"Our longest trip was to some Indian houses, a distance of fifteen or eighteen miles up the Sapó; a journey made with one Indian paddler, and occupying a whole day. The stream is not more than forty or fifty yards broad: its waters are dark in color, and flow, as in all these small rivers, partly under shade, between two lofty walls of forest. We passed, in ascending, seven habitations, most of them hidden in the luxuriant foliage of the banks; their sites being known only by small openings in the compact wall of forest, and the presence of a canoe or two tied up in little shady ports. The inhabitants are chiefly Indians of the Marauá tribe, whose original territory comprises all the by-streams lying between the Jutahí and the Juruá, near the mouths of both these great tributaries. They live in separate families, or small hordes; have no common chief; and are considered as a tribe little disposed to adopt civilized customs, or be friendly with the whites. One of the houses belonged to a Jurí family; and we saw the owner, an erect, noble-looking old fellow, tattooed, as customary with his tribe, in a large patch over the middle of his face, fishing, under the shade of a colossal tree, with hook and line. He saluted us in the usual grave and courteous manner of the better sort of Indians as we passed by. "We reached the last house, or rather two houses, about ten o'clock, and spent there several hours during the heat of the day. The houses, which stood on a high, clayey bank, were of quadrangular shape, partly open, like sheds, and partly enclosed with rude, mud walls, forming one or two chambers. The inhabitants, a few families of Marauás, received us in a frank, smiling manner. None of them were tattooed: but the men had great holes pierced in their ear-lobes, in which they insert plugs of wood; and their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One of the younger men, a fine, strapping fellow, nearly six feet high, with a large aquiline nose, who seemed to wish to be particularly friendly to me, showed me the use of these lip-holes, by fixing a number of little sticks in them, and then twisting his mouth about, and going through a pantomime to represent defiance in the presence of an enemy.