The Naturalist On The River Amazons Part 8

Towards February, they return to the villages, and are then not nearly so ravenous as before their summer trips.

The insects of Villa Nova are, to a great extent, the same as those of Santarem and the Tapajos. A few species of all orders, however, are found here, which occurred nowhere else on the Amazons, besides several others which are properly considered local varieties or races of others found at Para, on the Northern sh.o.r.e of the Amazons, or in other parts of Tropical America. The Hymenoptera were especially numerous, as they always are in districts which possess a sandy soil; but the many interesting facts which I gleaned relative to their habits will be more conveniently introduced when I treat of the same or similar species found in the localities above-named.

In the broad alleys of the forest several species of Morpho were common. One of these is a sister form to the Morpho Hecuba, which I have mentioned as occurring at Obydos. The Villa Nova kind differs from Hecuba sufficiently to be considered a distinct species, and has been described under the name of M. Cisseis; but it is clearly only a local variety of it, the range of the two being limited by the barrier of the broad Amazons. It is a grand sight to see these colossal b.u.t.terflies by twos and threes floating at a great height in the still air of a tropical morning. They flap their wings only at long intervals, for I have noticed them to sail a very considerable distance without a stroke. Their wing-muscles and the thorax to which they are attached are very feeble in comparison with the wide extent and weight of the wings; but the large expanse of these members doubtless a.s.sists the insects in maintaining their aerial course.

Morphos are among the most conspicuous of the insect denizens of Tropical American forests, and the broad glades of the Villa Nova woods seemed especially suited to them, for I noticed here six species. The largest specimens of Morpho Cisseis measure seven inches and a half in expanse. Another smaller kind, which I could not capture, was of a pale silvery-blue colour, and the polished surface of its wings flashed like a silver speculum as the insect flapped its wings at a great elevation in the sunlight.

To resume our voyage-- We left Villa Nova on the 4th of December.

A light wind on the 5th carried us across to the opposite sh.o.r.e and past the mouth of the Parana-mirim do arco, or the little river of the bow, so-called on account of its being a short arm of the main river, of a curved shape, and rejoining the Amazons a little below Villa Nova. On the 6th, after pa.s.sing a large island in mid-river, we arrived at a place where a line of perpendicular clay cliffs, called the Barreiros de Cararaucu, diverts slightly the course of the main stream, as at Obydos. A little below these cliffs were a few settlers' houses; here Penna remained ten days to trade, a delay which I turned to good account in augmenting very considerably my collections.

At the first house a festival was going forward. We anch.o.r.ed at some distance from the sh.o.r.e, on account of the water being shoaly, and early in the morning three canoes put off, laden with salt fish, oil of manatee, fowls and bananas-- wares which the owners wished to exchange for different articles required for the festa. Soon after I went ash.o.r.e. The head man was a tall, well- made, civilised Tapuyo, named Marcellino, who, with his wife, a thin, active, wiry old squaw, did the honours of their house, I thought, admirably. The company consisted of fifty or sixty Indians and Mamelucos; some of them knew Portuguese, but the Tupi language was the only one used amongst themselves. The festival was in honour of our Lady of Conception; and, when the people learnt that Penna had on board an image of the saint handsomer than their own, they put off in their canoes to borrow it; Marcellino taking charge of the doll, covering it carefully with a neatly-bordered white towel. On landing with the image, a procession was formed from the port to the house, and salutes fired from a couple of lazarino guns, the saint being afterwards carefully deposited in the family oratorio. After a litany and hymn were sung in the evening, all a.s.sembled to supper around a large mat spread on a smooth terrace-like s.p.a.ce in front of the house. The meal consisted of a large boiled Pirarucu, which had been harpooned for the purpose in the morning, stewed and roasted turtle, piles of mandioca-meal and bananas. The old lady, with two young girls, showed the greatest activity in waiting on the guests, Marcellino standing gravely by, observing what was wanted and giving the necessary orders to his wife. When all was done, hard drinking began, and soon after there was a dance, to which Penna and I were invited. The liquor served was chiefly a spirit distilled by the people themselves from mandioca cakes. The dances were all of the same cla.s.s, namely, different varieties of the "Landum," an erotic dance similar to the fandango, originally learned from the Portuguese. The music was supplied by a couple of wire-stringed guitars, played alternately by the young men.

All pa.s.sed off very quietly considering the amount of strong liquor drunk, and the ball was kept up until sunrise the next morning.

We visited all the houses one after the other. One of them was situated in a charming spot, with a broad sandy beach before it, at the entrance to the Parana-mirim do Mucambo, a channel leading to an interior lake, peopled by savages of the Mura tribe. This seemed to be the abode of an industrious family, but all the men were absent, salting Pirarucu on the lakes. The house, like its neighbours, was simply a framework of poles thatched with palm- leaves, the walls roughly latticed and plastered with mud; but it was larger, and much cleaner inside than the others. It was full of women and children, who were busy all day with their various employments; some weaving hammocks in a large clumsy frame, which held the warp while the shuttle was pa.s.sed by the hand slowly across the six foot breadth of web; others were spinning cotton, and others again sc.r.a.ping, pressing, and roasting mandioca. The family had cleared and cultivated a large piece of ground; the soil was of extraordinary richness, the perpendicular banks of the river, near the house, revealing a depth of many feet of crumbling vegetable mould. There was a large plantation of tobacco, besides the usual patches of Indian-corn, sugar-cane, and mandioca; and a grove of cotton, cacao, coffee, and fruit- trees surrounded the house. We pa.s.sed two nights at anchor in shoaly water off the beach. The weather was most beautiful, and scores of Dolphins rolled and snorted about the canoe all night.

We crossed the river at this point, and entered a narrow channel which penetrates the interior of the island of Tupinambarana, and leads to a chain of lakes called the Lagos de Cararaucu. A furious current swept along the coast, eating into the crumbling earthy banks, and strewing the river with debris of the forest.

