The Andes and the Amazon Part 1

The Andes and the Amazon.

by James Orton.

PREFACE.

This volume is one result of a scientific expedition to the equatorial Andes and the river Amazon. The expedition was made under the auspices of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and consisted of the following gentlemen besides the writer: Colonel Staunton, of Ingham University, Leroy, N.Y.; F.S. Williams, Esq., of Albany, N.Y.; and Messrs. P.V. Myers and A.

Bushnell, of Williams College. We sailed from New York July 1, 1867; and, after crossing the Isthmus of Panama and touching at Paita, Peru, our general route was from Guayaquil to Quito, over the Eastern Cordillera; thence over the Western Cordillera, and through the forest on foot to Napo; down the Rio Napo by canoe to Pebas, on the Maranon; and thence by steamer to Para.[1]

[Footnote 1: Another division, consisting of Messrs. H.M. Myers, R.H.

Forbes, and W. Gilbert, of Williams College, proceeded to Venezuela, and after exploring the vicinity of Lake Valencia, the two former traversed the Ilanos to Pao, descended the Apure and ascended the Orinoco to Yavita, crossed the portage of Pimichin (a low, level tract, nine miles wide, separating the waters of the Orinoco from those of the Amazon), and descended the Negro to Manaos, making a voyage by canoe of over 2000 miles through a little-known but deeply-interesting region. A narrative of this expedition will soon be given to the public.]

Nearly the entire region traversed by the expedition is strangely misrepresented by the most recent geographical works. On the Andes of Ecuador we have little besides the travels of Humboldt; on the Napo, nothing; while the Maranon is less known to North Americans than the Nile.

Many of the following pages first appeared in the New York _Evening Post_. The author has also published "Physical Observations on the Andes and the Amazon" and "Geological Notes on the Ecuadorian Andes" in the _American Journal of Science_, an article on the great earthquake of 1868 in the Rochester _Democrat_, and a paper _On the Valley of the Amazon_ read before the American a.s.sociation at Salem. These papers have been revised and extended, though the popular form has been retained. It has been the effort of the writer to present a condensed but faithful picture of the physical aspect, the resources, and the inhabitants of this vast country, which is destined to become an important field for commercial enterprise. For detailed descriptions of the collections in natural history, the scientific reader is referred to the various reports of the following gentlemen, to whom the specimens were committed by the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution:

Volcanic Rocks Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S., Montreal.

Plants Dr. Asa Gray, Cambridge.

Land and Fresh-water Sh.e.l.ls. M. Crosse, Paris, and Thomas Bland, Esq., New York.

Marine Sh.e.l.ls Rev. Dr. E.R. Beadle, Philadelphia.

Fossil Sh.e.l.ls W.M. Gabb, Esq., Philadelphia.

Hemiptera Prof. P.R. Uhler, Baltimore.

Orthoptera S.H. Scudder, Esq., Boston.

Hymenoptera and Nocturnal Lepidoptera Dr. A.S. Packard, Jr., Salem.

Diurnal Lepidoptera Tryon Reakirt, Esq., Philadelphia.

Coleoptera George D. Smith, Esq., Boston.

Phalangia and Pedipalpi Dr. H.C. Wood, Jr., Philadelphia.

Fishes Dr. Theodore Gill, Was.h.i.+ngton.

Reptiles Prof. E.D. Cope, Philadelphia.

Birds John Ca.s.sin, Esq.,[2] Philadelphia.

Bats Dr. H. Allen, Philadelphia.

Mammalian Fossils Dr. Joseph Leidy, Philadelphia.

[Footnote 2: This eminent ornithologist died in the midst of his examination. Mr. George N. Lawrence, of New York, has identified the remainder, including all the hummers.]

Many of the type specimens are deposited in the museums of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, the Boston Society of Natural History, the Peabody Academy of Science, and Va.s.sar College; but the bulk of the collection was purchased by Ingham University, Leroy, New York.

