of the two being limited by the barrier of the broad Amazons.
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