The mouth of the channel lies about twenty-five miles from Villa Nova; the entrance is only about forty yards broad, but it expands, a short distance inland, into a large sheet of water. We suffered terribly from insect pests during the twenty-four hours we remained here. At night it was quite impossible to sleep for mosquitoes; they fell upon us by myriads, and without much piping came straight at our faces as thick as raindrops in a shower. The men crowded into the cabins, and then tried to expel the pests by the smoke from burnt rags, but it was of little avail, although we were half suffocated during the operation. In the daytime, the Motuca, a much larger and more formidable fly than the mosquito, insisted upon levying his tax of blood. We had been tormented by it for many days past, but this place seemed to be its metropolis. The species has been described by Perty, the author of the Entomological portion of Spix, and Martius' travels, under the name of Hadrus lepidotus. It is a member of the Tabanidae family, and indeed is closely related to the Haematopota pluvialis, a brown fly which haunts the borders of woods in summer time in England. The Motuca is of a bronzed-black colour; its proboscis is formed of a bundle of h.o.r.n.y lancets, which are shorter and broader than is usually the case in the family to which it belongs. Its puncture does not produce much pain, but it makes such a large gash in the flesh that the blood trickles forth in little streams. Many scores of them were flying about the canoe all day, and sometimes eight or ten would settle on one's ankles at the same time. It is sluggish in its motions, and may be easily killed with the fingers when it settles. Penna went forward in the montaria to the Pirarucu fis.h.i.+ng stations, on a lake lying further inland; but he did not succeed in reaching them on account of the length and intricacy of the channels; so after wasting a day, during which, however, I had a profitable ramble in the forest, we again crossed the river, and on the 16th continued our voyage along the northern sh.o.r.e.

The clay cliffs of Cararaucu are several miles in length. The hard pink and red coloured beds are here extremely thick, and in some places present a compact, stony texture. The total height of the cliff is from thirty to sixty feet above the mean level of the river, and the clay rests on strata of the same coa.r.s.e iron- cemented conglomerate which has already been so often mentioned.

Large blocks of this latter have been detached and rolled by the force of currents up parts of the cliff where they are seen resting on terraces of the clay. On the top of all lies a bed of sand and vegetable mold, which supports a lofty forest, growing up to the very brink of the precipice. After pa.s.sing these barreiros we continued our way along a low uninhabited coast, clothed, wherever it was elevated above high-water mark, with the usual vividly-coloured forests of the higher Ygapo lands, to which the broad and regular fronds of the Murumuru palm, here extremely abundant, served as a great decoration. Wherever the land was lower than the flood height of the Amazons, Cecropia trees prevailed, sometimes scattered over meadows of tall broad- leaved gra.s.ses, which surrounded shallow pools swarming with water-fowl. Alligators were common on most parts of the coast; in some places we also saw small herds of Capybaras (a large Rodent animal, like a colossal Guinea-pig) among the rank herbage on muddy banks, and now and then flocks of the graceful squirrel monkey (Chrysothrix sciureus), while the vivacious Caiarara (Cebus albifrons) were seen taking flying leaps from tree to tree. On the 22nd, we pa.s.sed the mouth of the most easterly of the numerous channels which lead to the large interior lake of Saraca, and on the 23rd ,threaded a series of pa.s.sages between islands, where we again saw human habitations, ninety miles distant from the last house at Cararaucu. On the 24th we arrived at Serpa.

Serpa is a small village, consisting of about eighty houses, built on a bank elevated twenty-five feet above the level of the river. The beds of Tabatinga clay, which are here intermingled with scoria-looking conglomerate, are in some parts of the declivity prettily variegated in colour; the name of the town in the Tupi language, Ita-coatiara, takes its origin from this circ.u.mstance, signifying striped or painted rock. It is an old settlement, and was once the seat of the district government, which had authority over the Barra of the Rio Negro. It was in 1849 a wretched-looking village, but it has since revived, on account of having been chosen by the Steamboat Company of the Amazons as a station for steam saw-mills and tile manufactories.

We arrived on Christmas Eve, when the village presented an animated appearance from the number of people congregated for the holidays. The port was full of canoes, large and small, from the montaria, with its arched awning of woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the two-masted cuberta of the peddling trader, who had resorted to the place in the hope of trafficking with settlers coming from remote sitios to attend the festival. We anch.o.r.ed close to an igarite, whose owner was an old Juri Indian, disfigured by a large black tatooed patch in the middle of his face, and by his hair being close cropped, except a fringe in front of the head.

In the afternoon we went ash.o.r.e. The population seemed to consist chiefly of semi-civilised Indians, living as usual in half- finished mud hovels. The streets were irregularly laid out, and overrun with weeds and bushes swarming with "mocuim," a very minute scarlet acarus, which sweeps off to one's clothes in pa.s.sing, and attaching itself in great numbers to the skin causes a most disagreeable itching. The few whites and better cla.s.s of mameluco residents live in more substantial dwellings, white- washed and tiled. All, both men and women, seemed to me much more cordial, and at the same time more brusque in their manners, than any Brazilians I had yet met with. One of them, Captain Manoel Joaquim, I knew for a long time afterwards; a lively, intelligent, and thoroughly good-hearted man, who had quite a reputation throughout the interior of the country for generosity, and for being a firm friend of foreign residents and stray travellers. Some of these excellent people were men of substance, being owners of trading vessels, slaves, and extensive plantations of cacao and tobacco.

We stayed at Serpa five days. Some of the ceremonies observed at Christmas were interesting, inasmuch as they were the same, with little modification, as those taught by the Jesuit missionaries more than a century ago to the aboriginal tribes whom they had induced to settle on this spot. In the morning, all the women and girls, dressed in white gauze chemises and showy calico print petticoats, went in procession to church, first going the round of the town to take up the different "mordomos," or stewards, whose office is to a.s.sist the Juiz of the festa. These stewards carried each a long white reed, decorated with coloured ribbons; several children also accompanied, grotesquely decked with finery. Three old squaws went in front, holding the "saire," a large semi-circular frame, clothed with cotton and studded with ornaments, bits of looking-gla.s.s, and so forth. This they danced up and down, singing all the time a monotonous whining hymn in the Tupi language, and at frequent intervals turning round to face the followers, who then all stopped for a few moments. I was told that this saire was a device adopted by the Jesuits to attract the savages to church, for these everywhere followed the mirrors, in which they saw as it were magically reflected their own persons.

In the evening good-humoured revelry prevailed on all sides. The negroes, who had a saint of their own colour--St. Benedito--had their holiday apart from the rest, and spent the whole night singing and dancing to the music of a long drum (gamba) and the caracasha. The drum was a hollow log, having one end covered with skin, and was played by the performer sitting astride upon it, and drumming with his knuckles. The caracasha is a notched bamboo tube, which produces a harsh rattling noise by pa.s.sing a hard stick over the notches. Nothing could exceed in dreary monotony this music and the singing and dancing, which were kept up with unflagging vigour all night long. The Indians did not get up a dance--for the whites and mamelucos had monopolised all the pretty coloured girls for their own ball, and the older squaws preferred looking on to taking a part themselves. Some of their husbands joined the negroes, and got drunk very quickly. It was amusing to notice how voluble the usually taciturn redskins became under the influence of liquor. The negroes and Indians excused their own intemperance by saying the whites were getting drunk at the other end of the town, which was quite true.

