Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/264

in 1859, when the place was much changed through the influx of Portuguese immigrants and the building of a fortress on the top of the bluff. It is one of the pleasantest towns on the river. The houses are all roofed with tiles, and are mostly of substantial architecture. The inhabitants, at least at the time of my first visit, were naïve in their ways, kind and sociable. Scarcely any palm-thatched huts are to be seen, for very few Indians now reside here. It was one of the early settlements of the Portuguese, and the better class of the population consists of old-established white families, who exhibit however, in some cases, traces of cross with the Indian and negro. Obydos and Santarem have received, during the last eighty years, considerable importations of negro slaves; before that time a cruel traffic was carried on in Indians for the same purpose of forced servitude, but their numbers have gradually dwindled away, and Indians now form an insignificant element in the population of the district. Most of the Obydos townsfolk are owners of cacao plantations, which are situated on the low lands in the vicinity. Some are large cattle proprietors, and possess estates of many square leagues' extent in the campo, or grass-land districts, which border the Lago Grande, and other similar inland lakes, near the villages of Faro and Alemquer. These campos bear a crop of nutritious grass; but in certain seasons, when the rising of the Amazons exceeds the average, they are apt to be flooded, and then the large herds of half-wild cattle suffer great mortality from drowning, hunger, and the alligators. Neither in cattle-keeping nor cacao-growing are any but the laziest