Down the Amazon.— Serpa.—Villa Nova.— Obidos.— Santarem.— A Colony of Southerners.— Monte Alégre.— Porto do Moz.— Leaving the Amazon.—Breves.— Pará River.— The City of Pará.— Legislation and Currency.— Religion and Education.— Nonpareil Climate.
At 10p.m.we left Manáos in the "Tapajos," an iron steamer of seven hundred tons. We missed the snow-white cleanliness and rigid regularity of the "Icamiaba," and Captain José Antunes Rodrigues de Oliveira Catramby was quite a contrast to Lieutenant Nuno. There were only five first-class passengers besides ourselves (and four of these were "dead-heads"), though there were accommodations for sixty-four. Between Manáos and Pará, a distance of one thousand miles, there were fourteen additions. Passing the mouth of the Madeira, the largest tributary to the Amazon, we anchored thirty miles below at Serpa, after nine hours' sailing. Serpa is a village of ninety houses, built on a high bank of variegated clay, whence its Indian name,Ita-coatiara, or painted rock. It was the most animated place we had seen on the river. The town is irregularly laid out and overrun with weeds, but there is a busy tile factory, and the port was full of canoes, montarias, and cubertas. The African element in the population began to show itself prominently here, and increased in importance as we neared Pará. The Negroes are very ebony, and are employed as stevedores. The Indians are well-featured, and wear a long gown of bark-cloth reaching to the knees.
Taking on board rubber and salt fish, the "Tapajos" steamed down stream, passing the perpendicular pink-claycliffs of Cararaucú, arriving in ten hours at Villa Nova,[142]one hundred and fifty miles below Serpa. Villa Nova is a straggling village of mud huts standing on a conglomerate bank. The trade is chiefly in rubber, copaiba, and fish. The location is healthy, and in many respects is one of the most desirable places on the river. Here the Amazon begins to narrow, being scarcely three miles wide; but the channel, which has a rocky bed, is very deep. One hundred miles from Villa Nova is Obidos, airily situated on a bluff of pink and yellow clay one hundred feet above the river. The clay rests on a white calcareous earth, and this on red sandstone. It is a picturesque, substantially-built town, with a population, mostly white, engaged in raising cacao and cattle. Cacao is the most valuable product on the Amazon below Villa Nova. The soil is fertile, and the surrounding forest is alive with monkeys, birds, and insects, and abounds with precious woods and fruits. Obidos is blessed with a church, a school, and a weekly newspaper, and is defended by thirty-two guns. This is the Thermopylæ of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with tremendous velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the current 2.4 feet per second. As Bates remarks, however, the river valley is not contracted to this breadth, the southern shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial tract subject to inundation. Back of Obidos is an eminence which has been namedMount Agassizin honor of the Naturalist. There is no mountain between it and Cotopaxi save the spurs from the Eastern Cordillera. Five miles above the town is the mouth of the Trombetas, where Orellana had his celebrated fight with the fabulous Amazons.
Santarem.Santarem.
Adding to her cargo wood, hides, horses, and Paraguayanprisoners (short, athletic men), the "Tapajos" sailed for Santarem. The river scenery below Obidos loses its wild and solitary character, and is relieved with scattered habitations, factories, and cacao plantations. We arrived at Santarem in seven hours from Obidos, a distance of fifty miles. This city, the largest on the Amazon save Pará, stands on a pretty slope at the mouth of the Rio Tapajos, and five hundred miles from the sea.[143]It mainly consists of three long-rows of whitewashed, tiled houses, girt with green gardens. The citizens, made up of Brazilians, Portuguese, mulattoes, and blacks, number about two thousand five hundred. The surrounding country, which is an undulating campo, with patches of wood, is sparsely inhabited by Tapajocos. Cattle estates and cacao plantations are the great investments, but the soil is poor. Considerable sarsaparilla of superior quality, rubber, copaiba, Brazil nuts, and farina come down the Tapajos. The climate is delightful, the trade-winds tempering the heat and driving away all insect pests. Leprosy is somewhat common among the poorer class. At Santarem is one of the largest colonies which migrated from the disaffected Gulf States for Brazil. One hundred and sixty Southerners pitched their tents here. Many of them, however, were soon disgusted with the country, and, if we are to believe reports, the country was disgusted with them. On the 1st of January, 1868, only seventy-five remained. The colony does not fairly represent the United States, being made up in great part of the "roughs" of Mobile. A few are contented and are doing well. Amazonia will be indebted to them for some valuable ideas. Bates says: "Butter-making is unknown in this country; the milk, I was told, was too poor." But these Anglo-Saxon immigrants have no difficulty in making butter. Santarem sends to Pará for sugar; but the cavaliers of Alabama are proving that the sugar-cane grows better than in Louisiana, attaining the height of twenty feet, and that it will yield for ten or twelve years without transplanting or cultivation. It is not, however, so sweet or juicy as the Southern cane. Some of the colonists are making tapioca and cashaça or Brazilian rum; others have gone into the pork business; while one, Dr. Jones, expects to realize a fortune burning lime. Here we met the rebel ex-General Dobbins, who had been prospecting on the Tapajos River, but had not yet located himself.
