What a prospect of unlimited forest greets the visitor to the Amazon. What a land of dreams and mysteries is unfolded. Three or four hundred miles to the south, and as great a distance to the north, stretches an unbroken forest and jungle, until one reaches the open plateaus of Matto Grosso, on one side, or the boundaries of Venezuela and the Guianas, on the other. To the west there are trees and trees, set close together, and mingling their boughs with the intertwining vines into a vegetable infinity. Much of it is still an unknown land, untrodden by the foot of white man. The tangle has been threaded at different places by exploring expeditions and the rubber gatherers, but to the world it is still an unconversant wilderness. A traveller finds vegetation of one kind on one river, and the same form on another stream a hundred miles away. He then infers that all the intervening territory has the same character, and so reports it. He may be right; and again he may be mistaken.

In the regions between ten degrees on either side of the equator lies the major part of this primeval forest. Forest and rivers alike depend on the rain. The moist trade winds, which blow westward from the Atlantic, meet the cold blasts from the lofty, snow-capped Andes, and precipitation follows. The forests protect the rivers by preventing evaporation, and the rivers nurse the trees by increasing the moisture in soil and air. Thus this region, which has the greatest rainfall in the world, has produced the mightiest river and the largest stretch of forest on the globe.

Like a huge wall rise the tall trees on every hand. A photograph of a thousand feet of the bank at one place would answer for the same amount of bank at any other place, except that the palms might predominate in some places more than at others. There are no solitary tree trunks; neither are there groups of trees of the same species. It would scarcely be possible to find a half-dozen trees of the same kind to the acre. Penetrate this forest and you have the feeling of having entered a maze or a web. There are plants and trunks but no leaves near the ground. It is the vines that cause one to feel that he has been entrapped. Vines are here, there and everywhere. The great tree trunks are wreathed with them, and the branches above are woven together with them into a labyrinth of leaves and stems. They are not little puny stems, such as may be found in our northern woods, but many of them are giants with woody fibre, almost like that of the tree trunks themselves. They ascend one tree and stretch across a half a dozen others; and then may drop down to the ground again. They are twisted, knotted and looped into almost every conceivable shape. Some have smooth stems and others are covered with spines; some are round or square, and others are gathered together into bundles.

Follow up the vines for fifty feet and you meet with the parasites in countless variety. They are grouped, massed and interwoven; they cling to the trees wherever there is a chance, and feed on the moist air. There are hundreds of cord-like air-roots which dangle in the air, and others send a branch down to mother earth for sustenance. Delicate orchids bloom among the other plants on the branches. Many trees depend more on the air than soil for sustenance. Cut a tree, and it will probably remain green and throw off new branches. Then further up one will see the green roof composed of the matted leaves and vines, which almost exclude the light from the ground below. Some of the largest trees spread over the others a wide, thick roof of verdure, like a vast umbrella. The mighty columnar stems, which bear aloft this solid roof of lofty green, would make the proudest of earth’s beings feel awed and humbled. The visitor to these forests feels his own insignificance. It is almost impossible to keep in a straight line, for in some places the thickets are too dense to be passable. You feel your loneliness. At sea or on the desert one has a definite horizon, a fixed boundary. Here you are absolutely separated from the world. The thicket is so compact that oftentimes it is impossible to see more than a score of feet. An army of men could not find you, and, unless an experienced woodman, it would be almost impossible to find the way by yourself. One can only tramp along hour after hour, cutting the narrow path as well as possible, but seeing only an interminable stretch of unbroken forest ahead as far as the eye can penetrate.

