Along the coast of Brazil and up the Amazon there is current a more or less corrupted native tongue called the “common language,” _lingua geral_. It is derived mainly from the idiom of the Tupis, whose villages were found by the first discoverers along the seaboard, from the mouth of the La Plata to the Amazon and far up the stream of the latter. According to their traditions, which are supported by a comparison of their dialects, the Tupis wandered up the coast from the south. Their earlier home was between the Parana river and the Atlantic. There they called themselves _Carai_, the astute, a term they afterwards applied to the Spaniards, but later were given the name _Guaranis_, meaning warriors, by which they are generally known. They must have been very numerous, as a careful estimate made in 1612 computed those then living in the modern states of Corrientes and Uruguay at 365,000; a census which could not have been much exaggerated, as about a century later the Jesuits claimed to have over three hundred thousand Christianized and living in their “reductions;”[336] even to-day ninety per cent. of the population of Uruguay have Guarani blood in their veins. The inroads of the Spaniards from the south and of the kidnapping Portuguese from the east, reduced their number greatly, and many bands sought safety in distant removals; thus the Chiriguanos moved far to the west and settled on the highlands of Bolivia, where they have increased their stock from four or five thousand to triple that number,[337] extending as far south as the Pilcomayo river. On the upper waters of the Parana were the Tapes, a nation so called from the name of their principal village. It is another form of Tupi, and means “town.” They received the early missionaries willingly, and are complimented by these as being the most docile and intelligent of any of the nations of South America.[338] The Tupi tribes did not extend north of the immediate banks of the Amazon, nor south of the Rio de la Plata. It would appear not improbable that they started from the central highlands where the Tapajoz on the north and the Paraguay on the south have their sources. Their main body followed the latter to the Atlantic, where the Tupis proper separated and moved up the coast of Brazil. This latter migration is believed to have been as late as a few hundred years before the discovery.[339] Like the Tapuyas, the Tupis have a tendency to dolicocephaly, but it is less pronounced. They are less prognathic, the forehead is fuller and the color of the skin brighter. The hair is generally straight, but Pöppig saw many among the Cocamas of pure blood with wavy and even curly hair.[340]