On the morrow our falcon-eyed Indians whispered "cuche" long before we saw any thing.[129] Williams went ashore and came upon a herd of peccaries, killing two. The peccari is a pugnacious, fearless animal. It is not frightened by the noise of fire-arms, and when wounded is a dangerous foe; but captured when young, it is easily tamed. It has a higher back than the domestic hog, and cleanlier habits; an odoriferous gland on the loins, and three-toed hind feet. We preserved the skins for science and a ham for the table; the rest we gave to our crew and fellow-voyagers, who devoured every thing, even the viscera. They sat up late that night, around their camp-fire, cooking peccari meat: part they parboiled in a pot, and some they roasted, skewered on sticks which slanted over the flames; the rest they cured with smoke, for lack of salt. The meat, though rank, is palatable, but not equal to macaw, which we served up the next day.[130]

[Footnote 129: In the Quichua of Quito the peccari is called saino.]

[Footnote 130: The Uaupes on the Napo, according to Wallace, will not eat peccari meat. "Meat putrifies in this climate (of the Tapajos) in less than twenty-four hours, and salting is of no use unless the pieces are cut in thin slices and dried immediately in the sun."—Bates.]

We had now passed the mouth of the Aguarico, leaving behind us the Christian Quitus and the peaceful Zaparos. Henceforth the right bank of the Napo is inhabited by the Mazanes and Iquitos; while on the left are the wilder Santa Marias, Anguteros, Oritos, and Orejones. The Orejones, or "Big Ears," enlarge those appendages to such an extent that they are said to lie down on one ear and cover themselves with the other. This practice is now going out of fashion. These Indians received their name, Orejones, or Oregones, from the Spaniards, on account of this singular custom of inserting disks of wood in the ears to enlarge them; the like practice prevailed among the tribes on the Columbia River, Oregon. They trade in hammocks, poisons, and provisions. The Anguteros, or Putumayos, have a bad reputation. They are reported to have killed and robbed sarsaparilla traders coming up stream. Nevertheless, we kept watch only one night during the voyage, though we always anchored to an island, and between Coca and the Amazon we did not see twenty-five men. Equally rare were the savage brutes—not a jaguar showed himself, and only one anaconda. The anaconda, or water-boa (Eunectes murinus[131]), is larger and more formidable than the boa-constrictor which lives on the land. It has a hideous appearance, broad in the middle, and tapering abruptly at both ends. We did not learn from the natives that anacondas over twenty feet long had been seen on the Napo, but specimens twice that size are found on the Amazon. Land boas do not often exceed fifteen feet in length.

[Footnote 131: The specific name was strangely given for its habit, when young, of darting upon mice. Anaconda is a Ceylonese word.]



Gangs of the large howling monkeys often entertained us with their terrific, unearthly yells, which, in the truthful language of Bates, "increased tenfold the feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is calculated to inspire." They are of a maroon color (the males wear a long red beard), and have under the jaw a bony goitre—an expansion of the os hyoides—by means of which they produce their loud, rolling noise. They set up an unusual chorus whenever they saw us, scampering to the tops of the highest trees, the dams carrying the young upon their backs. They are the only monkeys which the natives have not been able to tame. Vast numbers of screaming parrots and macaws flew over our heads, always going in pairs and at a great height. Groups of "gypsy-birds" were perched on the trees overhanging the river, and black ducks, cormorants, and white cranes floated on the water or stalked along the plaias.

But one form of life superabounded. From the rising of the sun to the going down thereof clouds of ubiquitous sand-flies filled our cabin, save when the wind was high. As soon as the sand-flies ceased, myriads of musquitoes began their work of torture, without much preparatory piping, and kept it up all night.[132] These pests were occasionally relieved or assisted by piums—minute flies that alight unnoticed, and squatting close to the skin, suck their fill of blood, leaving dark spots and a disagreeable irritation. Our hands were nearly black with their punctures. We also made the acquaintance of the montuca, a large black fly whose horny lancets make a gash in the flesh, painless but blood-letting. All these insects are most abundant in the latter part of the rainy season, when the Maranon is almost uninhabitable. The apostrophe of Midshipman Wilberforce was prompted by sufferings which we can fully appreciate: "Ye greedy animals! I am ashamed of you. Can not you once forego your dinner, and feast your mind with the poetry of the landscape?" Right welcome was the usual afternoon squall, which sent these pests "kiting" over the stern.

[Footnote 132: Sand-flies are called by the natives musquitoes, and what we call musquitoes they call sancudos.]

On Wednesday we fell in with a petty sarsaparilla trader, with two canoes, bound for the Maranon. He was sick with fever. Sarsaparilla (written salsaparrilha in Brazil, and meaning "bramble vine") is the root of a prickly, climbing plant found throughout the whole Amazonian forest, but chiefly on dry, rocky ground. On the morning of the seventh day from Coca we passed the mouth of the Curaray, the largest tributary of the Napo. It rises on the slopes of the Llanganati mountains, and is considered auriferous. It is probably derived from curi, gold. Seeing a hut on the banks, we sent an Indian to purchase provisions; he returned with a few yucas and eggs. The day following we were attacked from a new quarter. Stopping to escape a storm, a party went ashore to cut down a tree of which we desired a section. It fell with its top in the river, just above our craft; when lo! to our consternation, down came countless hosts of ants (Ecitons). Myriads were, of course, swept down stream, but myriads more crawled up the sides of our canoes, and in one minute after the tree fell our whole establishment, from hold to roof, was swarming with ants. We gave one look of despair at each other, our provisions and collections, and then commenced a war of extermination. It was a battle for life. The ants, whose nest we had so suddenly immersed in the Napo, refused to quit their new lodgings. As we were loosely dressed, the tenacious little creatures hid themselves under our clothing, and when plucked off would leave their heads and jaws sticking in the skin. At last the deck was cleared by means of boots, slippers, and towels; but, had the ants persevered, they might have taken possession of the boat.

To-day we saw a high bank (called in Quichua pucaurcu, or red hill) consisting of fine laminated clays of many colors—red, orange, yellow, gray, black, and white. This is the beginning of that vast deposit which covers the whole Amazonian Valley. It rests upon a bed of lignite, or bituminous shale, and a coarse, iron-cemented conglomerate. The latter is not visible on the Napo, but crops out particularly at Obidos and Para. The Indians prepare their paints from these colored clays.

Our Santa Rosans seemed to have little tact in fishing; still their spears and our hooks gathered not a few representatives of ichthyic life in the Napo. The species most common belong to the genus Pimelodus, or catfish tribe. Below tho Curaray the sand bars yielded turtles' eggs of a different kind from those found above, the tracaja. They were smaller and oval, and buried only six or eight inches deep, thirty in a nest.

December 9.—Passed early this morning the mouth of the Mazan; four huts at the junction. To-day we noticed the anomaly first observed by Herndon. From Papallacta to the Curaray the rise of the mercury was regular, but on the lower Napo there were great fluctuations. At one time both barometer and boiling apparatus, with which we made daily and simultaneous observations, unanimously declared that our canoes were gliding up stream, though we were descending at the rate of five miles an hour. The temperature is decidedly lower and the winds are stronger as we near the Amazon.

December 10.—Our last day on the Napo. In celebration of the event we killed a fine young doe as it was crossing the river. It closely resembled the Virginia deer. At 9 A.M. the Indians shouted in their quiet way—"Maranon!" It was as thrilling as Thalatta to Xenophon's soldiers. We were not expecting to reach it till night, being deceived by Villavicencio's map, which, in common with all others, locates the Curaray and Mazan too far to the north. We halted for an hour at Camindo, a little fishing hamlet claimed by Peru, and then hastened to get our first sight of the Amazon. With emotions we can not express, we gazed upon this ocean-stream. The march of the great river in its silent grandeur is sublime. In its untamed might it rolls through the wilderness with a stately, solemn air, showing its awful power in cutting away the banks, tearing down trees, and building up islands in a day. Down the river we can look till the sky and water meet as on the sea, while the forest on either hand dwindles in the perspective to a long black line. Between these even walls of ever-living green the resistless current hurries out of Peru, sweeps past the imperial guns of Tabatinga into Brazil, and plows its way visibly two hundred miles into the Atlantic.

At a small island standing where the Napo pays tribute to the monarch of rivers, mingling its waters with the Huallaga and Ucayali, which have already come down from the Peruvian Andes, we bade adieu to our captain and cook, who, in the little canoe, paddled his way westward to seek his fortune in Iquitus. At this point the Maranon (for so the natives call the Upper Amazon) does not appear very much broader than the Napo; but its depth is far greater, and there are few sand-bars.[133] The water is always of a turbid yellow; while the Napo, though muddy during our voyage, is usually clear. The forest, moreover, on the banks of the Maranon, is not so striking as on the tributary. The palms are not so numerous, and the uniform height of the trees gives a monotonous, sea-like horizon.

