CHAPTER X.

THE UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA.

Departure from Barra—First day and night on the Upper Amazons—Desolate appearance of river in the flood season—Cucama Indians—Mental condition of

Indians—Squalls—Manatee—Forest—Floating pumice-stones from the Andes—

Falling banks—Ega and its inhabitants—Daily life of a Naturalist at Ega—

Customs, trade, etc.—The four seasons of the Upper Amazons.:

I must now take the reader from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters, to the boundless wooded plains and yellow turbid current of the Upper Amazons or Solimoens I will resume the narrative of my first voyage up the river, which was interrupted at the Barra of the Rio Negro, in the seventh chapter, to make way for the description of Santarem and its neighbourhood.

I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent. with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars. The owner, an old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega, named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra, attending the assizes as juryman, a public duty performed without remuneration, which took him six weeks away from his business. He was about to leave Barra himself, ina small boat, and recommended me to send forward my heavy baggage in the cuberta and make the journey with him. He would reach Ega, 370 miles distant from Barra, in twelve or fourteen days; whilst the large vessel would be thirty or forty days on the road. I preferred, however, to go in company with my luggage, looking forward to the many opportunities I should have of landing and making collections on the banks of the river.

I shipped the collections made between Para and the Rio Negro in a large cutter which was about descending to the capital, and after a heavy day’s work got all my chests aboard the Ega canoe by eight o’clock at night. The Indians were then all embarked, one of them being brought dead drunk by his companions, and laid to sober himself all night on the wet boards of the tombadilha. The cabo, a spirited young white, named Estulano Alves Carneiro, who has since risen to be a distinguished citizen of the new province of the Upper Amazons, soon after gave orders to get up the anchor. The men took to the oars, and in a few hours we crossed the broad mouth of the Rio Negro; the night 255

being clear, calm, and starlit, and the surface of the inky waters smooth as a lake.

When I awoke the next morning, we were progressing by espia along the left bank of the Solimoens. The rainy season had now set in over the region through which the great river flows; the sand-banks and all the lower lands were already under water, and the tearing current, two or three miles in breadth, bore along a continuous line of uprooted trees and islets of floating plants. The prospect was most melancholy; no sound was heard but the dull murmur of the waters; the coast along which we travelled all day was encumbered every step of the way with fallen trees, some of which quivered in the currents which set around projecting points of land. Our old pest, the Mottica, began to torment us as soon as the sun gained power in the morning. White egrets were plentiful at the edge of the water, and humming-birds, in some places, were whirling about the flowers overhead. The desolate appearance of the landscape increased after sunset, when the moon rose in mist.

This upper river, the Alto-Amazonas, or Solimoens, is always spoken of by the Brazilians as a distinct stream. This is partly owing, as before remarked, to the direction it seems to take at the fork of the Rio Negro; the inhabitants of the country, from their partial knowledge, not being able to comprehend the whole river system in one view. It has, however, many peculiarities to distinguish it from the lower course of the river. The trade-wind, or sea-breeze, which reaches, in the height of the dry season, as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro, goo or tooo miles from the Atlantic, never blows on the upper river. The atmosphere is therefore more stagnant and sultry, and the winds that do prevail are of irregular direction and short duration, A great part of the land on the borders of the Lower Amazons is hilly; there are extensive campos, or open plains, and long stretches of sandy soil clothed with thinner forests. The climate, in consequence, is comparatively dry, many months in succession during the fine season passing without rain. All this is changed on the Solimoens. A fortnight of clear sunny weather is a rarity: the whole region through which the river and its affluents flow, after leaving the easternmost ridges of the Andes, which Poppig describes as rising like a wall from the level country, 240 miles from the Pacific, is a vast plain, about 1000 miles in length, and 500 or 600 in breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest. The soil is nowhere sandy, but always either a stiff clay, alluvium, or vegetable mould, which latter, in many places, is seen in water-worn sections of the river banks to be twenty or thirty feet in depth. With such a soil and climate, the luxuriance of vegetation, and the abundance and beauty of animal forms which are already so great in the region nearer the Atlantic, increase on the upper river. ‘The fruits, both wild and cultivated, common to the two sections of the country, reach a progressively larger size in advancing westward, and some trees which blossom only once a year at Para and Santarem, yield flower and fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region, whilst we are yet on its threshold. I

resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the Andes amounting only to a few score acres. Man, indeed, in any condition, from his small numbers, makes but an insignificant figure in these vast solitudes. It may be mentioned that the Solimoens is 2130 miles in length, if we reckon from the source of what is usually considered the main stream (Lake Lauricocha, near Lima); but 2500 miles by the route of the Ucayali, the most considerable and practicable fork of the upper part of the river. It is navigable at all seasons by large steamers, for upwards of 1400 miles from tne mouth of the Rio Negro.