The Map of Equatorial America was drawn with great care after original observations and the surveys of Humboldt and Wisse on the Andes, and of Azevedo, Castlenau, and Bates on the Amazon.[3] The names of Indian tribes are in small capitals. Most of the ill.u.s.trations are after photographs or drawings made on the ground, and can be relied upon. The portrait of Humboldt, which is for the first time presented to the public, was photographed from the original painting in the possession of Sr. Aguirre, Quito. Unlike the usual portrait--an old man, in Berlin--this presents him as a young man in Prussian uniform, traveling on the Andes.

[Footnote 3: We have retained the common orthography of this word, though _Amazons_, used by Bates, is doubtless more correct, as more akin to the Brazilian name _Amazonas_.]

We desire to express our grateful acknowledgments to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, Hon. William H. Seward, and Hon. James A. Garfield, of Was.h.i.+ngton; to Cyrus W. Field, Esq., and William Pitt Palmer, Esq., of New York; to C.P. Williams, Esq., of Albany; to Rev. J.C. Fletcher, now United States Consul at Oporto; to Chaplain Jones, of Philadelphia; to Dr. William Jameson, of the University of Quito; to J.F. Reeve, Esq., and Captain Lee, of Guayaquil; to the Pacific Mail Steams.h.i.+p, Panama Railroad, and South Pacific Steam Navigation companies; to the officers of the Peruvian and Brazilian steamers on the Amazon; and to the eminent naturalists who have examined the results of the expedition.

NOTE.--Osculati has alone preceded us, so far as we can learn, in obtaining a vocabulary of Zaparo words; but, as his work is not to be found in this country, we have not had the pleasure of making a comparison.

INTRODUCTION

BY

REV. J.C. FLETCHER,

AUTHOR OF "BRAZIL AND BRAZILIANS."

In this day of many voyages, in the Old World and the New, it is refres.h.i.+ng to find an untrodden path. Central Africa has been more fully explored than that region of Equatorial America which lies in the midst of the Western Andes and upon the slopes of these mountain monarchs which look toward the Atlantic. In this century one can almost count upon his hand the travelers who have written of their journeys in this unknown region. Our own Herndon and Gibbon descended--the one the Peruvian and the other the Bolivian waters--the affluents of the Amazon, beginning their voyage where the streams were mere channels for canoes, and finis.h.i.+ng it where the great river appears a fresh-water ocean. Mr.

Church, the artist, made the sketches for his famous "Heart of the Andes" where the headwaters of the Amazon are rivulets. But no one whose language is the English has journeyed down and described the voyage from the _plateaux_ of Ecuador to the Atlantic Ocean until Professor Orton and his party accomplished this feat in 1868. Yet it was over this very route that the King of Waters (as the Amazon is called by the aborigines) was originally discovered. The _auri sacra fames_, which in 1541 urged the adventurous Gonzalo Pizarro to hunt for the fabled city of _El Dorado_ in the depths of the South American forests, led to the descent of the great river by Orellana, a knight of Truxillo. The fabled women-warriors were said to have been seen in this notable voyage, and hence the name of the river _Amazon_, a name which in Spanish and Portuguese is in the plural. It was not until nearly one hundred years after Orellana was in his grave that a voyage of discovery ascended the river. In 1637 Pedro Teixeira started from Para with an expedition of nearly two thousand (all but seventy of whom were natives), and with varied experiences, by water and by land, the explorer in eight months reached the city of Quito, where he was received with distinguished honor. Two hundred years ago the result of this expedition was published.

The Amazon was from that time, at rare intervals, the highway of Spanish and Portuguese priests and friars, who thus went to their distant charges among the Indians. In 1745 the French academician De la Condamine descended from Quito to Para, and gave the most accurate idea of the great valley which we had until the first quarter of this century.

The narrow policy of Spain and Portugal was most unfruitful in its results to South America. A jealous eye guarded that great region, of which it can be so well said there are

"Realms unknown and blooming wilds, And fruitful deserts, worlds of solitude, Where the sun smiles and seasons teem in vain."