We left Serpa on the 29th of December, in company of an old planter named Senor Joao (John) Trinidade, at whose sitio, situated opposite the mouth of the Madeira, Penna intended to spend a few days. Our course on the 29th and 30th lay through narrow channels between islands. On the 31st we pa.s.sed the last of these, and then beheld to the south a sea-like expanse of water, where the Madeira, the greatest tributary of the Amazons, after 2000 miles of course, blends its waters with those of the king of rivers. I was hardly prepared for a junction of waters on so vast a scale as this, now nearly 900 miles from the sea. While travelling week after week along the somewhat monotonous stream, often hemmed in between islands, and becoming thoroughly familiar with it, my sense of the magnitude of this vast water system had become gradually deadened; but this n.o.ble sight renewed the first feelings of wonder. One is inclined, in such places as these, to think the Paraenses do not exaggerate much when they call the Amazons the Mediterranean of South America. Beyond the mouth of the Madeira, the Amazons sweeps down in a majestic reach, to all appearance not a whit less in breadth before than after this enormous addition to its waters. The Madeira does not ebb and flow simultaneously with the Amazons; it rises and sinks about two months earlier, so that it was now fuller than the main river. Its current therefore, poured forth freely from its mouth, carrying with it a long line of floating trees and patches of gra.s.s which had been torn from its crumbly banks in the lower part of its course. The current, however, did not reach the middle of the main stream, but swept along nearer to the southern sh.o.r.e.

A few items of information which I gleaned relative to this river may find a place here. The Madeira is navigable for about 480 miles from its mouth; a series of cataracts and rapids then commences, which extends, with some intervals of quiet water, about 16o miles, beyond which is another long stretch of navigable stream. Canoes sometimes descend from Villa Bella, in the interior province of Matto Grosso, but not so frequently as formerly, and I could hear of very few persons who had attempted of late years to ascend the river to that point. It was explored by the Portuguese in the early part of the eighteenth century, the chief and now the only town on its banks, Borba, 150 miles from its mouth, being founded in 1756. Up to the year 1853, the lower part of the river, as far as about a hundred miles beyond Borba, was regularly visited by traders from Villa Nova, Serpa, and Barra, to collect sarsaparilla, copauba balsam, turtle-oil, and to trade with the Indians, with whom their relations were generally on a friendly footing. In that year many India-rubber collectors resorted to this region, stimulated by the high price (2s. 6d. a pound) which the article was at that time fetching at Para; and then the Araras, a fierce and intractable tribe of Indians, began to be troublesome. They attacked several canoes and ma.s.sacred everyone on board, the Indian crews as well as the white traders. Their plan was to lurk in ambush near the sandy beaches where canoes stop for the night, and then fall upon the people while asleep. Sometimes they came under pretence of wis.h.i.+ng to trade, and then as soon as they could get the trader at a disadvantage, shot him and his crew from behind trees. Their arms were clubs, bows, and Taquara arrows, the latter a formidable weapon tipped with a piece of flinty bamboo shaped like a spear-head; they could propel it with such force as to pierce a man completely through the body. The whites of Borba made reprisals, inducing the warlike Mundurucus, who had an old feud with the Araras, to a.s.sist them. This state of things lasted two or three years, and made a journey up the Madeira a risky undertaking, as the savages attacked all corners. Besides the Araras and the Mundurucus, the latter a tribe friendly to the whites, attached to agriculture, and inhabiting the interior of the country from the Madeira to beyond the Tapajos, two other tribes of Indians now inhabit the lower Madeira, namely, the Parentintins and the Muras. Of the former I did not hear much; the Muras lead a lazy quiet life on the banks of the labyrinths of lakes and channels which intersect the low country on both sides of the river below Borba. The Araras are one of those tribes which do not plant mandioca; and indeed have no settled habitations. They are very similar in stature and other physical features to the Mundurucus, although differing from them so widely in habits and social condition. They paint their chins red with Urucu (Anatto), and have usually a black tattooed streak on each side of the face, running from the corner of the mouth to the temple. They have not yet learned the use of firearms, have no canoes, and spend their lives roaming over the interior of the country, living on game and wild fruits. When they wish to cross a river, they make a temporary canoe with the thick bark of trees, which they secure in the required shape of a boat by means of lianas. I heard it stated by a trader of Santarem, who narrowly escaped being butchered by them in 1854, that the Araras numbered 2000 fighting men. The number I think must be exaggerated, as it generally is with regard to Brazilian tribes.

When the Indians show a hostile disposition to the whites, I believe it is most frequently owing to some provocation they have received at their hands; for the first impulse of the Brazilian red-man is to respect Europeans; they have a strong dislike to be forced into their service, but if strangers visit them with a friendly intention they are well treated. It is related, however, that the Indians of the Madeira were hostile to the Portuguese from the first; it was then the tribes of Muras and Torazes who attacked travellers. In 1855 I met with an American, an odd character named Kemp, who had lived for many years amongst the Indians on the Madeira, near the abandoned settlement of Crato.

He told me his neighbours were a kindly-disposed and cheerful people, and that the onslaught of the Araras was provoked by a trader from Bara, who wantonly fired into a family of them, killing the parents, and carrying off their children to be employed as domestic servants.

We remained nine days at the sitio of Senor John Trinidade. It is situated on a tract of high Ygapo land, which is raised, however, only a few inches above high-water mark. This skirts the northern sh.o.r.e for a long distance; the soil consisting of alluvium and rich vegetable mould, and exhibiting the most exuberant fertility. Such districts are the first to be settled on in this country, and the whole coast for many miles was dotted with pleasant-looking sitios like that of our friend. The establishment was a large one, the house and out-buildings covering a large s.p.a.ce of ground. The industrious proprietor seemed to be Jack-of-all-trades; he was planter, trader, fisherman, and canoe-builder, and a large igarite was now on the stocks under a large shed. There was great pleasure in contemplating this prosperous farm, from its being worked almost entirely by free labour; in fact, by one family, and its dependents. John Trinidade had only one female slave; his other workpeople were a brother and sister-in-law, two G.o.dsons, a free negro, one or two Indians, and a family of Muras. Both he and his wife were mamelucos; the negro children called them always father and mother. The order, abundance, and comfort about the place showed what industry and good management could effect in this country without slave-labour. But the surplus produce of such small plantations is very trifling. All we saw had been done since the disorders of 1835-6, during which John Trinidade was a great sufferer; he was obliged to fly, and the Mura Indians destroyed his house and plantations. There was a large, well- weeded grove of cacao along the banks of the river, comprising about 8000 trees, and further inland considerable plantations of tobacco, mandioca, Indian corn, fields of rice, melons, and watermelons. Near the house was a kitchen garden, in which grew cabbages and onions, introduced from Europe, besides a wonderful variety of tropical vegetables. It must not be supposed that these plantations and gardens were enclosed or neatly kept, such is never the case in this country where labour is so scarce; but it was an unusual thing to see vegetables grown at all, and the ground tolerably well weeded. The s.p.a.ce around the house was plentifully planted with fruit-trees, some, belonging to the Anonaceous order, yielding delicious fruits large as a child's head, and full of custardy pulp which it is necessary to eat with a spoon--besides oranges, lemons, guavas, alligator pears, Abius (Achras cainito), Genipapas, and bananas. In the shade of these, coffee trees grew in great luxuriance.

