The Museo Goldi at Pará is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and much dug from burial grounds on the great island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon; Marajó has a lake which in turn shelters an island which has proved a mine for the archaeologist—and none too respectfully treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been more occupied in acquiring loot than in making historical records. This island in the lake appears to have served for a burial ground of tribes with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good artistic design; there is a very noticeable resemblance between certain of these Marajó pottery specimens, especially the smaller jars and domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central America. To the present day the Amazon Indians have preserved their skill in weaving native fibres; hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with elaborate feather devices worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices reaching several hundred milreis. Both the Museum in Pará and that in Rio de Janeiro, begun by Dom Pedro and housed in his one-time palace, contain beautiful specimens of Indian feather work, the exquisite pinks, blues and greens of Brazilian birds lending themselves to the gay effect. Allied in race, apparently, to handsome, stocky natives of British Guiana, the Amazon Indian often has a skin of a cinnamon tint, is physically strong so long as he is not called upon for regular and confined labour, is a good waterman and archer, and is not inimical while he is allowed to remain undisturbed in his forests. If it were not necessary to enlist his help or enter his retreats, his effect upon Brazilian modern social conditions would be nil; there was a time when Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that period is past, although the effect of the former survives in the fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that resulted was able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably could not have done. [Illustration: Igapó near the Rio Negro, Amazonas. Caripuna Indians, on the Madeira River. ]