The Naturalist on the River Amazons

We reached Santarem ati1a.m. The town has a clean and cheerful appearance from the river. It consists of three long streets, with a few short ones crossing them at right angles, and contains about 2,500

Flat-topped Mountains of Parauá-quára, Lower Amazons.

inhabitants. It lies just within the mouth of the Tapajos, and is divided into two parts—the town and the aldeia or village. The houses of the white and trading classes are substantially built, many being of two and three stories, and all whitewashed and tiled. Thealdeia, which contains the Indian portion of the population, or did so formerly, consists mostly of mud huts, thatched with palm-leaves. The situation of the town is very beautiful. The land, although but slightly elevated, does not form, strictly speaking, a portion of the alluvial river plains of the Amazons, but is rather a northern prolongation of the Brazilian continental land. It is scantily wooded, and toward the interior consists of undulating campos, which are connected with a series of hills extending southward as far as the eye can reach. I subsequently made this place my head-quarters for three years; an account of its neighbourhood is therefore reserved for another chapter. At the first sight of Santarem, one cannot help being struck with the advantages of its situation. Although 400 miles from the sea, it is accessible to vessels of heavy tonnage coming straight from the Atlantic. The river has only two slight bends between this port and the sea, and for five or six months of the year the Amazonian trade wind blows with very little interruption, so that sailing ships coming from foreign countries could reach the place with little difficulty. We ourselves had accomplished 200 miles, or about half the distance from the sea, in an ill-rigged vessel, in three days and a half. Although the land in the immediate neighbourhood is perhaps ill adapted for agriculture, an immense tract of rich soil, with forest and meadow land, lies on the opposite banks of the river, and the Tapajos leads into the heart of the mining provinces of interior Brazil. But where is the population to come from to develop the resources of this fine country? At present the district within a radius of twenty-five miles contains barely 6,500 inhabitants; behind the town, towards the interior, the country is uninhabited, and jaguars roam nightly, at least in the rainy season, close up to the ends of the suburban streets., From information obtained here, I fixed upon the next town, Obydos, as the best place to stay at a few weeks, in order to investigate the natural productions of the north side of the Lower Amazons. We started at sunrise on the roth, and being still favoured by wind and weather, made a pleasant passage, reaching Obydos, which is nearly fifty miles distant from Santarem, by midnight. We sailed all day close to the southern shore, and found the banks here and there dotted with houses of settlers, each surrounded by its plantation of cacao, which is the staple product of the district. This coast has an evil reputation for storms and mosquitoes, but we fortunately escaped both. It was remarkable that we had been troubled by mosquitoes only on one night, and then to a small degree, during the whole of our voyage.

I landed at Obydos the next morning, and then bid adieu to my kind friend Joao da Cunha, who, after landing my baggage, got up his anchor and continued on his way. The town contains about 1,200 inhabitants, and is airily situated on a high bluff, 90 or 100 feet above the level of the river. The coast is precipitous for two or three miles hence to the west. The cliffs consist of the parti-coloured clay, or Tabatinga, which

occurs so frequently throughout the Amazons region; the strong current of the river sets full against them in the season of high water, and annually carries away large portions. The clay in places is stratified alternately pink and yellow, the pink beds being the thickest, and of much harder texture than the others. When I descended the river in 1859, a German Major of Engineers, in the employ of the Government, told me that he had found calcareous layers, thickly studded with marine shells interstratified with the clay. On the top of the Tabatinga lies a bed of sand, in some places several feet thick, and the whole formation rests on strata of sandstone, which are exposed only when the river reaches its lowest level. Behind the town rises a fine rounded hill, and a range of similar elevations extends six miles westward, terminating at the mouth of the Trombetas, a large river flowing through the interior of Guiana. Hills and lowlands alike are covered with a sombre rolling forest. The river here is contracted to a breadth of rather less than a mile (1738 yards), and the entire volume of its waters, the collective product of a score of mighty streams, is poured through the strait with tremendous velocity.* It must be remarked, however, that the river valley itself is not contracted to this breadth, the opposite shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial tract, subject to inundation more or less in the rainy season. Behind it lies an extensive lake, called the Lago Grande da Ville Franca, which communicates with the Amazons, both above and below Obydos, and has therefore the appearance ofa by-water or an old channel of the river. This lake is about thirty-five miles in length, and from four to ten in width; but its waters are of little depth, and in the dry season its dimensions are much lessened. It has no perceptible current, and does not therefore now divert any portion of the waters of the Amazons from their main course past Obydos. I remained at Obydos from the 11th of October to the 19th of November. I spent three weeks here, also, in 1859, when the place was much changed through the influx of Portuguese immigrants and the building of a fortress on the top of the bluff. Itis one of the pleasantest towns on the river. The houses are all roofed with tiles, and are mostly of substantial architecture. ‘The inhabitants, at least at the time of my first visit, were naive in their ways, kind and sociable. Scarcely any palm-thatched huts are to be seen, for very few Indians now reside here. It was one of the early settlements of the Portuguese, and the better class of the population consists of old-established white families, who exhibit, however, in some cases, traces of cross with the Indian and negro. Obydos and Santarem have received, during the last eighty years, considerable importations of negro slaves; before that

• It was formerly believed that the river at the strait of Obydos could not be sounded on account of its great depth and the velocity of the current. Lieut. Herndon, of the United States navy, succeeded in doing so, however, in 1852. He found a depth of 30 to 35 fathoms, but in one place he thought he had not touched the bottom at 40 fathoms. Von Martius, estimating the depth in the middle at 60 fathoms, and on the side at 20, and the velocity of the current at 2°4 feet per second, estimated that 499,584 cubic feet of water passed through the strait in each second of time. The tides are felt here in the dry season, but the flood does not press back the current of the Amazons.