The jaguar, called by the natives onca, as well as several other species of these cat-like animals, are encountered in these forests. The commonest variety is almost as large as the Asiatic tiger and is sometimes almost as dangerous. The tapir is the largest animal found in South America, and it frequents these Amazonian jungles. It is, however, a sluggish animal, something like a large hog, but a dangerous fighter when cornered. Monkeys abound, and their strange human-like faces may be seen gazing down upon the unwelcome intruders from the lofty branches above. The natives are very fond of certain species, which they esteem a great delicacy. Small red deer are also found, but they are not so palatable as our northern species. The paca is a rodent about two feet long, and is considered a choice delicacy. They look very much like a rat except that they are spotted and tailless. The sloth is one of nature’s curiosities which seems to have been left over from a prehistoric age. It is not only peculiar in looks, with its little round bullet-like head, but is as peculiar in its habits. It always hangs upside down on a limb, and lives all its days in a sort of dead calm between eating and sleeping. It is likely to fall asleep between steps in moving from one place to another. After taking a few steps the sloth will probably fall in almost a state of exhaustion. Its utmost speed would probably be fifteen or twenty feet in an hour on the ground. Like some kinds of insects, they are distasteful to other animals, and carnivorous beasts will eat them only as a last resort. They are sluggish and very hard to kill, for their circulation seems to be as sluggish as their movements. The ant-bear is another strange animal occasionally encountered, and is very valuable, for it lives entirely on those pestering insects. The peccary, armadillo, capivara and tatou are other animals peculiar to these forests. Lizards are very numerous. In size they vary from the little house lizards, which dart out from dark corners, to the big fat ones two feet long which the natives prize very highly.

In the number and variety of fishes the Amazon is especially prolific. Agassiz says: “The Amazon nourishes about twice as many species as the Mediterranean, and a more considerable number than the Atlantic Ocean from one pole to the other. All the rivers of Europe combined, from the Tagus to the Volga, do not feed more than one hundred and fifty species of fresh water fish, and yet in one little lake in the neighbourhood of Manaos we have discovered more than two hundred species, the greater part of which have not yet been observed elsewhere.” The largest is the river cow, or manatee, which is really a mammal, although it never leaves the water. This fish, or animal, oftentimes obtains a length of fifteen feet, and the meat is said to taste very much like coarse pork. The most valuable fish from a food standpoint is the pirarucu, which often grows to seven feet in length, and weighs as much as two hundred and twenty pounds. It has an elongated snout covered with bony plates or scales, the body being cylindrical. It is generally caught with a harpoon in clear water. The salted and dried meat brings a good price, and is sold everywhere along the Amazon, making one of the principal articles of food. The piranha is a salmon-like fish, which is rather feared for it has a habit of biting pieces of flesh from the limbs of bathers. It is very voracious in its eating and will take almost any kind of bait. In some places the natives capture a supply of fish by pouring the juice of a vine into the water, which seems to have the effect of an anÆsthetic upon them. Turtles also abound, and are considered a great delicacy by the natives. A full grown turtle will reach three feet in length. They are most easily caught during the egg-laying season, when they are trapped on the sandy banks where they have gone to lay their eggs. The latter are greedily eaten, so that it is a wonder the species does not become extinct.

The birds of this valley are brilliant in their plumage beyond those of any other portion of the world. Parrots and paroquets of all sorts abound in countless numbers, some of the former being of large size. The finest species is the hyacinthine macaw, which is three feet long from the beak to the tip of its tail. With its beak this bird can crack a nut which it is difficult to crack with a hammer. The toucan, with its curved beak almost as large as its body, the curious umbrella bird, the dancing “cock of the rock,” the humming-birds and many other species add bright flashes of colour to the otherwise sombre colours of the woods.

It is in the numbers and varieties of insectivorous birds that these forests specially abound. Hundreds of them may be seen at almost any time moving about with the greatest activity, from species no larger than a sparrow to others the size of a crow. There are tanagers, ant-thrushes, fly-catchers and bargets, running up the trees and flitting about the leaves or lower branches. The hustling crowd lose no time, and, although seeming to move in concert, each bird is occupied on its own account in searching bark, leaf or twig. Then again, in a few minutes, all these hosts may disappear and the forest will remain deserted and silent. One bird, the organ bird, is a remarkable songster. When its notes are heard for the first time, it is hard to resist the impression that it is a human voice. It is especially noticeable because of the general absence of song birds in the tropical forests.

