Although monkeys are now rare in a wild state near Para, a great number may be seen semi-domesticated in the city.The Brazilians are fond of pet animals.Monkeys, however, have not been known to breed in captivity in this country.I counted, in a short time, thirteen different species, whilst walking about the Para streets, either at the doors or windows of houses, or in the native canoes.Two of them I did not meet with afterwards in any other part of the country.One of these was the well-known Hapale Jacchus, a little creature resembling a kitten, banded with black and grey all over the body and tail, and having a fringe of long white hairs surrounding the ears.It was seated on the shoulder of a young mulatto girl, as she was walking along the street, and I was told had been captured in the island of Marajo.The other was a species of Cebus, with a remarkably large head.It had ruddy-brown fur, paler on the face, but presenting a blackish tuft on the top of the forehead.
In the wet season serpents are common in the neighbourhood of Para.One morning, in April, 1849, after a night of deluging rain, the lamplighter, on his rounds to extinguish the lamps, woke me up to show me a boa-constrictor he had just killed in the Rua St.Antonio, not far from my door.He had cut it nearly in two with a large knife, as it was making its way down the sandy street.Sometimes the native hunters capture boa- constrictors alive in the forest near the city.We bought one which had been taken in this way, and kept it for some time in a large box under our verandah.This is not, however, the largest or most formidable serpent found in the Amazons region.It is far inferior, in these respects, to the hideous Sucuruju, or Water Boa (Eunectes murinus), which sometimes attacks man; but of this I shall have to give an account in a subsequent chapter.
It frequently happened, in passing through the thickets, that a snake would fall from the boughs close to me.Once for a few moments I got completely entangled in the folds of one, a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part.It was a species of Dryophis.The majority of the snakes seen were innocuous.One day, however, I trod on the tail of a young serpent belonging to a very poisonous kind, the Jararaca (Craspedocephalus atrox).It turned round and bit my trousers;and a young Indian lad, who was behind me, dexterously cut it through with his knife before it had time to free itself.In some seasons snakes are very abundant, and it often struck me as strange that accidents did not occur more frequently than was the case.
Amongst the most curious snakes found here were the Amphisbaenae, a genus allied to the slow-worm of Europe.Several species occur at Para.Those brought to me were generally not much more than a foot in length.They are of cylindrical shape, having, properly speaking, no neck, and the blunt tail which is only about an inch in length, is of the same shape as the head.This peculiar form, added to their habit of wriggling backwards as well as forwards, has given rise to the fable that they have two heads, one at each extremity.They are extremely sluggish in their motions, and are clothed with scales that have the form of small imbedded plates arranged in rings round the body.The eye is so small as to be scarcely perceptible.They live habitually in the subterranean chambers of the Sauba ant; only coming out of their abodes occasionally in the night time.The natives call the Amphisbaena the "Mai das Saubas," or Mother of the Saubas, and believe it to be poisonous, although it is perfectly harmless.It is one of the many curious animals which have become the subject of mythical stories with the natives.They say the ants treat it with great affection, and that if the snake be taken away from a nest, the Saubas will forsake the spot.I once took one quite whole out of the body of a young Jararaca, the poisonous species already alluded to, whose body was so distended with its contents that the skin was stretched out to a film over the contained Amphisbaena.I was, unfortunately, not able to ascertain the exact relation which subsists between these curious snakes and the Sauba ants.I believe however, they feed upon the Saubas, for I once found remains of ants in the stomach of one of them.Their motions are quite peculiar; the undilatable jaws, small eyes and curious plated integument also distinguish them from other snakes.These properties have evidently some relation to their residence in the subterranean abodes of ants.It is now well ascertained by naturalists, that some of the most anomalous forms amongst Coleopterous insects are those which live solely in the nests of ants, and it is curious that an abnormal form of snakes should also be found in the society of these insects.