The table was always well supplied with fish, which the Mura who was attached to the household as fisherman caught every morning a few hundred yards from the port. The chief kinds were the Surubim, Pira-peeua, and Piramutaba, three species of Siluridae, belonging to the genus Pimelodus. To these we used a sauce in the form of a yellow paste, quite new to me, called Arube, which is made of the poisonous juice of the mandioca root, boiled down before the starch or tapioca is precipitated, and seasoned with capsic.u.m peppers. It is kept in stone bottles several weeks before using, and is a most appetising relish to fish. Tucupi, another sauce made also from mandioca juice, is much more common in the interior of the country than Arube. This is made by boiling or heating the pure liquid, after the tapioca has been separated, daily for several days in succession, and seasoning it with peppers and small fishes; when old, it has the taste of essence of anchovies. It is generally made as a liquid, but the Juri and Miranha tribes on the j.a.pura make it up in the form of a black paste by a mode of preparation I could not learn; it is then called Tucupi-pixuna, or black Tucupi-- I have seen the Indians on the Tapajos, where fish is scarce, season Tucupi with Sauba ants. It is there used chiefly as a sauce to Tacaca, another preparation from mandioca, consisting of the starch beaten up in boiling water.

I thoroughly enjoyed the nine days we spent at this place. Our host and hostess took an interest in my pursuit; one of the best chambers in the house was given up to me, and the young men took me on long rambles in the neighbouring forests. I saw very little hard work going forward. Everyone rose with the daw, and went down to the river to bathe; then came the never-failing cup of rich and strong coffee, after which all proceeded to their avocations. At this time, nothing was being done at the plantations; the cacao and tobacco crops were not ripe; weeding time was over; and the only work on foot was the preparation of a little farinha by the women. The men dawdled about-- went shooting and fis.h.i.+ng, or did trifling jobs about the house. The only laborious work done during the year in these establishments is the felling of timber for new clearings; this happens at the beginning of the dry season, namely, from July to September.

Whatever employment the people were engaged in, they did not intermit it during the hot hours of the day. Those who went into the woods took their dinners with them--a small bag of farinha, and a slice of salt fish. About sunset all returned to the house; they then had their frugal suppers, and towards eight o'clock, after coming to ask a blessing of the patriarchal head of the household, went off to their hammocks to sleep.

There was another visitor besides ourselves, a negro, whom John Trinidade introduced to me as his oldest and dearest friend, who had saved his life during the revolt of 1835. I have, unfortunately, forgotten his name; he was a freeman, and had a sitio of his own situated about a day's journey from this. There was the same manly bearing about him that I had noticed with pleasure in many other free negroes; but his quiet, earnest manner, and the thoughtful and benevolent expression of his countenance, showed him to be a superior man of his cla.s.s. He told me he had been intimate with our host for thirty years, and that a wry word had never pa.s.sed between them. At the commencement of the disorders of 1835, he got into the secret of a plot for a.s.sa.s.sinating his friend, hatched by some villains whose only cause of enmity was their owing him money and envying his prosperity. It was such as these who aroused the stupid and brutal animosity of the Muras against the whites. The negro, on obtaining this news, set off alone in a montaria on a six hour journey in the dead of night to warn his "compadre" of the fate in store for him, and thus gave him time to fly. It was a pleasing sight to notice the cordiality of feeling and respect for each other shown by these two old men; for they used to spend hours together enjoying the cool breeze, seated under a shed which overlooked the broad river, and talking of old times.

John Trinidade was famous for his tobacco and cigarettes, as he took great pains in preparing the Tauari, or envelope, which is formed of the inner bark of a tree, separated into thin papery layers. Many trees yield it, among them the Courataria Guianensis and the Sapucaya nut-tree, both belonging to the same natural order. The bark is cut into long strips, of a breadth suitable for folding the tobacco; the inner portion is then separated, boiled, hammered with a wooden mallet, and exposed to the air for a few hours. Some kinds have a reddish colour and an astringent taste, but the sort prepared by our host was of a beautiful satiny-white hue, and perfectly tasteless. He obtained sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred layers from the same strip of bark. The best tobacco in Brazil is grown in the neighbourhood of Borba, on the Madeira, where the soil is a rich black loam; but tobacco of very good quality was grown by John Trinidade and his neighbours along this coast, on similar soil. It is made up into slender rolls, an inch and a half in diameter and six feet in length, tapering at each end. When the leaves are gathered and partially dried, layers of them, after the mid-ribs are plucked out, are placed on a mat and rolled up into the required shape.

This is done by the women and children, who also manage the planting, weeding, and gathering of the tobacco. The process of tightening the rolls is a long and heavy task, and can be done only by men. The cords used for this purpose are of very great strength. They are made of the inner bark of a peculiar light- wooded and slender tree, called Uaissima, which yields, when beaten out, a great quant.i.ty of most beautiful silky fibre, many feet in length. I think this might be turned to some use by English manufacturers, if they could obtain it in large quant.i.ty.

The tree is abundant on light soils on the southern side of the Lower Amazons, and grows very rapidly. When the rolls are sufficiently well pressed, they are bound round with narrow thongs of remarkable toughness, cut from the bark of the climbing Jacitara palm tree (Desmoncus macracanthus), and are then ready for sale or use.

It was very pleasant to roam in our host's cacaoal. The ground was clear of underwood, the trees were about thirty feet in height, and formed a dense shade. Two species of monkey frequented the trees, and I was told committed great depredations when the fruit was ripe. One of these, the macaco prego (Cebus cirrhifer?), is a most impudent thief; it destroys more than it eats by its random, hasty way of plucking and breaking the fruits, and when about to return to the forest, carries away all it can in its hands or under its arms. The other species, the pretty little Chrysothrix sciureus, contents itself with devouring what it can on the spot. A variety of beautiful insects basked on the foliage where stray gleams of sunlight glanced through the canopy of broad soft-green leaves, and numbers of an elegant, long-legged tiger beetle (Odontocheila egregia) ran and flew about over the herbage.