The numbers and varieties of insects are countless from the gorgeous butterflies to the leaf insects, which it is almost impossible for the uninitiated to discover because of the close resemblance to the foliage which they inhabit. The Amazon is really the despair of the naturalist by reason of the abundance of its plant and animal life. One naturalist reports having found upwards of seven thousand insects in one locality. Included in this list were five hundred and fifty distinct specimens of the butterfly. No description can convey an adequate idea of the beauty and diversity in form of this class of insects. There are many beautifully coloured beetles, whose delicate tints are marvels of beauty. There are flies which swarm along the banks in such numbers as to look like columns of smoke. The ants themselves are an interesting study, for their numbers are legion. There are ants that fly and ants that crawl; some that bite and others that sting; species that are carnivorous and species that are purely vegetable feeders; good and bad, big and little, industrious and lazy. No form of insect life is more interesting than these little creatures that can teach lessons to the human race. The jaguar, or tapir, does not create so great a commotion in the forest, as the armies of foraging ants which oftentimes march. They carry death and destruction to all other forms of insect life which can not fly far enough, or run fast enough, to escape these enemies. Wherever they move the whole animal world is set in commotion, and every living creature is possessed of but one idea, and that to get out of the way just as soon as possible. The ants march along in solid columns in a given direction, clearing the ground, bushes and small trees of every living thing. They will even attack a human being, if he should fail to get out of the way, and a few bites or stings will soon cause him to scamper away as fast as his legs can carry him.

For more than a hundred miles before reaching the mouth of the Amazon its dirty current colours the otherwise blue waters of the Atlantic. Entering the delta by one of the numerous outlets, the steamer passes through channels which are surrounded on either side by islands covered with dense vegetation a hundred feet or more high, with a border of lilies and other aquatic plants. It is like a fairy garden, and the islands are peopled with a noisy population of monkeys and parrots. Occasionally, a huge snake may be exposed to view on the limb of a tree. There are many kinds of trees, from adolescent saplings, as big as your arm, to immense trunks many feet through. And what a variety of palms! There are little palms that branch out like fans and do not grow high. There are palms, loaded with cocoanuts, which lean out over the water’s edge at a very pronounced angle. One species is armed with fearful spines, but bears an edible nut, while the cohune palm grows great clusters of hard, oily nuts. Above all the members of this arborial family tower the lofty royal palms, which are the aristocrats of this family.

The native finds this tropical tree most useful, for

The tree which bears the Brazil nuts of commerce is one of the highest of the Amazonian trees and overtops the royal palm. Its foliage is of a deep green and spreads out on all sides. The nuts grow in a great pod as large as a good-sized apple, and inside the thick husk will be found fifteen or twenty of these rich and delicious nuts. Flowering trees are omnipresent in these forests, and some of them are covered with beautiful flowers; or perhaps it may be a vine that bears the flowers one sees in the canopy overhead. They are neither buttercups nor violets, and yet it may be that they resemble those better known blossoms.

After threading this system of narrow channels the boat enters the river proper, which at first is very wide and is more like an inland sea; the natives call it the sea-river. In places it opens out in sea-like expanses; at times the boat coasts along the shore near enough to hear the monkeys chatter, and again it is out so far that the shore is only a hazy line. The lower river varies from two to ten miles in width, but you are never sure whether you are not mistaking the shores of islands for the actual banks of the river. Slowly past you floats dÉbris that has come for two thousand miles on these yellow waters. Mixed up with the water may be soil from Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and half of the republics of South America. You pass the mouths of streams which are themselves navigable for a thousand miles by vessels. In all it has been said that the Amazon and its tributaries furnish fifty thousand miles of navigable waters, half of which are available for steamers. There are few towns of any size, and only a few miserable little villages. Along the bank is an occasional cleared patch on which stands the little wood and thatch hut of a rubber gatherer. Naked babies play on the shores and barefooted men and women gaze at your steamer as it goes by. There are no roads in the forest, and if a path is blazed to-day in six months it would be impassable. Every one travels by water, except the rubber gatherers and medicine hunters, who chop their way through the undergrowth.

Nature’s apothecary shop is located here, for hundreds of medicinal plants have been found in these woods and jungles. Sarsaparilla is probably the most profitable, but ipecac, oil of copaiba, and many other drugs useful in stopping a tooth-ache or poisoning a dog, are extracted from trees and vines of the Amazon Valley. Gums and balsams, essential oils and dyeing substances, spices and aromatic plants are also among the varied products.

Rain! Rain! Rain! One tires of hearing its ceaseless patter on the roof, and everything is soon covered with a coat of rust. Every article made of leather, which is allowed to stand for a few days, becomes covered with a down-like fungi of green mould. From November to February is the “rainy” season, and then the rain falls in perfect torrents, and the Amazon, fed by all its connecting streams, rises twenty-five, thirty or forty feet above its usual level. Thousands of square miles of territory are then submerged, and inland seas are formed in many places. The fall of the river is not more than two hundred inches in the first thousand miles from its mouth, and the current is not very swift. For this distance the depth will average one hundred and fifty feet.