[Footnote 133: Herndon makes the mouth of the Napo 150 yards broad, and the soundings six or seven fathoms. This is not a fair representation; for the Napo, like all the other tributaries, empties its waters by several mouths. At Camindo, five miles above the confluence, the Napo is certainly a mile wide.]

We arrived at Pebas December 12, ten hours after leaving the mouth of the Napo, and a month and a half from Quito. The first individual we met addressed us in good English, and proved to be Mr. Hauxwell of birds and insects, who has resided thirty years on the Amazon. His house, the largest and best in town, though but a roofed stockade, was generously placed at our disposal, and the fatted calf—an immense turtle—was immediately killed. To us, after the transit of the Andes and the dangers and hardships of the wilderness and the river, it seemed as if we had reached the end of our journey, though we were over two thousand miles from the Atlantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the Ambiyacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. Excepting Mr. Hauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two or three other whites, the inhabitants are Indians of the Orejones and Yagua tribes. The exportations are hammocks, sarsaparilla, palo de cruz, and urari. Palo de cruz is the very hard, dark-colored wood of a small leguminous tree bearing large pink flowers. Urari is the poison used by all the Amazonian Indians; it is made by the Ticunas on the Putumayo, by boiling to a jelly the juices of certain roots and herbs, chiefly of the Strychnos toxifera, though it does not contain any trace of strychnine. Tipped with urari, the needle-like arrow used in blow-guns will kill an ox in twenty minutes and a monkey in ten. "We have reason to congratulate ourselves (wrote the facetious Sidney Smith) that our method of terminating disputes is by sword and pistol, and not by these medicated pins." But the poison appears to be harmless to man and other salt-eating animals, salt being an antidote.[134] We were not troubled with sand-flies after leaving the plaias of the Napo, but the musquitoes at Pebas were supernumerary. Perhaps, however, it was a special gathering on our account, for the natives have a notion that just before the arrival of a foreigner the musquitoes come in great numbers.

[Footnote 134: Urari is mentioned by Raleigh. Humboldt was the first to take any considerable quantity to Europe. The experiments of Virchau and Muenster make it probable that it does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons, but that its particular effect is to take away the power of voluntary muscular movement, while the involuntary functions of the heart and intestines still continue. See Ann. de Chim. et de Phys., t. xxxix., 1828, p. 24; and Schoemberg's Reisen in Britisch Guiana, th. i., s. 441. The frightful poison, tieute of India, is prepared from a Java species of strychnos.]

Many of the Indians are disfigured by dark blotches on the skin, the effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in Central Amazonia. Here we first noticed the singular habit among the children of eating clay. This habit is not confined to the Otomacs on the Oronoco, nor to Indians altogether; for negroes and whites have the same propensity—Mr. Hauxwell found it impossible to restrain his own children. Bates ascribes the morbid craving to the meagre diet. This may be true to some extent, but it is certainly strange that the extraordinary desire to swallow earth (chiefly unctuous clays) is found only in the tropics, where vegetation is so rank and fruit so abundant.



CHAPTER XVI.

Down the Amazon.—Steam on the Great River.—Loreto.—San Antonio.—Tabatinga.—Brazilian Steamers.—Scenery on the Amazon.—Tocantins.—Fonte Boa.—Ega.—Rio Negro.—Manaos.

We left Pebas for Tabatinga in the Peruvian steamer "Morona," Captain Raygado. Going up to Jerusalem by railroad, or ascending the Nile by a screw whisking the sacred waters, is not so startling as the sight of a steamer in the heart of South America. There is such a contrast between the primeval wildness of the country and the people and this triumph of civilized life; and one looks forward to the dazzling future of this great valley, when the ships of all nations will crowd the network of rivers for the gold and perfumes, the gems and woods of this western Ophir. The natives call the steamer the "devil's boat," or "big canoe;" but they manifest little curiosity. Our Napo Indians were evidently afraid of it, and stood afar off. The first steamers that broke the deep solitude of the Maranon were the "Huallaga" and "Tirado," brought out in 1853 by Dr. Whittemore, for Peru. They were built in New York, of Georgia pine, costing Peru $75,000, and reflected no credit on the United States; they lie rotting near Nauta. Peru has now two iron steamers of London make—the "Morona" and "Pastassa"—besides two smaller craft for exploring the tributaries. These steamers are for government service, but three more are building in England with passenger accommodations. The "Morona" has a tonnage of five hundred, and an engine of one hundred and fifty horse-power. The engineers are English, and the cook is a Chinaman. She makes monthly trips between Yurimaguas, on the Huallaga River, and Tabatinga, on the Brazilian frontier. Her rate down stream is eighteen miles an hour, and from eleven to twelve against the current. These steamers do not pay expenses at present; but they preserve the authority of Peru on the Maranon, and supply with material the government works at Iquitos. They also do a little commerce, taking down sarsaparilla and Moyabamba hats, and bringing up English dry-goods. There were not half a dozen passengers on board.

The only towns of any consequence west of Pebas are Iquitos, Nauta, and Yurimaguas. Peru claims them—in fact, all the villages on the Maranon. Iquitos is the most thriving town on the Upper Amazon. It is situated on an elevated plain on the left bank of the river, sixty miles above the mouth of the Napo. In Herndon's time it was "a fishing village of 227 inhabitants;" it now contains 2000. Here are the government iron-works, carried on by English mechanics. In 1867 there were six engineers, two iron-molders, two brass-molders, two coppersmiths, three blacksmiths, three pattern-makers, two boiler-makers, five shipwrights, three sawyers, besides bricklayers, brick-makers, carpenters, coopers, etc.; in all forty-two. All the coal for the furnaces is brought from England—the lignite on the banks of the Maranon is unfit for the purpose. A floating dock for vessels of a thousand tons has just been built. Nauta lies on the north bank of the Maranon, opposite the entrance of the Ucayali. Its inhabitants, about 1000, trade in fish, sarsaparilla, and wax from Ucayali. Yurimaguas is the port of Moyabamba, a city of 10,000 souls, six days' travel southwest. This vast eastern slope, lying on the branches of the Maranon, is called the Montana of Peru. It is a region of inexhaustible fertility, and would yield ample returns to energy and capital. The villages are open to foreign commerce, free of duty; but at present the voice of civilized man is seldom heard, save on the main fluvial highway between Moyabamba and the Brazilian frontier. The Portuguese are the most adventurous traders. The value of imports to Peru by the Amazonian steamers during 1867 was $324,533; of exports, $267,748.

In two hours and a half we arrive at Maucallacta, or "Old Town," an Indian village on the right bank of the river. Here our passports were vised by the Peruvian governor, and the steamer wooded up. One of the hands on the "Morona" was Manuel Medina, a mameluco, who was employed by Bates and Agassiz in their explorations. We left at noon of the following day, and anchored for the night off Caballococha, for the Peruvian steamers run only in the daytime. Caballococha, or "Horse-lake," is a Ticuna town, situated on a level tract of light loam, closely surrounded by the dense forest, and beside a cano of clear water leading to a pretty lake. Ecuador claims this town, and likewise all the settlements on the Maranon; but her learned geographer, Villavicencio, with characteristic ignorance of the country, has located it on the north bank of the river!

We passed in the afternoon the little tug "Napo," having on board Admiral Tucker, the rebel, who, with some associates, is exploring the tributaries of the Upper Amazon for the Peruvian government. They had just returned from a voyage of two hundred and fifty miles up the Javari. One of the party had a tame tiger-cat in his arms. We arrived at Loreto early the next morning. This village of twenty houses and a church is prettily situated on the left bank, with a green slope in front. It is the most easterly town of Peru on the Amazon. Here resides Mr. Wilkens, the Brazilian consul, of German birth, but North American education. The inhabitants are Peruvians, Portuguese, Negroes, and Ticuna Indians. The musquitoes hold high carnival at this place. In two hours we were at San Antonio, a military post on the Peruvian frontier, commanded by a French engineer, Manuel Charon, who also studied in the United States. One large building, and a flag-staff on a high bluff of red clay, were all that was visible of San Antonio; but the "Morona" brought down a gang of Indians (impressed, no doubt) to build a fort for twenty guns. The site is in dispute, a Brazilian claiming it as private property. The white barracks of Tabatinga, the first fortress in Brazil, are in plain sight, the voyage consuming but twenty minutes. Between San Antonio and Tabatinga is a ravine, on either side of which is a white pole, marking the limits of the republic and the empire.

