Brazil, the Amazons and the coast . pper Curua ; asthese negroes were the only people who knew anythingabout the falls, I was naturally anxious to secure one for aguide. While at Curua, I had heard much of Manuel, wholived, so it was said, in the deep woods, fearing to see awhite man, lest he should be carried back into slavery ; togain his good-will I had sent him some trifling presents,with word that I would call on him on my way up the crossed now to the igarape, a sluggish row of pools, likethe Igarape-pichuna ; there was no sign of a habitation onthe farther bank ; but after much
Brazil, the Amazons and the coast . pper Curua ; asthese negroes were the only people who knew anythingabout the falls, I was naturally anxious to secure one for aguide. While at Curua, I had heard much of Manuel, wholived, so it was said, in the deep woods, fearing to see awhite man, lest he should be carried back into slavery ; togain his good-will I had sent him some trifling presents,with word that I would call on him on my way up the crossed now to the igarape, a sluggish row of pools, likethe Igarape-pichuna ; there was no sign of a habitation onthe farther bank ; but after much calling, a canoe appeared,paddled by Manuels two strapping sons. They were naked THE CURUA, 325 to the waist, and looked wild enough ; I could hardly un-derstand their broken negro-Portuguese. However, theygreeted me cordially, and put me across the igarape to alittle hidden path among the bushes ; following this for aquarter of a mile, w^e came out to a tiny plantation, wherewere two palm-thatched huts, so small and mean that any. Manuels Hut. Indian would have been ashamed of them. Manuel wasseated before one hut, smoking a clay pipe, while his little,fat wife superintended a kettle of monkey-broth near rose to meet me—a grizzled old man, slightly bent, butbright-eyed and strong-limbed as you would wish to thirty years at least he had lived in the forest, onlyvisiting the settlements by stealth, and at long intervals. The Curua miicainbo (so they call these colonies) ex-isted as early as the beginning of the century, and perhapslong before. At first it was located near the lower falls, on 326 BRAZIL. the Igarape Branco ; after an inroad of soldiers, the negroesfled up the river, and estabhshed themselves far above thefalls ; years later they were driven out again, and then theyfled still farther to the unknown interior. They had planta-tions of mandioca, and the river gave them plenty of fish ;gradually new parties came to join them, until the mucambonumbered
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