After travelling up the Amazon as far as from Boston to Chicago the Rio Negro is reached. The name means the black river. As one writer says, “the Rio Negro is as black as one’s hat and the Amazon is as yellow as pea soup.” It is a very wide river at its mouth, and the steamer turns up into its black waters. Just ahead may be seen a haze of white buildings with their red tile roofs. Here, in the midst of this vast wilderness, where the forest stretches out for hundreds of miles in each direction, and where a monkey could travel for days by jumping from branch to branch, is located a live, hustling town with fine public buildings, electric lights, electric tram lines and a theatre that would be a credit to any town. The ridges of the roofs are sometimes so covered with turkey-buzzards as almost to make one think at first sight that they are artificial ornaments. They used to be the chief sanitary force, but the new waterworks and sewer system have greatly relieved their labours. Like ParÁ, this city smells of rubber and the day dreams of the inhabitants are permeated with that one idea.

Above the junction with the Rio Negro the Amazon is called the Solimoes, for a thousand miles, and beyond that it is known as the MaraÑon. At Iquitos, in Peru, this river is a mile wide. The area of the basin of this river is three times that of the Mississippi. The Tocantins, Xingu, Tapajos, Purus, Negro, Jurua, and Madeira, all noble streams in themselves, pour their floods into this one channel. The last named river leads to the famous Acre territory, which has proven a bonanza for Brazil. She paid Bolivia $9,600,000 in 1904, and in the next five years it paid back nearly $24,000,000 in export duties on rubber alone.

The great traveller of a century ago, Baron von Humboldt, declared that “The valley of the Amazon in the near future is bound to become a great centre of civilization and the world’s greatest storehouse.” This prediction has not proven true, for more than a century has passed since the statement was made and little development has been made. The natural resources are there, just as Humboldt saw them, however, and still await the efforts of man to turn them to good account. Right at the mouth of the Amazon lies the great state of ParÁ, as large as two states the size of Texas, with only half a million inhabitants, less than one person to each square mile of territory, scattered over its confines. It has a fertile soil capable of producing almost anything necessary for the support and comfort of life; it possesses tablelands at an elevation high enough to escape the moisture of the river and continued heat of a tropical sun; in the mouth of the Amazon is an island almost as large as Portugal, which is capable of supplying thousands of head of cattle for the world’s food supply.

The trouble with ParÁ is that the people think of nothing, deal in nothing and dream of nothing but rubber. To quote the American Consul: “Last year the United States took twenty thousand tons of crude rubber at a cost of $64,000,000, and we are still howling for more. The other things we took are small, although Brazil nuts, balsams, deerskins and a few other items amounted to something. What did we send them? Practically nothing that they could buy elsewhere. Some flour, petroleum, hardware and such other things as they themselves have looked up and found good.” And yet the city of ParÁ is a thousand miles nearer to New York than it is to London or Hamburg, where the principal buying is done. The federal government receives twenty per cent. of the market value of every ton of rubber shipped, and in return promises, at some time in the future, to give the people good roads and other improvements. That happy day has not yet arrived, but rubber seems to be becoming higher each year and more difficult to procure. This perhaps accounts for the lack of improvement in some directions, that neither government nor people take time to think of anything except the one staple of rubber.

The city of Santa Maria de Belem do ParÁ is the principal port of the Amazon basin, and the greatest rubber shipping port in the world. It lies nearly a hundred miles from the Atlantic, but is as much on the Atlantic as New Orleans is on the Gulf, and is usually called an Atlantic port. It is only a few miles from the equator, and consequently is quite hot, for its elevation is only a few feet above sea level. And yet right here, almost on the “line,” has grown up a beautiful city of over one hundred thousand people, who enjoy life and live almost as many years as those in more favourable locations. This city with the long name is generally known as ParÁ, although Belem, meaning Bethlehem, is the proper name. It is perhaps the prettiest city in Brazil, except Rio de Janeiro, and has many parks and plazas filled with the luxuriant vegetation and noble palms which grow so luxuriantly here. Statues ornament nearly all of their public squares and parks, and many of them are well done. The public buildings are numerous and tasty, as is most of the architecture of the country.