time a cruel traffic was carried on in Indians for the same purpose of forced servitude, but their numbers have gradually dwindled away, and Indians now form an insignificant element in the population of the district. Most of the Obydos townsfolk are owners of cacao plantations, which are situated on the lowlands in the vicinity. Some are large cattle proprietors, and possess estates of many square leagues’ extent in the campo, or grass-land districts, which border the Lago Grande and other similar inland lakes, near the villages of Faro and Alemquer. These campos bear a crop of nutritious grass; but in certain seasons, when the rising of the Amazons exceeds the average, they are apt to be flooded, and then the large herds of half-wild cattle suffer great mortality from drowning, hunger, and the alligators. Neither in cattle-keeping nor cacao-growing are any but the laziest and most primitive methods followed, and the consequence is that the proprietors are generally poor. A few, however, have become rich by applying a moderate amount of industry and skill to the management of their estates. People spoke of several heiresses in the neighbourhood whose wealth was reckoned in oxen and slaves; a dozen slaves and a few hundred head of cattle being considered a great fortune. Some of them I saw had already been appropriated by enterprising young men, who had come from Para and Maranham to seek their fortunes in this quarter.

The weeks I spent here passed away pleasantly. I generally spent the evenings in the society of the townspeople, who associated together (contrary to Brazilian custom) in European fashion; the different families meeting at one another’s houses for social amusement, bachelor friends not being excluded, and the whole company, married and single, joining in simple games. The meetings used to take place in the sitting-rooms, and not in the open verandahs—a fashion almost compulsory on account of the mosquitoes; but the evenings here are very cool, and the closeness of a room is not so much felt as it is in Para. Sunday was strictly observed at Obydos; at least all the shops are closed, and almost the whole population went to church. The vicar, Padre Raimundo do Sanchez Brito, was an excellent old man, and I fancy the friendly manners of the people, and the general purity of morals at Obydos, were owing in great part to the good example he set to his parishioners. One day the owner of the house in which I occupied a room, Major Martinho da Fonseca Seixas, came over from his estate on the opposite bank of the river. He was aman of great importance in the district, and the only one who had had enterprise sufficient to establish a sugar-mill. He crossed over soon after sunrise in a small boat, with four dark-skinned paddlers, who made the morning air ring with a wild chorus, which their master, I was told, always made them sing, to beguile the way. I found him a tall, wiry, and sharp-featured old gentleman, with a shrewd but good-humoured expression of countenance —quite a typical specimen, in fact, of the old school of Brazilian planters. He landed in dressing-gown and slippers, and came up the beach chattering, scolding, and gesticulating. Several friends joined him, and we soon had the house full of company. After taking coffee and a hot buttered roll, he dressed and went to mass, whilst I slipped off

to spend an hour or two in the woods. When I came back I found the Major with his friends seated in hammocks, two by two, slung in the four corners of the room, and all engaged in a lively discussion on political questions. They had a demijohn of cashaca in their midst, and were helping themselves freely, drinking out of little teacups. One of the company was a dark-skinned Cametaense, named Senhor Calisto Pantoja, a very agreeable fellow, and as full of talk as the Major. Like most of his townsmen, he was a Santa Luzia, or Liberal, whilst the old gentleman was a rabid Tory. Pantoja rather nettled the old man by saying that the Cameta people had held their town against the rebels in 1835, whilst the whites of Obydos abandoned theirs to be pillaged by them. ‘The Major then launched out into a denunciation of the Cametaenses and the Liberals in general. He said he was a pure white, a ‘“ Massagonista”;* the blood of the Fidalguia of Portugal flowed in his veins, whilst the people of Cameta were a mixed breed of whites and Indians. I noticed that this boasting was ill received by the rest; it is generally, in fact, considered bad taste in Brazil to boast of purity of descent. Soon afterwards most of the visitors departed, and we dined in quiet. A few days afterwards I crossed the river to the Major’s place, and spent two days with him. The house was a very large two-story building, having a large verandah to the upper floor. There was an appearance of disorder and cheerlessness about the place which was very dispiriting. ‘The old gentleman was a, widower. His only son had been brutally massacred by the rebels in 1835, whilst he was crossing the river in a small boat; and his two daughters were now completing their education at a seminary in Parad. The household affairs appeared to be managed by a middle-aged mulatto woman; and a number of dirty negro children were playing about the rooms. Amongst the outbuildings there were several large sheds, containing the cane-mill and sugar factory, and beyond these a curral, or enclosure for cattle. The mill for grinding the sugar-cane was a rude affair, worked by bullocks. The cane was pressed between wooden cylinders, and the juice received in troughs formed of hollowed logs. Sugar-cane here grows to a height of 18 to 20 feet, the sugar-yielding part of the stem being about 8 feet in length and 3 inches in diameter. ‘The land for miles around the establishment is rich alluvial soil, and as level asa bowling-green. Beyond the belt of forest which runs along the banks of the river, there is a large tract of soft green meadow with patches of woodland and scattered trees, combining to form a landscape like that of an English park. But a meadow on the banks of the Amazons is a very different thing from what it is in a temperate climate: the vegetation is rank and monotonous, and there are absolutely no flowers. The old gentleman had built a pretty little chapel on his estate, on the occasion of a visit from the Bishop of Para, who sometimes travels through his diocese, and I slept in the Bishop’s room attached to the building. The abundance of mosquitoes is a great drawback to the rich agricultural country on this side of the river. A little before night sets in