Tabatinga has long been a military post, but, excepting the government buildings, there are not a dozen houses. Numerous Indians, however, of the Ticuna tribe, dwell in the neighboring forest. The commandante was O Illustrissimo Senor Tenente Aristides Juste Mavignier, a tall, thin, stooping officer, dressed in brown linen. He received us with great civility, and tendered a house and servant during our stay in port. We preferred, however, to accept the hospitalities of the "Morona" till the arrival of the Brazilian steamer. Senor Mavignier was commandante of Manaos when visited by Agassiz, and presented the Professor with a hundred varieties of wood. With the like courtesy, he gave us a collection of reptiles, all of them rare, and many of them new species. He showed us also a live raposa, or wild dog, peculiar to the Amazon, but seldom seen. Tabatinga stands on an eminence of yellow clay, and is defended by twelve guns. The river in front is quite narrow, only about half a mile wide. Here our passports, which had been signed at Maucallacta and Loreto, were indorsed by the commandante. They were afterward examined at Ega, Manaos, and Para. The mean temperature of Tabatinga we found to be 82 deg..[135] Some rubber and salt fish are exported, but nothing of consequence is cultivated. Grapes, the people say, grow well, but are destroyed by the ants. The only fruit-trees we noticed were the mamai (in Spanish, papaya), araca, and abio. The papaw-tree bears male and female flowers on different trees, and hence receives the name of papaya or mamai, according to one's view of the pre-eminence of the sex. The juice of this tree is used by the ladies of the West Indies as a cosmetic, and by the butchers to render the toughest meat tender. The fruit is melon-shaped, and of an orange-yellow color. Vauquelin discovered in it fibrine, till lately supposed to be confined to the animal kingdom.

[Footnote 135: According to Lieutenant Azevedo, the latitude of Tabatinga is 4 deg. 14' 30"; longitude, 70 deg. 2' 24"; magnetic variation, 6 deg. 35' 10" N.E.]

The Peruvian steamers connect at Tabatinga with the Brazilian line. There are eight imperial steamers on the Amazon: the "Icamiaba," running between Tabatinga and Manaos; the "Tapajos" and "Belem," plying between Manaos and Para; the "Inca" and "Manaos," between Obidos and Para; besides two steamers on the Tocantins, one between Para and Chares, and projected lines for the Negro, Tapajos, and Madeira. The captains get a small salary, but the perquisites are large, as they have a percentage on the freight. One captain pocketed in one year $9000.

We embarked, December 12, on the "Icamiaba," which promptly arrived at Tabatinga. The commander, formerly a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, and for twelve years a popular officer on the Upper Amazon, was a polished gentleman, but rigid disciplinarian. As an example of Brazilian etiquette, we give his full address from one of our letters of introduction:

"Ilmo. Sr. Capn. de Fragata Nuno Alvez Pereira de Mello Cardozo, Digno Commandante de Vapor Icamiaba."

The "Icamiaba" was an iron boat of four hundred and fifty tons, with two engines of fifty horse-power each. The engineer was an Austrian, yet the captain gave his orders in English, though neither could speak the language. The saloon, with berths for twenty-five passengers, was above deck, and open at both ends for ventilation. The passengers, however, usually swung their hammocks on the upper deck, which was covered by an awning. This was a delightfully breezy and commanding position; and though every part of the steamer was in perfect order, this was scrupulously neat. Here the table was spread with every tropical luxury, and attentively served by young men in spotless attire. Happy the traveler who sits at the table of Commandante Cardozo. The refreshment hours were: Coffee as soon as the passengers turned out of their hammocks, and sometimes before; breakfast at ten, dinner at five, and tea at eight. Live bullocks, fowls, and turtles were kept on board, so that of fresh meat, particularly beef (the first we had tasted since leaving Quito), there was no lack. At breakfast we counted nine different courses of meat. The Peruvian steamers are limited to turtle and salt fish. Rice and farina are extensively used in Brazil, but we saw very little tapioca. Farina is the flour of the country, and is eaten in hard, dry grains; it will not keep in any other form. It can not be very nutritious, as it contains little gluten. All bread and butter are imported from the United States and England. The captains of Brazilian steamers are their own stewards; and in the midst of other business in port, they stop to negotiate for a chicken, or a dozen eggs, with an Indian or Negro. The "Icamiaba" left Tabatinga with only three first-class passengers, besides our own party. On no Amazon steamer did we meet with a lady passenger. Madame Godin, who came down the river from the Andes, and Mrs. Agassiz, who ascended to Tabatinga, were among the few ladies who have seen these upper waters. But how differently they traveled! one on a raft, the other on the beautiful "Icamiaba."

Between Tabatinga and Teffe, a distance of five hundred miles, is perhaps the most uncivilized part of the main river. Ascending, we find improvements multiply as we near the mountains of Peru; descending, we see the march of civilization in the budding cities and expanding commerce culminating at Grand Para. The scenery from the deck of an Amazonian steamer, if described, appears monotonous. A vast volume of smooth, yellow water, floating trees and beds of aquatic grass, low, linear-shaped, wooded islets, a dark, even forest—the shores of a boundless sea of verdure, and a cloudless sky occasionally obscured by flocks of parrots: these are the general features. No busy towns are seen along the banks of the Middle Amazon; only here and there a palm hut or semi-Indian village half buried in the wilderness. We agree with Darwin (speaking of the Plata), that "a wide expanse of muddy water has neither grandeur nor beauty." The real grandeur, however, of a great river like this is derived from reflecting upon its prospective commercial importance and its immense drainage. A lover of nature, moreover, can never tire of gazing at the picturesque grouping and variety of trees, with their mantles of creeping plants; while a little imagination can see in the alligators, ganoid fishes, sea-cows, and tall gray herons, the ichthyosaurus, holoptychius, dinotherium, and brontozoum of ancient days. Here and there the river is bordered with low alluvial deposits covered with feathery-topped arrow-grass and amphibious vegetation; but generally the banks are about ten feet high and magnificently wooded; they are abrupt, and land-slides are frequent.

A few minutes after leaving Tabatinga we passed the mouth of the Javari, which forms the natural boundary between Peru and Brazil. Henceforth the river loses the name of Maranon, and is called Solimoens, or, more commonly, simply Amazon. We were ten hours in reaching San Paulo, a wretched Ticuna village of five hundred souls, built on a grassy table-land nearly one hundred feet high. Steps have been cut in the slippery clay bluff to facilitate the ascent. Swamps lie back of the town, rendering it unhealthy. "On damp nights (says the Naturalist on the Amazon) the chorus of frogs and toads which swarm in weedy back-yards creates such a bewildering uproar that it is impossible to carry on a conversation in doors except by shouting."

In ten hours more we had passed the Putumayo and entered the Tunantins, a sluggish, dark-colored tributary emptying into the Amazon about two hundred miles below the Javari.[136] On the bank of white earth, which strongly contrasts with the tinted stream, is a dilapidated hamlet of twenty-five hovels, built of bamboo plastered with mud and whitewashed. We saw but one two-storied house; and all have ground-floors and double-thatched roofs. The inhabitants are semi-civilized Shumana and Passe Indians and half-breeds; but in the gloomy forest which hugs the town live the wild Caishanas. The atmosphere is close and steaming, but not hot, the mercury at noon standing at 83 deg.. The place is alive with insects and birds. The nights on the Amazon were invariably cool; on the Lower Amazon, cold, so that we required a heavy blanket.

[Footnote 136: Herndon says (p. 241), "the Tunantins is about fifty yards broad, and seems deep with a considerable current."]



Taking on board wood, beeves, turtles, salt fish, and water-melons, we left at half past 2 P.M. The Brazilian steamers run all night, and with no slackening of speed. At one o'clock we were awakened by a cry from the watch, "Stop her!" And immediately after there was a crash; but it was only the breaking of crockery caused by the sudden stoppage. The night was fearfully dark, and for aught we knew the steamer was running headlong into the forest. Fortunately there was no collision, and in a few minutes we were again on our way, arriving at Fonte Boa at 4 A.M. This little village stands in a palm grove, on a high bank of ochre-colored sandy clay, beside a slue of sluggish black water, eight miles from the Amazon.[137] The inhabitants, about three hundred, are ignorant, lazy mamelucos. They dress like the majority of the semi-civilized people on the Amazon: the men content with shirt and pantaloons, the women wearing cotton or gauze chemises and calico petticoats. Fonte Boa is a museum for the naturalist, but the headquarters of musquitoes, small but persistent. Taking in a large quantity of turtle-oil, the "Icamiaba" turned down the cano, but almost immediately ran aground, and we were two hours getting off. These yearly shifting shoals in the Amazon can not be laid down in charts, and the most experienced pilots often run foul of them. In twelve hours we entered the Teffe, a tributary from the Bolivian mountains. Just before reaching the Great River it expands into a beautiful lake, with a white, sandy beach. On a grassy slope, stretching out into the lake, with a harbor on each side of it, lies the city of Ega. A hundred palm-thatched cottages of mud and tiled frame houses, each with an inclosed orchard of orange, lemon, banana, and guava trees, surround a rude church, marked by a huge wooden crucifix on the green before it, instead of a steeple. Cacao, assai, and pupunha palms rise above the town, adding greatly to its beauty; while back of all, on the summit of the green slope, begins the picturesque forest, pathless, save here and there a faint hunter's track leading to the untrodden interior. The sheep and cattle grazing on the lawn, a rare sight in Alto Amazonas, gives a peaceful and inviting aspect to the scene. The inhabitants, numbering about twelve hundred, are made up of pure Indians, half-castes, negroes, mulattoes, and whites. Ega (also called Teffe) is the largest and most thriving town between Manaos and Iquitos, a distance of twelve hundred miles. It is also one of the oldest settlements on the river, having been founded during the English revolution, or nearly two centuries ago. Tupi is the common idiom. The productions of the country are cacao, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, bast for caulking vessels, copaiba balsam, India-rubber, salt fish, turtle-oil, manati, grass hammocks, and tiles. Bates calculates the value of the annual exports at nearly forty thousand dollars. The "Icamiaba" calls here twice a month; besides which there are small schooners which occupy about five months in the round trip between Ega and Para. "The place is healthy (writes the charming Naturalist on the Amazon), and almost free from insect pests; perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of marvelous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle; a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!" Here Bates pursued butterflies for four years and a half, and Agassiz fished for six months.