The sanitary conditions of the city have been greatly improved in the past few years, and a new sewer system to be worked by pumps something like the New Orleans method has just been begun. It is as a shipping port that the city is best known. To quote again from the American Consul: “Eight hundred and fifty-three steamers entered the port of ParÁ in 1908, having a tonnage of nine hundred and fifty thousand tons, but it was mainly remarkable for the fact that we did not fly the flag on even one cargo boat.” It is only in the last few decades that this city has become very important, for no longer ago than the Civil War ParÁ was only a tropical trading port.

The docks are busy places, for steamers from all parts of the world, and flying many flags, come here. Men of all shades, from a dirty yellow to black and white, are busy handling the staple commodity of rubber. The rubber is all put up in sacks, and taken to the shipping houses, of which there are scores near the wharves. Every one handles “caoutchouc” and the air smells of it, the hot sun giving it an odour of burnt rubber. Everywhere they are cutting the dried rubber, which looks like great cheeses, chopping it, packing it, carrying it and loading it on vessels.

The Amazon district dominates the rubber market of the world. ParÁ and Manaos are the greatest rubber exporting ports of that district. From these cities the rubber buyers make their expeditions into the very heart of the Amazon, and its many tributaries are nearly all the home of rubber gatherers. From these centres the Indian gatherers make their expeditions by canoe, and through almost trackless forests to the trees which they are tapping. These trees do not grow in clumps, but one will be found here, another there, and oftentimes these single trees are at a distance of several hundred yards from each other. The amount of crude rubber that the native can gather depends on how close the trees may be to each other.

Upwards of one hundred rubber-bearing trees, vines and shrubs have been classified; but the one known as the Hevea is the rubber tree par excellence of Brazil. It is indigenous to the Amazon and its tributaries. Trees are oftentimes found which are as much as twelve feet in circumference, but those are exceptional. They require an abundance of moisture, and it is only in the thick forest, where the necessary moisture is constant and abundant, that they will reach this extraordinary size, although the trees can be successfully cultivated. It is quite probable that thousands of these trees are still undiscovered, and perhaps large districts still await development; but it is equally certain that the rubber prospector has threaded his way through thousands of miles of Amazonian jungle in his search after this profitable article of commerce. The present unprecedented prices have bestirred the exporting firms to feverish activity. Sections of hitherto unpierced forest are now being treaded by the prospector, with his Indian guides busily engaged in cutting a path through the dense undergrowth and labyrinth of vines. The howling of the enraged beasts thus disturbed in their lairs, the fear of poisonous snakes, the dread of the fever-laden mosquito, the annoyance of troublesome insects are nothing, with the price of rubber soaring upwards towards three dollars per pound.

An American rubber expert, who recently visited the Amazon rubber camps, says: “The past year more than seventy thousand tons of crude rubber, having a value approximating $300,000,000, were produced, of which forty thousand tons came out of the Amazon River. This was wholly wild rubber, gathered almost entirely from a belt extending along the Amazon and its tributaries, and running less than three miles into the interior. The vast forest beyond these borders is substantially untouched; but with the building of the railroad around the falls of the Madeira, which will be completed in 1911, with the building of roads through the forest connecting up rivers, and with the introduction of the gasoline boat, vast districts heretofore inaccessible will be brought within the reach of the rubber gatherer; and, while the gain in production each year has been approximately but ten per cent. over the previous year, there is no question that this percentage will increase largely from this time forward.”

It is not the sap of the tree that produces the rubber, but a juice which is yielded by the bark. As it flows this juice has the appearance of milk, and acts in much the same way. If left to itself it will separate into a lower fluid and a surface mass like cream, and this is the so-called india-rubber. Less than fifteen per cent. of this “cream” in the product of the tree is unprofitable and does not pay for the working. Various ways have been devised to separate the rubber by processes of coagulation. The native method has always been by a smoking heat, but in some places chemicals are used; again separators, similar to those employed in butter making, have been introduced with good results, so it is said. The method and care used has a very marked influence on the price and value of the crude rubber in the markets. The heating by smoke is generally considered to produce the cleanest and purest form of rubber for commercial export.

