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Updated: June 18, 2025
The Vicar, Padre Raimundo do Sanchez Brito, was an excellent old man, and I fancy the friendly manners of the people, and the general purity of morals at Obydos, were owing in great part to the good example he set to his parishioners. The forest at Obydos seemed to abound in monkeys, for I rarely passed a day without seeing several.
A pleasant perfume came from the forest, which Raimundo said proceeded from a cane-field. He told me that all this land was owned by large proprietors at Para, who had received grants from time to time from the Government for political services.
About one o'clock we again stopped at the mouth of a little creek. It was now intensely hot. Raimundo said deer were found here; so he borrowed my gun, as being a more effective weapon than the wretched arms called Lazarinos, which he, in common with all the native hunters, used, and which sell at Para for seven or eight shillings apiece.
We breakfasted heartily when our cutia was roasted, and washed the meal down with a calabash full of the pure water of the river. After breakfast the dogs found another cutia, which was hidden in its burrow two or three feet beneath the roots of a large tree, and it took Raimundo nearly an hour to disinter it.
I believe the law of Brazil at this time was that the new lands should become the property of those who cleared and cultivated them, if their right was not disputed within a given term of years by some one who claimed the proprietorship. This land-law has since been repealed, and a new one adopted founded on that of the United States. Raimundo spoke of his race as the redskins, "pelle vermelho."
As soon as we got out of the channel we began to feel the wind the sea-breeze, which here makes a clean sweep from the Atlantic. The waves ran very high, there was no rudder, Raimundo steered with a paddle, and all we had to rely upon to save us from falling into the trough of the sea and being instantly swamped were his nerve and skill.
My clothes were quite wet with the dew. The birds were astir, the cicadas had begun their music, and the Urania Leilus, a strange and beautiful tailed and gilded moth, whose habits are those of a butterfly, commenced to fly in flocks over the tree- tops. Raimundo exclaimed "Clareia o dia!" "The day brightens!"
Raimundo sat at the stern, rigid and silent, his eye steadily watching the prow of the boat. It was almost worth the risk and discomfort of the passage to witness the seamanlike ability displayed by Indians on the water. The little boat rode beautifully, rising well with each wave, and in the course of an hour and a half we arrived at Caripi, thoroughly tired and wet through to the skin.
The pipe was a reed pierced with four holes, by means of which a few unmusical notes were produced, and the tabor was a broad hoop with a skin stretched over each end. A deformed young man played both the instruments. Senor Raimundo received them with the quiet politeness which comes so naturally to the Indian when occupying the position of host.
Reply was made to this by an anonymous writer, against whom Fray Raimundo Verart came out with drawn sword, issuing a manifesto that was full of assertions hostile to the royal jurisdiction and to the cabildo. The governor entered Manila on August 24, 1684.
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