We left this place on the 8th of January, and on the afternoon of the 9th, arrived at Matari, a miserable little settlement of Mura Indians. Here we again anch.o.r.ed and went ash.o.r.e. The place consisted of about twenty slightly-built mud-hovels, and had a most forlorn appearance, notwithstanding the luxuriant forest in its rear. A horde of these Indians settled here many years ago, on the site of an abandoned missionary station; and the government had lately placed a resident director over them, with the intention of bringing the hitherto intractable savages under authority. This, however, seemed to promise no other result than that of driving them to their old solitary haunts on the banks of the interior waters, for many families had already withdrawn themselves. The absence of the usual cultivated trees and plants gave the place a naked and poverty-stricken aspect. I entered one of the hovels where several women were employed cooking a meal.

Portions of a large fish were roasting over a fire made in the middle of the low chamber, and the entrails were scattered about the floor, on which the women with their children were squatted.

These had a timid, distrustful expression of countenance, and their bodies were begrimed with black mud, which is smeared over the skin as a protection against mosquitoes. The children were naked, the women wore petticoats of coa.r.s.e cloth, ragged round the edges, and stained in blotches with murixi, a dye made from the bark of a tree. One of them wore a necklace of monkey's teeth. There were scarcely any household utensils; the place was bare with the exception of two dirty gra.s.s hammocks hung in the corners. I missed the usual mandioca sheds behind the house, with their surrounding cotton, cacao, coffee, and lemon trees. Two or three young men of the tribe were lounging about the low open doorway. They were stoutly-built fellows, but less well- proportioned than the semi-civilised Indians of the Lower Amazons generally are. Their breadth of chest was remarkable, and their arms were wonderfully thick and muscular. The legs appeared short in proportion to the trunk; the expression of their countenances was unmistakably more sullen and brutal, and the skin of a darker hue than is common in the Brazilian red man. Before we left the hut, an old couple came in; the husband carrying his paddle, bow, arrows, and harpoon, the woman bent beneath the weight of a large basket filled with palm fruits. The man was of low stature and had a wild appearance from the long coa.r.s.e hair which hung over his forehead. Both his lips were pierced with holes, as is usual with the older Muras seen on the river. They used formerly to wear tusks of the wild hog in these holes whenever they went out to encounter strangers or their enemies in war. The gloomy savagery, filth, and poverty of the people in this place made me feel quite melancholy, and I was glad to return to the canoe.

They offered us no civilities; they did not even pa.s.s the ordinary salutes, which all the semi-civilised and many savage Indians proffer on a first meeting. The men persecuted Penna for cashaca, which they seemed to consider the only good thing the white man brings with him. As they had nothing whatever to give in exchange, Penna declined to supply them. They followed us as we descended to the port, becoming very troublesome when about a dozen had collected together. They brought their empty bottles with them and promised fish and turtle, if we would only trust them first with the coveted aguardente, or cau-im, as they called it. Penna was inexorable; he ordered the crew to weigh anchor, and the disappointed savages remained hooting after us with all their might from the top of the bank as we glided away.

The Muras have a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers. Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel. They have a greater repugnance than any other cla.s.s of Indians to settled habits, regular labour, and the service of the whites; their distaste, in fact, to any approximation towards civilised life is invincible.

Yet most of these faults are only an exaggeration of the fundamental defects of character in the Brazilian red man. There is nothing, I think, to show that the Muras had a different origin from the n.o.bler agricultural tribes belonging to the Tupi nation, to some of whom they are close neighbours, although the very striking contrast in their characters and habits would suggest the conclusion that their origin had been different, in the same way as the Semangs of Malacca, for instance, with regard to the Malays. They are merely an offshoot from them, a number of segregated hordes becoming degraded by a residence most likely of very many centuries in Ygapo lands, confined to a fish diet, and obliged to wander constantly in search of food. Those tribes which are supposed to be more nearly related to the Tupis are distinguished by their settled agricultural habits, their living in well-constructed houses, their practice of many arts, such as the manufacture of painted earthenware, weaving, and their general custom of tattooing, social organisation, obedience to chiefs, and so forth. The Muras have become a nation of nomade fishermen, ignorant of agriculture and all other arts practised by their neighbours. They do not build substantial and fixed dwellings, but live in separate families or small hordes, wandering from place to place along the margins of those rivers and lakes which most abound in fish and turtle. At each resting- place they construct temporary huts at the edge of the stream, s.h.i.+fting them higher or lower on the banks, as the waters advance or recede. Their canoes originally were made simply of the thick bark of trees, bound up into a semi-cylindrical shape by means of woody lianas; these are now rarely seen, as most families possess montarias, which they have contrived to steal from the settlers from time to time. Their food is chiefly fish and turtle, which they are very expert in capturing. It is said by their neighbours that they dive after turtles, and succeed in catching them by the legs, which I believe is true in the shallow lakes where turtles are imprisoned in the dry season. They shoot fish with bow and arrow, and have no notion of any other method of cooking it than by roasting.

It is not quite clear whether the whole tribe were originally quite ignorant of agriculture; as some families on the banks of the streams behind Villa Nova, who could scarcely have acquired the art in recent times, plant mandioca, but, as a general rule, the only vegetable food used by the Muras is bananas and wild fruits. The original home of this tribe was the banks of the Lower Madeira. It appears they were hostile to the European settlers from the beginning-- plundering their sitios, waylaying their canoes, and ma.s.sacring all who fell into their power. About fifty years ago, the Portuguese succeeded in turning the warlike propensities of the Mundurucus against them and these, in the course of many years' persecution, greatly weakened the power of the tribe, and drove a great part of them from their seats on the banks of the Madeira. The Muras are now scattered in single hordes and families over a wide extent of country bordering the main river from Villa Nova to Catua, near Ega, a distance of 800 miles. Since the disorders of 1835-6, when they committed great havoc amongst the peaceable settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and were pursued and slaughtered in great numbers by the Mundurucus in alliance with the Brazilians, they have given no serious trouble.

There is one curious custom of the Muras which requires noticing before concluding this digression; this is the practice of snuff- taking with peculiar ceremonies. The snuff is called Parica, and is a highly stimulating powder made from the seeds of a species of Inga, belonging to the Leguminous order of plants. The seeds are dried in the sun, pounded in wooden mortars, and kept in bamboo tubes. When they are ripe, and the snuff-making season sets in, they have a fuddling-bout, lasting many days, which the Brazilians call a Quarentena, and which forms a kind of festival of a semi-religious character. They begin by drinking large quant.i.ties of caysuma and cas.h.i.+ri, fermented drinks made of various fruits and mandioca, but they prefer cashaca, or rum, when they can get it. In a short time they drink themselves into a soddened semi-intoxicated state, and then commence taking the Parica. For this purpose they pair off, and each of the partners, taking a reed containing a quant.i.ty of the snuff, after going through a deal of unintelligible mummery, blows the contents with all his force into the nostrils of his companion. The effect on the usually dull and taciturn savages is wonderful; they become exceedingly talkative, sing, shout, and leap about in the wildest excitement. A reaction soon follows; more drinking is then necessary to rouse them from their stupor, and thus they carry on for many days in succession.