Now, the making known to the world of any portion of these "fruitful deserts" is performing a service for the world. This Professor Orton has done. His interesting and valuable volume hardly needs any introduction or commendation, for its intrinsic merit will exact the approbation of every reader. Scientific men, and tourists who seek for new routes of travel, will appreciate it at once; and I trust that the time is near at hand when our mercantile men, by the perusal of such a work, will see how wide a field lies before them for future commercial enterprise. This portion of the tropics abounds in natural resources which only need the stimulus of capital to draw them forth to the light; to create among the natives a desire for articles of civilization in exchange for the crude productions of the forest; and to stimulate emigration to a healthy region of perpetual summer.

It seems as if Providence were opening the way for a great change in the Valley of the Amazon. That immense region drained by the great river is as large as all the United States east of the States of California and Oregon and the Territory of Was.h.i.+ngton, and yet it has been so secluded, mainly by the old monopolistic policy of Portugal, that that vast s.p.a.ce has not a population equal to the single city of Rio de Janeiro or of Brooklyn. Two million five hundred thousand square miles are drained by the Amazon. Three fourths of Brazil, one half of Bolivia, two thirds of Peru, three fourths of Ecuador, and a portion of Venezuela are watered by this river. Riches, mineral and vegetable, of inexhaustible supply have been here locked up for centuries. Brazil held the key, but it was not until under the rule of their present const.i.tutional monarch, Don Pedro II., that the Brazilians awoke to the necessity of opening this glorious region. Steamers were introduced in 1853, subsidized by the government. But it is to a young Brazilian statesman, Sr. A.C. Tavares Bastos, that belongs the credit of having agitated, in the press and in the national parliament, the opening of the Amazon, until public opinion, thus acted upon, produced the desired result. On another occasion, in May, 1868, I gave several indices of a more enlightened policy in Brazil, and stated that the opening of the Amazon, which occurred on the 7th of September, 1867, and by which the great river is free to the flags of all nations, from the Atlantic to Peru, and the abrogation of the monopoly of the coast-trade from the Amazon to the Rio Grande do Sul, whereby 4000 miles of Brazilian sea-coast are open to the vessels of every country, can not fail not only to develop the resources of Brazil, but will prove of great benefit to the bordering Hispano-American republics and to the maritime nations of the earth. The opening of the Amazon is the most significant indication that the leaven of the narrow monopolistic Portuguese conservatism has at last worked out. Portugal would not allow Humboldt to enter the Amazon Valley in Brazil. The result of the new policy is beyond the most sanguine expectation. The exports and imports for Para for October and November, 1867, were double those of 1866. This is but the beginning. Soon it will be found that it is cheaper for Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and New Granada, east of the Andes, to receive their goods from, and to export their India-rubber, cinchona, etc., to the United States and Europe, _via_ the great water highway which discharges into the Atlantic, than by the long, circuitous route of Cape Horn or the trans-Isthmian route of Panama.

THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON.

CHAPTER I.

Guayaquil.--First and Last Impressions.--Climate.--Commerce.--The Malecon.--Glimpse of the Andes.--Scenes on the Guayas.--Bodegas.--Mounted for Quito.--La Mona.--A Tropical Forest.

Late in the evening of the 19th of July, 1867, the steamer "Favorita"

dropped anchor in front of the city of Guayaquil. The first view awakened visions of Oriental splendor. Before us was the Malecon, stretching along the river, two miles in length--at once the most beautiful and the most busy street in the emporium of Ecuador. In the centre rose the Government House, with its quaint old tower, bearing aloft the city clock. On either hand were long rows of ma.s.sive, apparently marble, three-storied buildings, each occupying an entire square, and as elegant as they were ma.s.sive. Each story was blessed with a balcony, the upper one hung with canvas curtains now rolled up, the other protruding over the sidewalk to form a lengthened arcade like that of the Rue de Rivoli in imperial Paris. In this lower story were the gay shops of Guayaquil, filled with the prints, and silks, and fancy articles of England and France. As this is the promenade street as well as the Broadway of commerce, crowds of Ecuadorians, who never do business in the evening, leisurely paced the magnificent arcade; hatless ladies sparkling with fire-flies[4] instead of diamonds, and far more brilliant than koh-i-noors, swept the pavement with their long trains; martial music floated on the gentle breeze from the barracks or some festive hall, and a thousand gas-lights along the levee and in the city, doubling their number by reflection from the river, betokened wealth and civilization.