Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/354

contrived to steal from the settlers from time to time. Their food is chiefly fish and turtle, which they are very expert in capturing. It is said by their neighbours that they dive after turtles, and succeed in catching them by the legs, which I believe is true in the shallow lakes where turtles are imprisoned in the dry season. They shoot fish with bow and arrow, and have no notion of any other method of cooking it than by roasting. It is not quite clear whether the whole tribe were originally quite ignorant of agriculture; as some families on the banks of the streams behind Villa Nova, who could scarcely have acquired the art in recent times, plant mandioca; but, as a general rule, the only vegetable food used by the Múras is bananas and wild fruits. The original home of this tribe was the banks of the Lower Madeira. It appears they were hostile to the European settlers from the beginning; plundering their sitios, waylaying their canoes, and massacreing all who fell into their power. About fifty years ago the Portuguese succeeded in turning the warlike propensities of the Mundurucús against them; and these, in the course of many years' persecution, greatly weakened the power of the tribe, and drove a great part of them from their seats on the banks of the Madeira. The Múras are now scattered in single hordes and families over a wide extent of country bordering the main river from Villa Nova to Catuá, near Ega, a distance of 800 miles. Since the disorders of 1835–6, when they committed great havoc amongst the peaceable settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and were pursued and slaughtered in great numbers by the Mundurucús in