The tapping of a rubber tree is a seemingly simple operation, and yet it requires considerable skill to so tap a tree as to produce the maximum of sap, and inflict the minimum of injury to the tree. A tree properly treated will stand continual tapping for twenty years, while a tree abused might die after two or three seasons. Hence it is to the interest of all to preserve the life of the tree. The tapper first affixes a small cup to the tree, and then with a wedge-shaped axe makes a gash in the bark, being careful not to penetrate the wood. This operation is repeated at intervals of a foot in a line around the tree. Into these cups the milk flows slowly. The next day a row of incisions is made just below the first, and so on until the ground is reached. A good tree will yield up to a height of at least twenty feet. An expert can tap a hundred trees a day, provided that they are close together. The sap, which is collected once each day, is then brought to the camp. Heat is then applied and the crude rubber is made into roughly-shaped balls of different sizes. The buyers usually cut these in two in order to see that no extraneous substance has been placed inside to give weight. Stones have frequently been found moulded in with the rubber, and stones are easier to gather even along the Amazon than rubber. Many plantations of rubber trees, principally of the ManiÇoba species, which will grow on higher and drier lands of the interior, have been set out in Brazil, but their production is very small when compared with that of the dense Amazonian forests.

Of the other valuable trees of the Amazon basin Agassiz says: “The importance of the basin of the Amazons to Brazil, from an industrial point of view, can hardly be over-estimated. Its woods alone have an almost priceless value. Nowhere in the world is there finer timber, either for solid construction or for work of ornament, and yet it is scarcely used even for the local buildings, and makes no part whatever of the exports. The rivers which flow past these magnificent forests seem meant to serve, first as a waterpower for the sawmills, which ought to be established along their borders, and then as a means of transportation for the material so provided. Setting aside the woods as timber, what shall I say of the mass of fruits, resins, oils, colouring matters and textile fabrics which they yield?” These words of this great naturalist, although written years ago, are just as true to-day. At least one hundred and fifty varieties of valuable hardwood timbers have been found in these forests. As mahogany and other better known woods become scarcer, these woods will certainly find a market.

The great state of Amazonas, which is more than two-thirds as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, is an empire in itself. It is difficult to predict what may be its future. Some scientific men say that civilization will again be centred in the tropics; if so, then here will be the future Europe. Any prediction would be only guesswork, for no man with only human foresight could look into the future and foretell the development. The possibilities are visible to even the shallow observer; the uncertain trend of civilization no one can with certainty prognosticate. Nature is kind, if her laws are obeyed, and the white man endures the climate better than his copper-coloured brother. It would be the lazy man’s paradise, for it takes little labour to provide the simple wants. The only difficult task is to fight nature in her prodigal growth. The struggle of the northern farmer with weeds is an infantile task in comparison with the constant fight against every kind of growth in this climate. It would be a hopeless task for one man, lone handed and without means, to locate in this wilderness and attempt to carve out his fortune. Goodly sized colonies would do better, and, by their energetic and united efforts, nature would be conquered and compelled to contribute of her bounty to the welfare and support of man.

Outside of Manaos and a few small towns and settlements the population of the state of Amazonas consists almost entirely of Indians. One industrious writer has listed nearly four hundred separate and distinct tribes. Many of these are extinct, or practically extinct, but a large number of distinct tribes are still found on the different rivers that have widely divergent habits and physical characteristics. A few of these tribes live a retired existence in the forests, but most of them mingle with the white people, and are employed by them in gathering rubber or other products of the forests. The skin of the Indians is a coppery-brown colour. They are of a medium height, but have not the high cheek bones of the North American Indian. Like the latter, however, they are undemonstrative, and do not betray their emotions of joy and grief, wonder or fear. They will undoubtedly be driven out and disappear as the white race settle in the tropics, for their inflexible character prevents them from adapting themselves to changed conditions.

Although these Indians have dropped cannibalism, and other inhuman practices, they are still simple children in their customs and beliefs. They live as their ancestors have lived for centuries, have adopted few of the conveniences or luxuries of civilization, and live a hand-to-mouth existence. Religious holidays are observed with a strange mixture of superstition. Their idea of a holiday, whether religious or secular, is “bonfires, processions, masquerading, confused drumming and fifing, monotonous dancing kept up hour after hour without intermission, and, the most important part of all, getting gradually and completely drunk.” They are kindly disposed toward aliens, and are as hospitable as their circumstances permit. The Tupi-Guarini language is generally spoken, or at least understood, and this has been reduced to written form by the Jesuit clergy.