[Footnote 137: Smyth says the town gets its name from the clearness of the water; but Herndon found it muddy, and, to our eyes, it was dark as the Negro.]



Ega is the half-way point across the continent, but its exact altitude above the sea is unknown. Herndon's boiling apparatus gave two thousand feet, and, what is worse, the lieutenant believed it. Our barometer made it one hundred feet; but as our instrument, though perfect in itself, behaved very strangely on the Middle Amazon, we do not rely on the calculation. The true height is not far from one hundred and twenty-five feet, or one fifth the elevation of the middle point in the North American continent.[138] Taking on board salt fish, turtle-oil, and tiles, we left Ega two hours after midnight, reaching Coary at noon. The Amazon began to look more like a lake than a river, having a width of four or five miles. Floating gulls and rolling porpoises remind one of the sea. Coary is a huddle of fifteen houses, six of them plastered without, whitewashed, and tiled. It is situated on a lake of the same name—the expanded outlet of a small river whose waters are dark brown, and whose banks are low and covered with bushes. Here we took in turtles and turtle-oil, Brazil nuts and cocoa-nuts, rubber, salt fish, and wood; and, six hours after leaving, more fish and rubber were received at Cudaja. Cudaja is a lonely spot on the edge of an extensive system of back-waters and lakes, running through a dense unexplored forest inhabited by Mura savages.

[Footnote 138: For a discussion of the barometric perturbations on the Amazon, see American Journal of Science for Sept., 1868.]

At three in the afternoon of Christmas, seventy-four hours' running time from Tabatinga, we entered the Rio Negro. Strong is the contrast between its black-dyed waters and the yellow Amazon. The line separating the two rivers is sharply drawn, the waters meeting, not mingling. Circular patches of the dark waters of the Negro are seen floating like oil amid the turbid waters of the Amazon. The sluggish tributary seems to be dammed up by the impetuous monarch. The banks of the latter are low, ragged, perpendicular beds of clay, covered with a bright green foliage; the Negro is fringed with sandy beaches, with hills in the background clothed with a sombre, monotonous forest containing few palms or leguminous trees. Musquitoes, piums, and montucas never trouble the traveler on the inky stream. When seen in a tumbler, the water of the Negro is clear, but of a light-red color; due, undoubtedly, to vegetable matter. The visible mouth of the river at this season of the year (December) is three miles wide, but from main-land to main-land it can not be less than twenty.



In forty minutes after leaving the Amazon we arrived at Manaos. This important city lies on the left bank of the Negro, ten miles from its mouth and twenty feet above high-water level. The site is very uneven, and consists of ferruginous sandstone. There was originally a fort here, erected by the Portuguese to protect their slave-hunting expeditions among the Indians on the river—hence the ancient name of Barra. On the old map of Father Fritz (1707) the spot is named Taromas. Since 1852 it has been called Manaos, after the most warlike tribe. Some of the houses are two-storied, but the majority are low adobe structures, white and yellow washed, floored and roofed with tiles, and having green doors and shutters. Every room is furnished with hooks for hanging hammocks. We did not see a bed between Quito and New York except on the steamers. The population, numbering two thousand,[139] is a mongrel set—Brazilians, Portuguese, Italians, Jews, Negroes, and Indians, with divers crosses between them. Laziness is the prominent characteristic. A gentleman offered an Indian passing his door twenty-five cents if he would bring him a pitcher of water from the river, only a few rods distant. He declined. "But I will give you fifty cents." Whereupon the half-clothed, penniless aboriginal replied: "I will give you a dollar to bring me some."[140] While every inch of the soil is of exuberant fertility, there is always a scarcity of food. It is the dearest spot on the Amazon. Most of the essentials and all of the luxuries come from Liverpool, Lisbon, and New York. Agriculture is at a discount on the Amazon. Brazilians will not work; European immigrants are traders; nothing can be done with Indians; and negroes are few in number, the slave-trade being abolished, emancipation begun, and the Paraguayan war not ended. A laboring class will ever be a desideratum in this tropical country. With a healthy climate,[141] and a situation at the juncture of two great navigable rivers, Manaos is destined to become the St. Louis of South America. In commercial advantages it is hardly to be surpassed by any other city in the world, having water communication with two thirds of the continent, and also with the Atlantic. It is now the principal station for the Brazilian line of steamers. Here all goods for a higher or lower point are reshipped. The chief articles of export are coffee (of superior quality), sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, piassaba, and fish. The Negro at this point is really five or six miles wide, but the opposite shore is masked by low islands, so that it appears to be but a mile and a half.

[Footnote 139: Official returns for 1848 give 3614; Bates (1850) reckons 3000.]

[Footnote 140: Darwin met a similar specimen in Banda Oriental: "I asked two men why they did not work. One gravely said the days were too long; the other that he was too poor."]

[Footnote 141: It is, however, one of the warmest spots on the river. The average temperature, according to Azevedo and Pinto, is only 79.7 deg.; but the highest point readied on the Amazon in 1862 (87.3 deg.) was at Manaos, and the extraordinary height of 95 deg. has been noted there.]

The country around Manaos is quite romantic for the Amazonian Valley. The land is undulating and furrowed by ravines, and the vegetation covering it is marvelously rich and diversified. In the forest, two miles from the city, there is a natural curiosity celebrated by all travelers from Spix and Martius down. A rivulet coming out of the wilderness falls over a ledge of red sandstone ten feet high and fifty feet broad, forming a beautiful cascade. The water is cool, and of a deep orange color. The foundation of a fine stone cathedral was laid in Manaos fourteen years ago, but this generation is not likely to witness the dedication. Life in this Amazonian city is dull enough: commerce is not brisk, and society is stiff; balls are about the only amusements. On Sunday (the holiday) every body who can afford it comes out in Paris fashions. There are carts, hut no coaches. We called upon the President at his "Palace"—an odd term for a two-storied, whitewashed edifice. His excellency received us with less formality and more cordiality than we expected to find in the solemn officials of the empire. The first glance at the reception-room, with the four chairs for visitors set in two lines at right angles to the chair of state, promised cold etiquette; but he addressed us with considerable familiarity and evident good-will. We found, however, that his authority was quite limited, for a written order which he gave us for a subordinate did not receive the slightest consideration. At the house of a Jew named Levy we met a party of Southerners, Captains Mallory, Jones, Sandedge, and Winn, commanded by Dr. Dowsing, who, since "the late onpleasantness," as Nasby calls it, have determined to settle in this country. The government grants them twenty square leagues of land on any tributary, on condition that they will colonize it. They were about to start for the Rio Branco on an exploring tour.



CHAPTER XVII.

Down the Amazon.—Serpa.—Villa Nova.—Obidos.—Santarem.—A Colony of Southerners.—Monte Alegre.—Porto do Moz.—Leaving the Amazon.—Breves.—Para River.—The City of Para.—Legislation and Currency.—Religion and Education.—Nonpareil Climate.

At 10 P.M. we left Manaos in the "Tapajos," an iron steamer of seven hundred tons. We missed the snow-white cleanliness and rigid regularity of the "Icamiaba," and Captain Jose Antunes Rodrigues de Oliveira Catramby was quite a contrast to Lieutenant Nuno. There were only five first-class passengers besides ourselves (and four of these were "dead-heads"), though there were accommodations for sixty-four. Between Manaos and Para, a distance of one thousand miles, there were fourteen additions. Passing the mouth of the Madeira, the largest tributary to the Amazon, we anchored thirty miles below at Serpa, after nine hours' sailing. Serpa is a village of ninety houses, built on a high bank of variegated clay, whence its Indian name, Ita-coatiara, or painted rock. It was the most animated place we had seen on the river. The town is irregularly laid out and overrun with weeds, but there is a busy tile factory, and the port was full of canoes, montarias, and cubertas. The African element in the population began to show itself prominently here, and increased in importance as we neared Para. The Negroes are very ebony, and are employed as stevedores. The Indians are well-featured, and wear a long gown of bark-cloth reaching to the knees.