The Mauhes also use the Parica, although it is not known among their neighbours the Mundurucus. Their manner of taking it is very different from that of the swinish Muras, it being kept in the form of a paste, and employed chiefly as a preventive against ague in the months between the dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quant.i.ty of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat sh.e.l.l, and the powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras.

This community of habits is one of those facts which support the view of the common origin and near relations.h.i.+p of the Amazonian Indians.

After leaving Matari, we continued our voyage along the northern sh.o.r.e. The banks of the river were of moderate elevation during several days' journey; the terra firma lying far in the interior, and the coast being either lowland or masked with islands of alluvial formation. On the 14th we pa.s.sed the upper mouth of the Parana-mirim de Eva, an arm of the river of small breadth, formed by a straggling island some ten miles in length, lying parallel to the northern bank. On pa.s.sing the western end of this, the main land again appeared; a rather high rocky coast, clothed with a magnificent forest of rounded outline, which continues hence for twenty miles to the mouth of the Rio Negro, and forms the eastern sh.o.r.e of that river. Many houses of settlers, built at a considerable elevation on the wooded heights, now enlivened the riverbanks. One of the first objects which greeted us here was a beautiful bird we had not hitherto met with, namely, the scarlet and black tanager (Ramphoccelus nigrogularis), flocks of which were seen sporting about the trees on the edge of the water, their flame-coloured liveries lighting up the ma.s.ses of dark- green foliage.

The weather, from the 14th to the i8th, was wretched; it rained sometimes for twelve hours in succession, not heavily, but in a steady drizzle, such as we are familiar with in our English climate. We landed at several places on the coast, Penna to trade as usual, and I to ramble in the forest in search of birds and insects. In one spot the wooded slope enclosed a very picturesque scene: a brook, flowing through a ravine in the high bank, fell in many little cascades to the broad river beneath, its margins decked out with an infinite variety of beautiful plants. Wild bananas arched over the watercourse, and the trunks of the trees in its vicinity were clothed with ferns, large-leaved species belonging to the genus LyG.o.dium, which, like Osmunda, have their spore-cases collected together on contracted leaves. On the 18th, we arrived at a large fazenda (plantation and cattle farm), called Jatuarana. A rocky point here projects into the stream, and as we found it impossible to stem the strong current which whirled around it, we crossed over to the southern sh.o.r.e. Canoes, in approaching the Rio Negro, generally prefer the southern side on account of the slackness of the current near the banks. Our progress, however, was most tediously slow, for the regular east wind had now entirely ceased, and the vento de cima or wind from up river, having taken its place, blew daily for a few hours dead against us. The weather was oppressively close, and every afternoon a squall arose, which, however, as it came from the right quarter and blew for an hour or two, was very welcome. We made acquaintance on this coast with a new insect pest, the Pium, a minute fly, two thirds of a line in length, which here commences its reign, and continues henceforward as a terrible scourge along the upper river, or Solimoens, to the end of the navigation on the Amazons. It comes forth only by day, relieving the mosquito at sunrise with the greatest punctuality, and occurs only near the muddy sh.o.r.es of the stream, not one ever being found in the shade of the forest. In places where it is abundant, it accompanies canoes in such dense swarms as to resemble thin clouds of smoke. It made its appearance in this way the first day after we crossed the river. Before I was aware of the presence of flies, I felt a slight itching on my neck, wrist, and ankles, and, on looking for the cause, saw a number of tiny objects having a disgusting resemblance to lice, adhering to the skin.

This was my introduction to the much-talked-of Pium. On close examination, they are seen to be minute two-winged insects, with dark coloured body and pale legs and wings, the latter closed lengthwise over the back. They alight imperceptibly, and squatting close, fall at once to work; stretching forward their long front legs, which are in constant motion and seem to act as feelers, and then applying their short, broad snouts to the skin.

Their abdomens soon become distended and red with blood, and then, their thirst satisfied, they slowly move off, sometimes so stupefied with their potations that they can scarcely fly. No pain is felt while they are at work, but they each leave a small circular raised spot on the skin and a disagreeable irritation.

The latter may be avoided in great measure by pressing out the blood which remains in the spot; but this is a troublesome task when one has several hundred punctures in the course of a day. I took the trouble to dissect specimens to ascertain the way in which the little pests operate. The mouth consists of a pair of thick fleshy lips, and two triangular h.o.r.n.y lancets, answering to the upper lip and tongue of other insects. This is applied closely to the skin, a puncture is made with the lancets, and the blood then sucked through between these into the oesophagus, the circular spot which results coinciding with the shape of the lips. In the course of a few days the red spots dry up, and the skin in time becomes blackened with the endless number of discoloured punctures that are crowded together. The irritation they produce is more acutely felt by some persons than others. I once travelled with a middle-aged Portuguese, who was laid up for three weeks from the attacks of Pium; his legs being swelled to an enormous size, and the punctures aggravated into spreading sores.

A brisk wind from the east sprang tip early in the morning of the 22nd-- we then hoisted all sail, and made for the mouth of the Rio Negro. This n.o.ble stream at its junction with the Amazons, seems, from its position, to be a direct continuation of the main river, while the Solimoens which joins at an angle and is somewhat narrower than its tributary, appears to be a branch instead of the main trunk of the vast water system. One sees at once,therefore,how the early explorers came to give a separate name to this upper part of the Amazons. The Brazilians have lately taken to applying the convenient term Alto Amazonas (High or Upper Amazons) to the Solimoens, and it is probable that this will gradually prevail over the old name. The Rio Negro broadens considerably from its mouth upwards, and presents the appearance of a great lake; its black-dyed waters having no current, and seeming to be dammed up by the impetuous flow of the yellow, turbid Solimoens, which here belches forth a continuous line of uprooted trees and patches of gra.s.s, and forms a striking contrast with its tributary. In crossing, we pa.s.sed the line, a little more than halfway over, where the waters of the two rivers meet and are sharply demarcated from each other. On reaching the opposite sh.o.r.e, we found a remarkable change. All our insect pests had disappeared, as if by magic, even from the hold of the canoe; the turmoil of an agitated, swiftly flowing river, and its torn, perpendicular, earthy banks, had given place to tranquil water and a coast indented with snug little bays fringed with sloping, sandy beaches. The low sh.o.r.e and vivid light-green, endlessly-varied foliage, which prevailed on the south side of the Amazons, were exchanged for a hilly country, clothed with a sombre, rounded, and monotonous forest. Our tedious voyage now approached its termination; a light wind carried us gently along the coast to the city of Barra, which lies about seven or eight miles within the mouth of the river. We stopped for an hour in a clean little bay, to bathe and dress, before showing ourselves again among civilised people. The bottom was visible at a depth of six feet, the white sand taking a brownish tinge from the stained but clear water. In the evening I went ash.o.r.e, and was kindly received by Senor Henriques Antony, a warm-hearted Italian, established here in a high position as merchant, who was the never-failing friend of stray travellers. He placed a couple of rooms at my disposal, and in a few hours I was comfortably settled in my new quarters, sixty-four days after leaving Obydos.

