THE WILD INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MADEIRA VALLEY.
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national costume. They wore—horribile dictu !—coloured cotton shirts, black coats and inexpressibles, and tall hats ! Anything more ludicrous could not well be imagined. Generally speaking, there is nothing so conspicuous and ridiculous as coloured people (negro, mulatto, sambo, or mestizo) in what they consider Sunday apparel of unrivalled elegance. A pretty negro or mulatto girl (of the Mina tribe, for instance) looks quite a queen, in her way, in her costume of lace-trimmed chemise of dazzling whiteness, set off by the velvet-like dark skin, her gaudy short petticoat ending in points below; a white, yellow, or green kerchief, slung with inimitable grace turbanwise round her short ringlets; and a shawl they call panno da eosta, with large blue, white, and black stripes, hanging carelessly over her shoulders or round her waist. Some coral bracelets, or ornaments of massive gold, which never saw the inside of a Pforzheim melting-pot, complete the outfit, whose brilliant colours and easy grace contrast strikingly with our fashionable black, brown, or grey strait-waistcoats. But when you see the same creature, after (it may be) her entering the service of some noble family as nurse or lady's-maid, in a tight black silk dress; her woolly curls twisted, with pomatum, scissors, and comb, into a shape slightly resembling the chignon of her mistress; in high-heeled boots, instead of her richly embroidered slippers; with some big, tasteless brooch, instead of her corals and heavy gold filigree;—the graceful creature is transformed into a hideously ridiculous monster: but squeamish Decency is not offended, and does not now, with averted head, hiss out— "Shocking!" The same happens with our own country people: how much more with the Indians!                                                        '
The Mundrucus have long abandoned their supremacy on the Madeira. They left this river even before the Conquest, I believe, to another powerful tribe, the Araras, who also nowadays are not held in the same fear as they were formerly. Towards the end of the last century, more than once they seriously menaced the former Mission of Araretama, now Borba; and the whole lower course of the Madeira was haunted and rendered unsafe by them: but now they have totally retired to the forests on the right shore, whence they break out only now and again, appearing and disappearing with the rapidity of lightning. None of the settlers, however, will venture into one of the smaller lateral valleys, where they arc still kept in awe by the strong bows and long  arrows of  the  former masters of the territory.     The immediate