Taking on board rubber and salt fish, the "Tapajos" steamed down stream, passing the perpendicular pink-clay cliffs of Cararaucu, arriving in ten hours at Villa Nova,[142] one hundred and fifty miles below Serpa. Villa Nova is a straggling village of mud huts standing on a conglomerate bank. The trade is chiefly in rubber, copaiba, and fish. The location is healthy, and in many respects is one of the most desirable places on the river. Here the Amazon begins to narrow, being scarcely three miles wide; but the channel, which has a rocky bed, is very deep. One hundred miles from Villa Nova is Obidos, airily situated on a bluff of pink and yellow clay one hundred feet above the river. The clay rests on a white calcareous earth, and this on red sandstone. It is a picturesque, substantially-built town, with a population, mostly white, engaged in raising cacao and cattle. Cacao is the most valuable product on the Amazon below Villa Nova. The soil is fertile, and the surrounding forest is alive with monkeys, birds, and insects, and abounds with precious woods and fruits. Obidos is blessed with a church, a school, and a weekly newspaper, and is defended by thirty-two guns. This is the Thermopylae of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with tremendous velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the current 2.4 feet per second. As Bates remarks, however, the river valley is not contracted to this breadth, the southern shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial tract subject to inundation. Back of Obidos is an eminence which has been named Mount Agassiz in honor of the Naturalist. There is no mountain between it and Cotopaxi save the spurs from the Eastern Cordillera. Five miles above the town is the mouth of the Trombetas, where Orellana had his celebrated fight with the fabulous Amazons.

[Footnote 142: Otherwise called, on Brazilian maps, Villa Bella da Imperatriz.]



Adding to her cargo wood, hides, horses, and Paraguayan prisoners (short, athletic men), the "Tapajos" sailed for Santarem. The river scenery below Obidos loses its wild and solitary character, and is relieved with scattered habitations, factories, and cacao plantations. We arrived at Santarem in seven hours from Obidos, a distance of fifty miles. This city, the largest on the Amazon save Para, stands on a pretty slope at the mouth of the Rio Tapajos, and five hundred miles from the sea.[143] It mainly consists of three long-rows of whitewashed, tiled houses, girt with green gardens. The citizens, made up of Brazilians, Portuguese, mulattoes, and blacks, number about two thousand five hundred. The surrounding country, which is an undulating campo, with patches of wood, is sparsely inhabited by Tapajocos. Cattle estates and cacao plantations are the great investments, but the soil is poor. Considerable sarsaparilla of superior quality, rubber, copaiba, Brazil nuts, and farina come down the Tapajos. The climate is delightful, the trade-winds tempering the heat and driving away all insect pests. Leprosy is somewhat common among the poorer class. At Santarem is one of the largest colonies which migrated from the disaffected Gulf States for Brazil. One hundred and sixty Southerners pitched their tents here. Many of them, however, were soon disgusted with the country, and, if we are to believe reports, the country was disgusted with them. On the 1st of January, 1868, only seventy-five remained. The colony does not fairly represent the United States, being made up in great part of the "roughs" of Mobile. A few are contented and are doing well. Amazonia will be indebted to them for some valuable ideas. Bates says: "Butter-making is unknown in this country; the milk, I was told, was too poor." But these Anglo-Saxon immigrants have no difficulty in making butter. Santarem sends to Para for sugar; but the cavaliers of Alabama are proving that the sugar-cane grows better than in Louisiana, attaining the height of twenty feet, and that it will yield for ten or twelve years without transplanting or cultivation. It is not, however, so sweet or juicy as the Southern cane. Some of the colonists are making tapioca and cashaca or Brazilian rum; others have gone into the pork business; while one, Dr. Jones, expects to realize a fortune burning lime. Here we met the rebel ex-General Dobbins, who had been prospecting on the Tapajos River, but had not yet located himself.

[Footnote 143: Herndon makes Santarem 460 miles from the Negro, and 650 from the sea. Bates calls it 400 miles from the Atlantic, and nearly 50 from Obidos.]

Below Santarem the Amazon vastly increases in width; at one point the southern shore was invisible from the steamer. The waves often run very high. At 10 A.M., eight hours from Santarem, we entered the romantic port of Monte Alegre. The road from the river to the village, just visible inland, runs through a pretty dell. Back of the village, beyond a low, swampy flat, rise the table-topped blue hills of Almeyrim. It was an exhilarating sight and a great relief to gaze upon a mountain range from three hundred to one thousand feet high, the greatest elevations along the Amazon east of the Andes. Agassiz considers these singular mountains the remnants of a plain which once filled the whole valley of the Amazon; but Bates believes them to be the southern terminus of the high land of Guiana. Their geological constitution—a pebbly sandstone—favors the Professor's theory. The range extends ninety miles along the north bank of the river, the western limit at Monte Alegre bearing the local name of Serra Erere. Mount Agassiz, at Obidos, is a spur of the same table-land. The Amazon is here about five miles wide, the southern shore being low, uninhabited, and covered with coarse grass. Five schooners were anchored in the harbor of Monte Alegre, a sign of considerable trade for the Amazon. The place exports cattle, cacao, rubber, and fish.

In four hours we reached Prayinha, a dilapidated village of forty houses, situated on a low, sandy beach. The chief occupation is the manufacture of turtle-oil. In ten hours more we were taking in wood at Porto do Moz, situated just within the mouth of the Xingu, the last great tributary to the Amazon. Dismal was our farewell sail on the great river. With the highlands came foul weather. We were treated to frequent and furious showers, accompanied by a violent wind, and the atmosphere was filled with smoke caused by numerous fires in the forest. Where the Xingu comes in, the Amazon is ten miles wide, but it is soon divided by a series of islands, the first of which is Grand Island. Twenty miles below Porto do Moz is Gurupa, where we took in rubber. The village, nearly as inanimate as Pompeii, consists of one street, half deserted, built on an isolated site. Forty miles below Gurupa we left the Amazon proper, turning to the right down a narrow channel leading into the river Para. The forest became more luxuriant, the palms especially increasing in number and beauty. At one place there was a forest of palms, a singularity, for trees of the same order are seldom associated. The forest, densely packed and gloomy, stands on very low, flat banks of hard river mud. Scarcely a sign of animal life was visible; but, as we progressed, dusky faces peered out of the woods; little shanties belonging to the seringeros, or rubber-makers, here and there broke the solitude, and occasionally a large group of half-clad natives greeted us from the shore. A labyrinth of channels connects the Amazon with the Para; the steamers usually take the Tajapuru. This natural canal is of great depth, and from fifty to one hundred yards in width; so that, hemmed in by two green walls, eighty feet-high, we seemed to be sailing through a deep gorge; in some places it was so narrow it was nearly overarched by the foliage. One hundred and twenty-five miles from Gurupa is Breves, a busy little town on the southwest corner of the great island of Marajo. The inhabitants, mostly Portuguese, are engaged in the rubber trade; the Indians in the vicinity manufacture fancy earthen-ware and painted cuyas or calabashes.

Soon after leaving Breves we entered the Para River, which suddenly begins with the enormous width of eight miles. It is, however, shallow, and contains numerous shoals and islands. It is properly an estuary, immense volumes of fresh water flowing into it from the south. The tides are felt through its entire length of one hundred and sixty miles, but the water is only slightly brackish. It has a dingy orange-brown color. A narrow blue line on our left, miles away, was all that was visible, at times, of the island of Marajo; and as we passed the broad mouth of the Tocantins, we were struck with the magnificent sea-like expanse, for there was scarcely a point of mainland to be seen.



At 4 P.M., eighteen hours from Breves, we entered the peaceful bay of Goajara, and anchored in front of the city of Para. Beautiful was the view of the city from the harbor in the rays of the declining sun. The towering spires and cupolas, the palatial government buildings, the long row of tall warehouses facing a fleet of schooners, ships, and steamers, and pretty white villas in the suburbs, nestling in luxuriant gardens, were to us, who had just come down the Andes from mediaeval Quito, the ultima thule of civilization. We seemed to have stepped at once from the Amazon to New York or London. We might, indeed, say ne plus ultra in one respect—we had crossed the continent, and Para was the terminus of our wanderings, the end of romantic adventures, of privations and perils. We were kindly met on the pier by Mr. James Henderson, an elderly Scotchman, whom a long residence in Para, a bottomless fund of information, and a readiness to serve an Anglo-Saxon, have made an invaluable cicerone. We shot through the devious, narrow streets to the Hotel Diana, where we made our toilet, for our habiliments, too, had reached their ultima thule. As La Condamine said on his arrival at Quito: "Je me trouvai hors d'etat de paroitre en public avec decence."