The town of Barra is built on a tract of elevated, but very uneven land, on the left bank of the Rio Negro, and contained, in 1850, about 3000 inhabitants. There was originally a small fort here, erected by the Portuguese, to protect their slave-hunting expeditions amongst the numerous tribes of Indians which peopled the banks of the river. The most distinguished and warlike of these were the Manaos, who were continually at war with the neighbouring tribes, and had the custom of enslaving the prisoners made during their predatory expeditions. The Portuguese disguised their slave-dealing motives under the pretext of ransoming (resgatando) these captives; indeed, the term resgatar (to ransom) is still applied by the traders on the Upper Amazons to the very general, but illegal, practice of purchasing Indian children of the wild tribes. The older inhabitants of the place remember the time when many hundreds of these captives were brought down by a single expedition. In 1809, Barra became the chief town of the Rio Negro district; many Portuguese and Brazilians from other provinces then settled here; s.p.a.cious houses were built, and it grew, in the course of thirty or forty years, to be, next to Santarem, the princ.i.p.al settlement on the banks of the Amazons. At the time of my visit it was on the decline, in consequence of the growing distrust, or increased cunning, of the Indians, who once formed a numerous and the sole labouring cla.s.s, but having got to know that the laws protected them against forced servitude, were rapidly withdrawing themselves from the place. When the new province of the Amazons was established, in 1852, Barra was chosen as the capital, and was then invested with the appropriate name of the city of Manaos.

The situation of the town has many advantages; the climate is healthy; there are no insect pests; the soil is fertile and capable of growing all kinds of tropical produce (the coffee of the Rio Negro, especially, being of very superior quality), and it is near the fork of two great navigable rivers. The imagination becomes excited when one reflects on the possible future of this place, situated near the centre of the equatorial part of South America, in the midst of a region almost as large as Europe, every inch of whose soil is of the most exuberant fertility, and having water communication on one side with the Atlantic, and on the other with the Spanish republics of Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Barra is now the princ.i.p.al station for the lines of steamers which were established in 1853, and pa.s.sengers and goods are trans.h.i.+pped here for the Solimoens and Peru. A steamer runs once a fortnight between Para and Barra, and a bi-monthly one plies between this place and Nauta in the Peruvian territory. The steam-boat company is supported by a large annual grant, about 50,000 sterling, from the imperial government. Barra was formerly a pleasant place of residence, but it is now in a most wretched plight, suffering from a chronic scarcity of the most necessary articles of food.

The attention of the settlers was formerly devoted almost entirely to the collection of the spontaneous produce of the forests and rivers; agriculture was consequently neglected, and now the neighbourhood does not produce even mandioca-meal sufficient for its own consumption. Many of the most necessary articles of food, besides all luxuries, come from Portugal, England, and North America. A few bullocks are brought now and then from Obydos, 500 miles off, the nearest place where cattle are reared in any numbers, and these furnish at long intervals a supply of fresh beef, but this is generally monopolised by the families of government officials. Fowls, eggs, fresh fish, turtles, vegetables, and fruit were excessively scarce and dear in 1859, when I again visited the place; for instance, six or seven s.h.i.+llings were asked for a poor lean fowl, and eggs were twopence-halfpenny a piece. In fact, the neighbourhood produces scarcely anything; the provincial government is supplied with the greater part of its funds from the treasury of Para; its revenue, which amounts to about fifty contos of reis (5600), derived from export taxes on the produce of the entire province, not sufficing for more than about one-fifth of its expenditure.

The population of the province of the Amazons, according to a census taken in 1858, is 55,000 souls; the munic.i.p.al district of Barra, which comprises a large area around the capital, containing only 4500 inhabitants. For the government, however, of this small number of people, an immense staff of officials is gathered together in the capital, and, notwithstanding the endless number of trivial formalities which Brazilians employ in every small detail of administration, these have nothing to do the greater part of their time. None of the people who flocked to Barra on the establishment of the new government seemed to care about the cultivation of the soil and the raising of food, although these would have been most profitable speculations. The cla.s.s of Portuguese who emigrate to Brazil seem to prefer petty trading to the honourable pursuit of agriculture. If the English are a nation of shopkeepers, what are we to say of the Portuguese? I counted in Barra one store for every five dwelling- houses. These stores, or tavernas, have often not more than fifty pounds' worth of goods for their whole stock, and the Portuguese owners, big l.u.s.ty fellows, stand all day behind their dirty counters for the sake of selling a few coppers' worth of liquors, or small wares. These men all give the same excuse for not applying themselves to agriculture, namely, that no hands can be obtained to work on the soil. Nothing can be done with Indians; indeed, they are fast leaving the neighbourhood altogether, and the importation of negro slaves, in the present praiseworthy temper of the Brazilian mind, is out of the question. The problem, how to obtain a labouring cla.s.s for a new and tropical country, without slavery, has to be solved before this glorious region can become what its delightful climate and exuberant fertility fit it for--the abode of a numerous, civilised, and happy people.

I found at Barra my companion, Mr. Wallace, who, since our joint Tocantins expedition, had been exploring, partly with his brother, lately arrived from England, the northeastern coast of Marajo, the river Capim (a branch of the Guama, near Para), Monte Alegre, and Santarem. He had pa.s.sed us by night below Serpa, on his way to Barra, and so had arrived about three weeks before me.

Besides ourselves, there were half-a-dozen other foreigners here congregated--Englishmen, Germans, and Americans; one of them a Natural History collector, the rest traders on the rivers. In the pleasant society of these, and of the family of Senor Henriques, we pa.s.sed a delightful time; the miseries of our long river voyages were soon forgotten, and in two or three weeks we began to talk of further explorations.