On the 28th we passed the mouth of Ariauli, a narrow inlet which communicates with the Rio Negro, emerging in front of Barra. Our vessel was nearly drawn into this by the violent current which set from the Solimoens. The towing-cable was lashed to a strong tree about thirty yards ahead, and it took the whole strength of crew and passengers to pull across. We passed the Guariba, a second channel connecting the two rivers, on the 30th, and on the 31st sailed past a straggling settlement called Manacdpuru, situated on a high rocky bank. Many citizens of Barra have sztios, or country-houses, in this place, although it is eighty miles distant from the town by the nearest road. They come here for a few weeks in the fine season to economise, and pass the time in planting on a small scale, fishing and trading. The custom of having two places of residence is very general throughout the country, and exists amongst the aborigines, at least the more advanced tribes. Some of the establishments at Manacapurt are large and of old date, shown by the number and size of the mangos and other introduced fruit-trees. ‘The houses, though spacious, were now in a neglected and ruinous condition. Estulano and I landed at one of them, and dined off roasted wild hog with the owner, an uncommonly lively little old man, named Feyres. ‘The place looked dirty and desolate; the stucco and whitewash had peeled off in great pieces from the walls; the doors and window-shutters were broken and off their hinges; the dingy mud-floors were covered with litter, and the cultivated grounds around the house choked with weeds. The high bank, and with it the settlement, terminates at the mouth of a narrow channel which leads to a large interior lake abounding in fish, manatee, and turtle. Beyond Manacdpurt all traces of high land cease; both shores of the river, henceforward for many hundred miles, are flat, except in places where the Tabatinga formation appears in clayey elevations of from twenty to forty feet above the line of highest water. The country is so completely destitute of rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is seen during many weeks’ journey. Our voyage was now very monotonous. After leaving the last house at Manacapura we travelled nineteen days without seeing a human habitation, the few settlers being located on the banks of inlets or lakes some distance from the shores of the main river. We met only one vessel during the whole of the time, 17

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and this did not come within hail, as it was drifting down in the middle of the current in a broad part of the river two miles from the bank along which we were laboriously warping our course upwards.

After the first two or three days we fell into a regular way of life aboard. Our crew was composed of ten Indians of the Cucdma nation, whose native country is a portion of the borders of the upper river, in the neighbourhood of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucdmas speak the Tupf language, using, however, a harsher accent than is common amongst the semi-civilised Indians from Ega downwards. They are a shrewd, hard-working people, and. are the only Indians who willingly and in a body engage themselves to navigate the canoes of traders. The pilot, a steady and faithful fellow named Vicente, told me that he and his companions had now been fifteen months absent from their wives and families, and that on arriving at Ega they intended to take the first chance of a passage to Nauta. There was nothing in the appearance of these men to distinguish them from canoe-men in general. Some were tall and well built, others had squat figures with broad shoulders and excessively thick arms and legs. No two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head: Vicente had an oval visage, with fine regular features, whilst a little dumpy fellow, the wag of the party, was quite a Mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of eyes; but these two formed the extremes as to face and figure. None of them were tattooed or disfigured in any way; and they were all quite destitute of beard. ‘The Cucdmas are notorious on the river for their provident habits. The desire of acquiring property is so rare a trait in Indians, that the habits of these people are remarked on with surprise by the Brazilians.. The first possession which they strive to acquire, on descending the river into Brazil, which all the Peruvian Indians look upon as a richer country than their own, is a wooden trunk with lock and key; in this they stow away carefully all their earnings converted into clothing, hatchets, knives, harpoon heads, needles and thread, and so forth. Their wages are only fourpence or sixpence a day, which are often paid in goods charged a hundred per cent. above Para prices, so that it takes them a long time to fill their chest. It would be difficult to find a better-behaved set of men on a voyage than these poor Indians. During our thirty-five days’ journey they lived and worked together in the most perfect good fellowship. I never heard an angry word pass amongst them. Senhor Estulano let them navigate the vessel in their own way, exerting his authority only now and then when they were inclined to be lazy. Vicente regulated the working hours. These depended on the darkness of the nights. In the first and second quarters of the moon they kept it up with esgza, or oars, until towards midnight; in the third and fourth quarters they were allowed to go to sleep soon after sunset, and aroused at three or four o’clock in the morning to resume their work. On cool, rainy days we all bore a hand at the esfza, trotting with bare feet on the sloppy deck in Indian file, to the tune of some wild boatman’s chorus. We had a favourable wind for two days only out of the thirty-five, by which we made about forty miles; the rest of our long journey was accomplished literally

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