The same year which saw Shakspeare carried to his grave beside the Avon witnessed the founding of Para, or, speaking more respectfully, of Santa Maria de Belem do Gram Para. The city stands on a low elbow of land formed by the junction of the rivers Guama and Para, seventy-five miles from the ocean. The great forest comes close up to the suburbs; and, in fact, vegetation is so rapid the city fathers have a hard struggle to keep the jungle out of the streets. The river in front is twenty miles wide, but the vast expanse is broken by numerous islets. Ships of any size will float within, one hundred and fifty yards of the shore. All passengers and goods are landed by boats at the custom-house wharf. The city is regularly laid out, there are several public squares, and many of the streets, especially in the commercial part, are well paved. Magnificent avenues, lined with silk-cotton trees, cocoa-palms, and almonds, lead out to beautiful rocinhas, or country residences, of one story, but having spacious verandas. The President's house, built in the Italian style, whose marble staircase is a wonder to Brazil; the six large churches, including the cathedral, after patterns from Lisbon; the post-office, custom-house, and convent-looking warehouses on the mole—these are the most prominent buildings. The architecture is superior to that of Quito. The houses, generally two-storied, are tiled, plastered, and whitewashed or painted; the popular colors are red, yellow, and blue. A few have porcelain facing. The majority have elegant balconies and glass windows, but not all the old projecting lattice casements have disappeared. Some of the buildings bear the marks of the cannonading in the Revolution of 1835. Instead of bedrooms and beds, the largest apartments and verandahs have hooks in the wall for hammocks. A carpeted, cushioned room is seldom seen, and is out of place in the tropics. Coaches and gas are supplanting ox-carts and candles. There are two hotels, but scant accommodations for travelers. Beef is almost the only meat used; the fish are poor and dear; the oysters are horrible. Bananas, oranges, and coffee are the best native productions on the table.



The population of Para is thirty-five thousand, or double what it was when Wallace and Bates entered it twenty years ago. It is the largest city on the largest river in the world, and the capital of a province ten times the size of New York State. The enterprising, wealthy class consists of Portuguese and pure Brazilians, with a few English, Germans, French, and North Americans. The multitude is an amalgamation of Portuguese, Indian, and Negro. The diversity of races, and the mingled dialects of the Amazon and Europe, make an attractive street scene. Side by side we see the corpulent Brazilian planter, the swarthy Portuguese trader, the merry Negro porter, and the apathetic Indian boatman. Some of the more recent offspring are dressed a la Adam before the fall; numbers wear only a shirt or skirt; the negro girls who go about the streets with trays of sweetmeats on their heads are loosely yet prettily dressed in pure white, with massive gilded chains and earrings; but the middle and upper classes generally follow Paris fashions. The mechanic arts are in the hands of free Negroes and Indians, mulattoes and mamelucos.[144] Commerce is carried on almost exclusively by Portuguese and other foreigners. Dry-goods come chiefly from England and France; groceries from Portugal; flour and hardware from the United States. The principal exports are rubber, cacao, coffee,[145] sugar, cotton, Brazil nuts, sarsaparilla, vanilla, farina, copaiba, tobacco, rum, hides, fish, parrots, and monkeys.[146] Para exceeds in the number of its indigenous commodities any other port in the world, but the trade at present is insignificant when we consider the vast extent and resources of the country. The city can never have a rival at the mouth of the Amazon, and is destined to become a great emporium. But Brazilian legislation stands in the way. Heavy import duties are charged—from 35 to 45 per cent.; and on the 1st of January, 1868, it was ordered that 15 per cent. must be paid in English gold. The consequence has been that gold has risen from 28 to 30 above par, creating an additional tax. Exportation is equally discouraging. There is a duty of nine per cent. to be paid at the custom-house, and seven per cent. more at the consulado. But this is not the sum total. Those who live outside of the province of Para, say above Obidos, must first pay an import of thirteen per cent. to get their produce into Para. For example: up the river crude rubber can be bought for twenty-five cents a pound; the trader pays twenty-five cents an arroba (thirty-two pounds) for transportation to Para from Santarem, exclusive of canoe hire and shipping; thirteen per cent. duty in entering Para, ten per cent. to the commission merchant, and sixteen per cent. more as export tax; making a total loss on labor of about fifty per cent. Brazil abounds with the most valuable woods in the world, but is prevented from competing with other nations by this system of self-strangulation. In 1867 the import duty on timber was twelve per cent. Though situated on the edge of a boundless forest, Para consumes large quantities of North American pine. There is not a grist-mill on the Amazon, and only two or three saw-mills. A dozen boards of red cedar (a very common timber) costs 60$000 per thousand (about thirty dollars) at Santarem. There is no duty on goods going to Peru. The current money, besides foreign gold, consists of copper coins and imperial treasury notes. The basis of calculation is the imaginary rey, equivalent to half a mill. The coins in use are the vintem (twenty reys), answering to our cent, the half vintem, and double vintem. The currency has so fluctuated in value that many of the pieces have been restamped. Fifty vintems make a milrey, expressed thus: 1$000. This is the smallest paper issue. Unfortunately, the notes may suddenly fall below par. As a great many counterfeits made in Portugal are in circulation, the government recalls the issue which has been counterfeited, notifying holders, by the provincial papers, that all such bills must be exchanged for a new issue within six months. Those not brought in at the end of that period lose ten per cent. of their value, and ten per cent. for each following month, until the value of the note is nil. The result has been that many persons trading up the river have lost heavily, and now demand hard money. Change is very scarce in Para.

[Footnote 144: We are inclined to doubt the assertion of Mansfield that Paraguay is the only country in eastern South America with an industrious peasantry.]

[Footnote 145: Brazil yields more than one half the quantity of coffee consumed by the world. That of Ceara is the best.]

[Footnote 146: In January, 1868, the current prices were as follows:

Refined Sugar, per arroba $3 00 Rice 1 40 Cacao 3 20 Coffee 3 50 Farina 75 Tapioca 3 00 Pure rubber 11 50 Plassaba cord 6 50 Tobacco 1 50 Sarsparilla 11 50

The Brazilian arroba is seven pounds heavier than the Spanish.]

The province of Para is governed by a president chosen at Rio, and every four years sends representatives to the Imperial Parliament. The Constitution of Brazil is very liberal; every householder, without distinction of race or color, has a vote, and may work his way up to high position. There are two drawbacks—the want of intelligence and virtue in the people, and the immense staff of officials employed to administer the government. There are also many formalities which are not only useless, but a hinderance to prosperity. Thus, the internal trade of a province carried on by Brazilian subjects is not exempt from the passport system. A foreigner finds as much trouble in getting his passport en regle in Para as in Vienna. The religion of Para is Romish, and not so tolerant as in Rio. We arrived during festa. (When did a traveler enter a Portuguese town on any other than a feast day?) That night was made hideous with rockets, fire-crackers, cannon, and bells. "Music, noise, and fireworks," says Wallace, "are the three essentials to please a Brazilian populace." The most celebrated shrine in Northern Brazil is Our Lady of Nazareth. The little chapel stands about a mile out of the city, and is now rebuilding for the third time. The image is a doll about the size of a girl ten years old, wearing a silver crown and a dress of blue silk glittering with golden stars. Hosts of miracles are attributed to Our Lady, and we were shown votive offerings and models of legs, arms, heads, etc., etc., the grateful in memoriam of wonderful cures, besides a boat whose crew were saved by invoking the protection of Mary. The facilities for education are improving. There are several seminaries in Para, of which the chief is the Lyceo da Capital. Too many youths, however, as in Quito, are satisfied with a little rhetoric and law. The city supports four newspapers.

Paraenses may well be proud of their delightful climate. Wallace says the thermometer ranges from 74 deg. to 87 deg.; our observation made the mean annual temperature 80.2 deg.. The mean daily temperature does not vary more than two or three degrees. The climate is more equable than that of any other observed part of the New World.[147] The greatest heat is reached at two o'clock, but it is never so oppressive as in New York. The greater the heat, the stronger the sea-breeze; and in three hundred out of three hundred and sixty-five days, the air is farther cooled by an afternoon shower. The rainiest month is April; the dryest, October or November. Lying in the delta of a great river, in the middle of the tropics, and half surrounded by swamps, its salubrity is remarkable. We readily excuse the proverb, "Quem vai para Para para" ("He who goes to Para stops there"); and we might have made it good, had we not been tempted by the magnificent steamer "South America," which came up from Rio on the way to New York. On the moonlit night of the 7th of January, when the ice-king had thrown his white robes over the North, we turned our backs upon the glimmering lights of Para, and noiselessly as a canoe glided down the great river. As the sun rose for the last time to us upon the land of perpetual verdure, our gallant ship was plowing the mottled waters on the edge of the ocean—mingled yellow patches of the Amazon and dark streaks from the Para floating on the Atlantic green. Far behind us we could see the breakers dashing against the Braganza Banks; a moment after Cape Magoary dropped beneath the horizon, and with it South America vanished from our view.

[Footnote 147: "The traveler, in going from the equator toward the tropics, is less struck by the decrease of the mean annual temperature than by the unequal distribution of heat in different parts of the year."—Humboldt. The great German fixes the mean temperature of the equator at 81.5 deg.; Brewster, at 82.8 deg.; Kirwan, 83.9 deg.; Atkinson, 84.5 deg..]



CHAPTER XVIII.

The River Amazon.—Its Source and Magnitude.—Tributaries and Tints.—Volume and Current.—Rise and Fall.—Navigation.—Expeditions on the Great River.

