soldiers in the world. The advantage at last remained with the latter, and the Indian disappeared from the Atlantic coast. At the present day, one must penetrate the distant forests that skirt the great rivers to find the remnants of the Guaranis, and this exploration is not always unattended with danger. Still remembering the ferocity with which the Portuguese pursued their ancestors, they instinctively seize their arrows at the sight of a white man who ventures upon their river-banks, and whose presence reminds them of the enemy of their race. Moreover, civilization has no hold upon these wild charters.
TWO INDIAN CHILDREN
A few yours ago, two young Indian children found in the forest were brought to the mansion of the Emperor of Brazil. The sister, it is true, readily received the care lavished upon her; she learned the Portuguese language, was baptized, was afterwards married to a white man, and was still alive when I was in Rio de Janeiro; but the young man would never permit any approaches; he bit at all who came within his reach like a wild animal. He at last died, suffocating with rage and despair.
INDIOS MANSOS AND INDIOS BRAVOS.
This indocile character has caused the Indiana of the forests to be called Indios bravos, or wild Indians, in contradistinction to the Indians of the frontier, who are called Indios mansos, or tame Indians. Like their ancestors, the bravos live upon fruits, and by hunting and fishing. Each tribe obeys a chief whose authority it is difficult to analyze. Superior in physical strength to other aboriginal Americans, they appear inferior in intelligence; for no historical tradition, no monument bearing traces of civilization, has been found among them.
MYTHOLOGY
As for their religion, it is doubtless the same as that of their ancestors. A Frenchman whom recent political agitations had transferred from his native country to Brasil, has observed these savage tribes with special attention, and made investigations as to their religion. 'Among the hundred tribes scattered between the mouth of the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata,' says M. Ribeyrolles in his work on Brazil, the greater number lived without gods, and no worship was practised beneath the evergreen arches of the virgin forest. This great temple had no other incense than that of flowers. The historians of the conquest and those of the missions nevertheless attribute a very clear mythology to one of the original tribes, the Tupic race. They say that these Indiaus recognize a god—a veritable Jehovah—whom they called Tupan, (Thunder.) As in all legendary theogonies, whether they come from India, Persia, or Sinai, this god Tupan had an opposite, an adversary, a devil, whom they called Anhanga. Below these two majesties of heaven came two series of genii, the good and the wicked, and lower still, as simple ministers or interpreters, were the priests, or sorcerers, who sold the secrets of the gods to the people.'
The transition between the wild tribes and the civilized population of the Brazilian coast is marked by the Indios mansos. It is this class who gather caoutchouc, ipecacuanha, vanilla, sarsaparilla, and in short all those products found only in the distant forests. Having finished their harvest, they proceed to the settlements of the whites to deliver it, receiving in exchange the products of civilized industry—knives, calicoes, spirits, etc. The remainder of the year is spent in hunting, and more particularly fishing, which is their favorite employment.
INDIAN SWIMMERS
Born in a country traversed by numerous rivers, which in the solstices of each year overflow and sometimes cover immense extents of forest, they acquire from childhood such a habit of swimming that water seems to be their nat-