Meantime we had almost daily rambles in the neighbouring forest.

The whole surface of the land down to the water's edge is covered by the uniform dark-green rolling forest, the caa-apoam (convex woods) of the Indians, characteristic of the Rio Negro. This clothes also the extensive areas of lowland, which are flooded by the river in the rainy season. The olive-brown tinge of the water seems to be derived from the saturation in it of the dark green foliage during these annual inundations. The great contrast in form and colour between the forest of the Rio Negro and those of the Amazons arises from the predominance in each of different families of plants. On the main river, palms of twenty or thirty different species form a great proportion of the ma.s.s of trees, while on the Rio Negro, they play a very subordinate part. The characteristic kind in the latter region is the Jara (Leopoldinia pulchra), a species not found on the margins of the Amazons, which has a scanty head of fronds with narrow leaflets of the same dark green hue as the rest of the forest. The stem is smooth, and about two inches in diameter; its height is not more than twelve to fifteen feet; it does not, therefore, rise amongst the ma.s.ses of foliage of the exogenous trees, so as to form a feature in the landscape, like the broad-leaved Murumuru and Urucuri, the slender a.s.sai, the tall Jauari, and the fan-leaved Muriti of the banks of the Amazons.

On the sh.o.r.es of the main river the ma.s.s of the forest is composed, besides palms, of Leguminosae, or trees of the bean family, in endless variety as to height, shape of foliage, flowers, and fruit; of silk-cotton trees, colossal nut-trees (Lecythideae), and Cecropiae; the underwood and water-frontage consisting in great part of broad-leaved Musaceae, Marantaceae, and succulent gra.s.ses-- all of which are of light shades of green. The forests of the Rio Negro are almost dest.i.tute of these large-leaved plants and gra.s.ses, which give so rich an appearance to the vegetation wherever they grow; the margins of the stream being clothed with bushes or low trees, having the same gloomy monotonous aspect as the mangroves of the sh.o.r.es of creeks near the Atlantic. The uniformly small but elegantly-leaved exogenous trees, which const.i.tute the ma.s.s of the forest, consist in great part of members of the Laurel, Myrtle, Bignoniaceous, and Rubiaceous orders. The soil is generally a stiff loam, whose chief component part is the Tabatinga clay, which also forms low cliffs on the coast in some places, where it overlies strata of coa.r.s.e sandstone. This kind of soil and the same geological formation prevail, as we have seen, in many places on the banks of the Amazons, so that the great contrast in the forest-clothing of the two rivers cannot arise from this cause.

The forest was very pleasant for rambling. In some directions broad pathways led down gentle slopes, through what one might fancy were interminable shrubberies of evergreens, to moist hollows where springs of water bubbled up, or shallowbrooks ran over their beds of clean white sand. But the most beautiful road was one that ran through the heart of the forest to a waterfall, which the citizens of Barra consider as the chief natural curiosity of their neighbourhood. The waters of one of the larger rivulets which traverse the gloomy wilderness, here fall over a ledge of rock about ten feet high. It is not the cascade itself, but the noiseless solitude, and the marvellous diversity and richness of trees, foliage, and flowers encircling the water basin that form the attraction of the place. Families make picnic excursions to this spot; and the gentlemen--it is said the ladies also--spend the sultry hours of midday bathing in the cold and bracing waters. The place is cla.s.sic ground to the Naturalist from having been a favourite spot with the celebrated travellers Spix and Martius, during their stay at Barra in 1820. Von Martins was so much impressed by its magical beauty that he commemorated the visit by making a sketch of the scenery serve as background in one of the plates of his great work on the palms.

Birds and insects, however, were scarce amidst these charming sylvan scenes. I have often traversed the whole distance from Barra to the waterfall, about two miles by the forest road, without seeing or hearing a bird, or meeting with so many as a score of Lepidopterous and Coleopterous insects. In the thinner woods near the borders of the forest many pretty little blue and green creepers of the Dacnidae group, were daily seen feeding on berries; and a few very handsome birds occurred in the forest.

But the latter were so rare that we could obtain them only by employing a native hunter, who used to spend a whole day, and go a great distance to obtain two or three specimens. In this way I obtained, amongst others, specimens of the Trogon pavoninus (the Suruqua grande of the natives), a most beautiful creature, having soft golden green plumage, red breast, and an orange-coloured beak; also the Ampelis Pompadoura, a rich glossy-purple chatterer with wings of a snowy-white hue.

After we had rested some weeks in Barra, we arranged our plans for further explorations in the interior of the country. Mr.

Wallace chose the Rio Negro for his next trip, and I agreed to take the Solimoens. My colleague has already given to the world an account of his journey on the Rio Negro, and his adventurous ascent of its great tributary the Uapes. I left Barra for Ega, the first town of any importance on the Solimoens, on the 26th of March, 1850. The distance is nearly 400 miles, which we accomplished in a small cuberta, manned by ten stout Cucama Indians, in thirty-five days. On this occasion, I spent twelve months in the upper region of the Amazons; circ.u.mstances then compelled me to return to Para. I revisited the same country in 1855, and devoted three years and a half to a fuller exploration of its natural productions. The results of both journeys will be given together in subsequent chapters of this work; in the meantime, I will proceed to give an account of Santarem and the river Tapajos, whose neighbourhoods I investigated in the years 1851-4.

A few words on my visit to Para in 1851 may be here introduced. I descended the river from Ega, to the capital, a distance of 1400 miles, in a heavily-laden schooner belonging to a trader of the former place. The voyage occupied no less than twenty-nine days, although we were favoured by the powerful currents of the rainy season. The hold of the vessel was filled with turtle oil contained in large jars, the cabin was crammed with Brazil nuts, and a great pile of sarsaparilla, covered with a thatch of palm leaves, occupied the middle of the deck. We had, therefore, (the master and two pa.s.sengers) but rough accommodation, having to sleep on deck, exposed to the wet and stormy weather, under little toldos or arched shelters, arranged with mats of woven lianas and maranta leaves. I awoke many a morning with clothes and bedding soaked through with the rain. With the exception, however, of a slight cold at the commencement, I never enjoyed better health than during this journey. When the wind blew from up river or off the land, we sped away at a great rate; but it was often squally from those quarters, and then it was not safe to hoist the sails. The weather was generally calm, a motionless ma.s.s of leaden clouds covering the sky, and the broad expanse of waters flowing smoothly down with no other motion than the ripple of the current. When the wind came from below, we tacked down the stream; sometimes it blew very strong, and then the schooner, having the wind abeam, laboured through the waves, s.h.i.+pping often heavy seas which washed everything that was loose from one side of the deck to the other.