Near the silver mines of Cerro Pasco, in the little Lake of Lauricocha, just below the limit of perpetual winter, rises the "King of Waters."[148] For the first five hundred miles it flows northerly, in a continuous series of cataracts and rapids, through a deep valley between the parallel Cordilleras of Peru. Upon reaching the frontier of Ecuador, it turns to the right, and runs easterly two thousand five hundred miles across the great equatorial plain of the continent.[149] No other river flows in the same latitude, and retains, therefore, the same climatic conditions for so great a distance. The breadth of the Amazon, also, is well proportioned to its extraordinary length. At Tabatinga, two thousand miles above its mouth, it is a mile and a half wide; at the entrance of the Madeira, it is three miles; below Santarem, it is ten; and if the Para be considered a part of the great river, it fronts the Atlantic one hundred and eighty miles. Brazilians proudly call it the Mediterranean of the New World. Its vast expanse, presenting below Teffe magnificent reaches, with blank horizons, and forming a barrier between different species of animals; its system of back channels, joining the tributaries, and linking a series of lagunes too many ever to be named; its network of navigable waters stretching over one third of the continent; its oceanic fauna—porpoises and manatis, gulls and frigate-birds—remind the traveler of a great inland sea, with endless ramifications, rather than a river. The side-channels through the forest, called by the Indians igarapes, or canoe-paths, are one of the characteristic features of the Amazon.[150] They often run to a great distance parallel to the great river, and intersecting the tributaries, so that one can go from Santarem a thousand miles up the Amazon without once entering it. These natural highways will be of immense advantage for inter-communication.



[Footnote 148: Herndon gives, for the altitude of Cerro Pasco, 13,802 feet; Rivero, 14,279. The lieutenant thus describes his first view from the rough hills surrounding this birthplace of the greatest of rivers: "I can compare it to nothing so fitly as looking from the broken and ragged edges of a volcano into the crater beneath."]

[Footnote 149: From Lauricocha to its mouth, the Amazon, following the main curves, is 2740 miles long, as estimated by Bates; in a straight line, 2050; from Para to the head of the Ucayali, 3000. From north to south the tributaries stretch 1720 miles.]

[Footnote 150: Igarape is sometimes limited to a creek filled with back-water; paranamirim is the proper term for a narrow arm of the main river; and furos are the diminutive mouths of the tributaries.]

But extraordinary as is this network of natural canals, the tributaries of the Amazon are still more wonderful. They are so numerous they appear on the map like a thousand ribbons streaming from a main mast, and many of the obscure affluents, though large as the Hudson, are unknown to geography. From three degrees north to twenty degrees south, every river that flows down the eastern slope of the Andes is a contributor—as though all the rivers between Mexico and Mount Hooker united their waters in the Mississippi. While the great river of the northern continent drains an area of one million two hundred thousand square miles, the Amazon (not including the Tocantins) is spread over a million more, or over a surface equal to two thirds of all Europe. Let us journey around the grand trunk and take a glimpse of the main branches.

The first we meet in going up the left bank is the Rio Negro. It rises in the Sierra Tunuhy, an isolated mountain group in the llanos of Colombia, and enters the Amazon at Manaos, a thousand miles from the sea. The upper part, down to the parallel of one degree north, has a very rapid current; at San Gabriel are the first rapids in ascending; between San Gabriel and Barcellos the rate is not over two or three miles per hour; between Barcellos and Manaos it is a deep but sluggish river, and in the annual rise of the Amazon its waters are stagnant for several hundred miles up, or actually flow back. Its extreme length is twelve hundred miles, and its greatest breadth is at Barcellos, where it is twelve or fifteen miles. Excepting this middle section, the usual breadth of the Negro below the equatorial line is about one mile. It is joined to the Orinoco by the navigable Cassiquiari,[151] a natural canal three fourths of a mile wide, and a portage of only two hours divides the head of its tributary, the Branco, from the Essequibo of Guiana. The Negro yields to commerce coffee, cacao, farina, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, pitch, piassaba, and valuable woods. The commerce of Brazil with Venezuela by the Rio Negro amounted in 1867 to $22,000, of which $9000 was the value of imports. The principal villages above Manaos are San Miguel and Moroa (which contain about fifty dwellings each), Tireguin, Barcellos, Toma, San Carlos, Coana, San Gabriel, and Santa Isabel.

[Footnote 151: The Cassiquiari belongs indifferently to both river systems, the level being so complete at one point between them as to obliterate the line of water-shed.—Herschel.]

The next great affluent is the Japura. It rises in the mountains of New Granada, and, flowing southeasterly a thousand miles, enters the Amazon opposite Ega, five hundred miles above Manaos. Its principal mouth is three hundred feet wide, but it has a host of distributing channels, the extremes of which are two hundred miles apart. Its current is only three quarters of a mile an hour, and it has been ascended by canoes five hundred miles. A natural canal like the Cassiquiari is said to connect it with the Orinoco. The products of the Japura are sarsaparilla, copaiba, rubber, cacao, farina, Brazil nuts, moira-piranga—a hard, fine-grained wood of a rich, cherry-red color—and carajuru, a brilliant scarlet dye.

Parallel to the Japura is the Putumayo or Issa. Its source is the Lake of San Pablo, at the foot of the volcano of Pasto; its mouth, as given by Herndon, is half a mile broad, and its current two and three fourths miles an hour.

Farther west are the Napo and Pastassa, starting from the volcanoes of Quito. The former is nearly seven hundred miles long, navigable five hundred. The latter is an unnavigable torrent. One of its branches, the Topo, is one continued rapid; "of those who have fallen into it, only one has come out alive." Another, the Patate, rises near Iliniza, runs through the plain to a little south of Cotopaxi, receives all streams flowing from the eastern side of the western Cordillera from Iliniza to Chimborazo, and unites near Tunguragua with the Chambo, which rises near Sangai. Castelnau and Bates saw pumice floating on the Amazon; it was probably brought from Cotopaxi by the Pastassa.

Crossing the Maranon, and going eastward, we first pass the Huallaga, a rapid river of the size of the Cumberland, coming down the Peruvian Andes from an altitude of eight thousand six hundred feet, and entering the great river nearly opposite the Pastassa. Its mouth is a mile wide, and for a hundred miles up its average depth is three fathoms. In July, August, and September the steamers are not able to ascend to Yurimaguas. Canoe navigation begins at Tinga Maria, three hundred miles from Lima. The fertile plain through which the river flows is very attractive to an agriculturist. Cotton is gathered six months after sowing, and rice in five months. At Tarapoto a large amount of cotton-cloth is woven for export.

The next great tributary from the south is the Ucayali. This magnificent stream originates near ancient Cuzco, and has a fall of .87 of a foot per mile, and a length nearly equal to that of the Negro. For two hundred and fifty miles above its mouth it averages half a mile in width, and has a current of three miles an hour. At Sarayacu it is twenty feet deep. The Ucayali is navigable for at least seven hundred miles. The "Morona," a steamer of five hundred tons, has been up to the entrance of the Pachitea in the dry season, a distance of six hundred miles, and in the wet season ascended that branch to Mayro. A small Peruvian steamer has recently ascended the Tambo to within sixty miles of Fort Ramon, or seven hundred and seventy-three miles from Nauta.

Leaving the Ucayali, we pass by six rivers rising in the unknown lands of Northern Bolivia: the Javari, navigable by steam for two hundred and fifty miles; the sluggish Jutahi, half a mile broad and four hundred miles long; the Jurua, four times the size of our Connecticut, and navigable nearly its entire length; the unhealthy, little-known Teffe and Coary; and the Purus, a deep, slow river, over a thousand miles long, and open to navigation half way to its source. Soldan and Pinto claim to have ascended the Javari, in a steamer, about one thousand miles, and it is said Chandlers went up the Purus one thousand eight hundred miles. The Teffe is narrow, with a strong current. Of all these six rivers, the Purus is the most important. It is probably the Amaru-mayu, or "serpent-river," of the Incas, and its affluents enjoy the privilege of draining the waters of those beautiful Andes which formed the eastern boundary of the empire of Manco Capac, and fertilizing the romantic valley of Paucar-tambo, or "Inn of the Flowery Meadow." The banks of this noble stream are now held by the untamable Chunchos; but the steam-whistle will accomplish what the rifle can not. The Purus communicates with the Madeira, proving the absence of rapids and of intervening mountains.

Sixty miles below the confluence of the Negro, the mighty Madeira, the largest tributary of the Amazon, blends its milky waters with the turbid king of rivers. It is about two thousand miles in length; one branch, the Beni, rising near Lake Titicaca, drains the fertile valleys of Yungus and Apollo, rich in cinchona, chocolate, and gold; the Marmore springs from the vicinity of Chuquisaca, within fifteen miles of a source of the Paraguay, traversing the territory of the brave and intelligent Moxos; while the Itinez washes down the gold and diamonds of Matto Grosso. Were it not for the cascade four hundred and eighty miles from its mouth, large vessels might sail from the Amazon into the very heart of Bolivia. When full, it has a three-mile current, and at its junction with the Amazon it is two miles wide and sixty-six feet deep. Five hundred miles from its mouth it is a mile wide and one hundred feet deep. It contains numerous islands, and runs in a comparatively straight course. It received its name from the vast quantity of drift-wood often seen floating down. The value of Brazilian commerce with Bolivia by the Madeira was, in 1867, $43,000.[152]

[Footnote 152: In the map of Friar Fritz, published in 1707, the Madeira is one of the most insignificant of the tributaries, and the Ucayali and Putumayo are the largest.]

At Santarem the Amazon receives another great tributary, the Tapajos (or Rio Preto, as the Portuguese call it), a thousand miles long, and, for the last eighty miles, from four to twelve miles in breadth. It rises amid the glittering mines of Matto Grosso, only twenty miles from the headwaters of the Rio Plata, and flows rapidly down through a magnificent hilly country to the last cataract, which is one hundred and sixty miles above Santarem, and is the end of navigation to sailing vessels. Thence to the Amazon it has little current and no great depth. From Santarem to Diamantino it is about twenty-six days' travel. Large quantities of sarsaparilla, rubber, tonka beans, mandioca, and guarana are brought down this river.

Parallel to the Tapajos, and about two hundred miles distant, flows the Xingu. It rises in the heart of the empire, has the length of the Ohio and Monongahela, and can be navigated one hundred and fifty miles. This is the last great tributary of the Amazon proper; if, however, we consider the Para as only one of the outlets of the great river, we may then add to the list the grand Tocantins.[153] This splendid river has its source in the rich province of Minas (the source, also, of the San Francisco and Uruguay), not six hundred miles from Rio Janeiro—a region possessing the finest climate in Brazil, and yielding diamonds and rubies, the sapphire, topaz and opal, gold, silver, and petroleum. The Tocantins is sixteen hundred miles long, and ten miles broad at its mouth; but, unfortunately, rapids commence one hundred and twenty miles above Cameta. The Araguaia, its main branch, is, according to Castelnau, one mile wide, with a current of three fourths of a mile an hour.

[Footnote 153: We are inclined to hold, with Bates and others, that the Para River is not, strictly speaking, one of the mouths of the Amazon. "It is made to appear so on many of the maps in common use, because the channels which connect it with the main river are there given much broader than they are in reality, conveying the impression that a large body of water finds an outlet from the main river into the Para. It is doubtful, however, if there be any considerable stream of water flowing constantly downward through these channels. There is a great contrast in general appearance between the Para and the main Amazon. In the former the flow of the tide always creates a strong current upward, while in the Amazon the turbid flow of the mighty stream overpowers all tides, and produces a constant downward current. The color of the water is different; that of the Para being of a dingy orange-brown, while the Amazon has an ochreous or yellowish-clay tint. The forests on their banks have a different aspect. On the Para, the infinitely diversified trees seem to rise directly out of the water, the forest-frontage is covered with greenery, and wears a placid aspect; while the shores of the main Amazon are encumbered with fallen trunks, and are fringed with a belt of broad-leaved grasses."—Naturalist on the Amazon, i., p. 3-5.]

Here are six tributaries, all of them superior to any river in Europe, outside of Russia, save the Danube, and ten times greater than any stream on the west slope of the Andes. While the Arkansas joins the Mississippi four hundred miles above New Orleans, the Madeira, of equal length, enters the Amazon nine hundred miles from Para. But, vast as are these tributary streams, they seem to make no impression on the Amazon; they are lost like brooks in the ocean. Our ideas of the magnitude of the great river are wonderfully increased when we see the Madeira coming down two thousand miles, yet its enormous contribution imperceptible half way across the giant river; or the dark waters of the Negro creeping along the shore, and becoming undistinguishable five miles from its mouth. Though the Amazon carries a larger amount of sediment than any other river, it has no true delta, the archipelago in its mouth (for, like our own St. Lawrence, it has its Bay of a Thousand Isles) not being an alluvial formation, but having a rocky base. The great island of Marajo, in physical configuration, resembles the mainland of Guiana. The deltoid outlet is confined to the tributaries, nearly all of them, like "the disembogning Nile," emptying themselves by innumerable embouchures. To several tributaries the Amazon gives water before it receives their tribute. Thus, by ascending the Negro sixty miles, we have the singular spectacle of water pouring in from the Amazon through the Guariba Channel.

The waters of this great river system are of divers tints. The Amazon, as it leaps from the Andes, and as far down as the Ucayali, is blue, passing into a clear olive-green; likewise the Pastassa, Huallaga, Tapajos, Xingu, and Tocantins. Below the Ucayali it is of a pale, yellowish olive; the Madeira,[154] Purus, Jurua, Jutahi, Javari, Ucayali, Napo, Ica, and Japura are of similar color. The Negro, Coary, and Teffe are black. Humboldt observes that "a cooler atmosphere, fewer musquitoes, greater salubrity, and absence of crocodiles, as also of fish, mark the region of these black rivers." This is not altogether true. The Amazon throughout is healthy, being swept by the trade-winds. The branches, which are not so constantly refreshed by the ocean breezes, are occasionally malarious; the "white-water" tributaries, except when they have a slack current in the dry season, have the best reputation, while intermittent fevers are nearly confined to the dark-colored streams. Much of the sickness on these tropical waters, however, is due to exposure and want of proper food rather than to the climate. The river system of South America will favorably compare, in point of salubrity, with the river system of its continental neighbor.[155]

[Footnote 154: The Madeira has often a milky color which it receives from the white clay along its banks.]

[Footnote 155: The average temperature of the water in the Lower Amazon is 81 deg., that of the air being a little less. The temperature of the Huallaga at Yurimaguas was 75 deg. when the air was 88 deg. in the shade; in another experiment both the river and air were 80 deg.. The Maranon at Iquitos was 79 deg. when the air was 90 deg.. At the mouth of the Jurua, Herndon found both water and air 82 deg.. In the tropics the difference between the temperature of the water and air is proportionally less than in high latitudes.]

As we might expect, the volume of the Amazon is beyond all parallel. Half a million cubic feet of water pour through the narrows of Obidos every second, and fresh water may be taken up from the Atlantic far out of sight of land. The fall of the main easterly trunk of the Amazon is about six and a half inches per mile, equivalent to a slope of 21'—the same as that of the Nile, and one third that of the Mississippi. Below Jaen there are thirty cataracts and rapids; at the Pongo de Manseriche, at the altitude of 1164 feet (according to Humboldt), it bids adieu to mountain scenery. Between Tabatinga and the ocean the average current is three miles an hour. It diminishes toward Para, and is every where at a minimum in the dry season; but it always has the "swing" of an ocean current.

Though not so rapid as the Mississippi, the Amazon is deeper. There are seven fathoms of water at Nauta (2200 miles from the Atlantic), eleven at Tabatinga, and twenty-seven on the average below Mandaos.[156]

[Footnote 156: The assertion of the Ency. Metropolitana, that "its current has great violence and rapidity, and its depth is unfathomable," must be received with some allowance.]

The Amazon and its branches are subject to an annual rise of great regularity. It does not take place simultaneously over the whole river, but there is a succession of freshets. At the foot of the Andes the rise commences in January; at Ega it begins about the end of February. Coinciding with this contribution from the west, the October rains on the highlands of Bolivia and Brazil swell the southern tributaries, whose accumulated floods reach the main stream in February; and the latter, unable to discharge the avalanche of waters, inundates a vast area, and even crowds up the northern tributaries. As the Madeira, Tapajos, and Purus subside, the Negro, fed by the spring rains in Guiana and Venezuela, presses downward till the central stream rolls back the now sluggish affluents from the south. There is, therefore, a rhythmical correspondence in the rise and fall of the arms of the Amazon, so that this great fresh-water sea sways alternately north and south; while the onward swell in the grand trunk is a progressive undulation eastward. As the Cambridge Professor well says: "In this oceanic river the tidal action has an annual instead of a daily ebb and flow; it obeys a larger orb, and is ruled by the sun and not the moon." As the southern affluents have the greatest volume, the Amazon receives its largest accession after the sun has been in the southern hemisphere. The rise is gradual, increasing to one foot per day. One lowland after another sinks beneath the flood; the forest stands up to its middle in the water, and shady dells are transformed into navigable creeks.[157] Swarms of turtles leave the river for the inland lakes; flocks of wading birds migrate to the banks of the Negro and Orinoco to enjoy the cloudless sky of the dry season; alligators swim where a short time before the jaguar lay in wait for the tapir; and the natives, unable to fish, huddle in their villages to spend the "winter of their discontent." The Lower Amazon is at its minimum in September or October. The rise above this lowest level is between seven and eight fathoms. If we consider the average width of the Amazon two miles, we shall have a surface of at least five thousand square miles raised fifty feet by the inundation. An extraordinary freshet is expected every sixth year.