Below Santarem the Amazon vastly increases in width; at one point the southern shore was invisible from the steamer. The waves often run very high. At 10A.M., eight hours from Santarem, we entered the romantic port of Monte Alégre. The road from the river to the village, just visible inland, runs through a pretty dell. Back of the village, beyond a low, swampy flat, rise the table-topped blue hills of Almeyrim. It was an exhilarating sight and a great relief to gaze upon a mountain range from three hundred to one thousand feet high, the greatest elevations along the Amazon east of the Andes. Agassiz considers these singular mountains the remnants of a plain which once filled the whole valley of the Amazon; but Bates believes them to be the southern terminus of the high land of Guiana. Their geological constitution—a pebbly sandstone—favors the Professor's theory. The range extends ninety miles along the north bank of the river, the western limit at Monte Alégre bearing the local name of Serra Ereré. Mount Agassiz, at Obidos, is a spur of the same table-land. The Amazon is here about five miles wide, the southern shore being low, uninhabited, and covered with coarse grass. Five schooners were anchored in the harbor of Monte Alégre, a sign of considerable trade forthe Amazon. The place exports cattle, cacao, rubber, and fish.
In four hours we reached Prayinha, a dilapidated village of forty houses, situated on a low, sandy beach. The chief occupation is the manufacture of turtle-oil. In ten hours more we were taking in wood at Porto do Moz, situated just within the mouth of the Xingú, the last great tributary to the Amazon. Dismal was our farewell sail on the great river. With the highlands came foul weather. We were treated to frequent and furious showers, accompanied by a violent wind, and the atmosphere was filled with smoke caused by numerous fires in the forest. Where the Xingú comes in, the Amazon is ten miles wide, but it is soon divided by a series of islands, the first of which is Grand Island. Twenty miles below Porto do Moz is Gurupá, where we took in rubber. The village, nearly as inanimate as Pompeii, consists of one street, half deserted, built on an isolated site. Forty miles below Gurupá we left the Amazon proper, turning to the right down a narrow channel leading into the river Pará. The forest became more luxuriant, the palms especially increasing in number and beauty. At one place there was a forest of palms, a singularity, for trees of the same order are seldom associated. The forest, densely packed and gloomy, stands on very low, flat banks of hard river mud. Scarcely a sign of animal life was visible; but, as we progressed, dusky faces peered out of the woods; little shanties belonging to theseringeros, or rubber-makers, here and there broke the solitude, and occasionally a large group of half-clad natives greeted us from the shore. A labyrinth of channels connects the Amazon with the Pará; the steamers usually take the Tajapurú. This natural canal is of great depth, and from fifty to one hundred yards in width; so that, hemmed in by two green walls, eighty feet-high, we seemedto be sailing through a deep gorge; in some places it was so narrow it was nearly overarched by the foliage. One hundred and twenty-five miles from Gurupá is Breves, a busy little town on the southwest corner of the great island of Marajó. The inhabitants, mostly Portuguese, are engaged in the rubber trade; the Indians in the vicinity manufacture fancy earthen-ware and painted cuyas or calabashes.
Soon after leaving Breves we entered the Pará River, which suddenly begins with the enormous width of eight miles. It is, however, shallow, and contains numerous shoals and islands. It is properly an estuary, immense volumes of fresh water flowing into it from the south. The tides are felt through its entire length of one hundred and sixty miles, but the water is only slightly brackish. It has a dingy orange-brown color. A narrow blue line on our left, miles away, was all that was visible, at times, of the island of Marajó; and as we passed the broad mouth of the Tocantíns, we were struck with the magnificent sea-like expanse, for there was scarcely a point of mainland to be seen.
Pará.Pará.
At 4P.M., eighteen hours from Breves, we entered the peaceful bay of Goajara, and anchored in front of the city of Pará. Beautiful was the view of the city from the harbor in the rays of the declining sun. The towering spires and cupolas, the palatial government buildings, the long row of tall warehouses facing a fleet of schooners, ships, and steamers,and pretty white villas in the suburbs, nestling in luxuriant gardens, were to us, who had just come down the Andes from mediæval Quito, theultima thuleof civilization. We seemed to have stepped at once from the Amazon to New York or London. We might, indeed, sayne plus ultrain one respect—we had crossed the continent, and Pará was the terminus of our wanderings, theend of romantic adventures, of privations and perils. We were kindly met on the pier by Mr. James Henderson, an elderly Scotchman, whom a long residence in Pará, a bottomless fund of information, and a readiness to serve an Anglo-Saxon, have made an invaluable cicerone. We shot through the devious, narrow streets to the Hotel Diana, where we made our toilet, for our habiliments, too, had reached theirultima thule. As La Condamine said on his arrival at Quito: "Je me trouvai hors d'état de paroitre en public avec décence."
The same year which saw Shakspeare carried to his grave beside the Avon witnessed the founding of Pará, or, speaking more respectfully, of Santa Maria de Belém do Gram Pará. The city stands on a low elbow of land formed by the junction of the rivers Guamá and Pará, seventy-five miles from the ocean. The great forest comes close up to the suburbs; and, in fact, vegetation is so rapid the city fathers have a hard struggle to keep the jungle out of the streets. The river in front is twenty miles wide, but the vast expanse is broken by numerous islets. Ships of any size will float within, one hundred and fifty yards of the shore. All passengers and goods are landed by boats at the custom-house wharf. The city is regularly laid out, there are several public squares, and many of the streets, especially in the commercial part, are well paved. Magnificent avenues, lined with silk-cotton trees, cocoa-palms, and almonds, lead out to beautifulrocinhas, or country residences, of one story, but having spacious verandas. The President's house, built in the Italian style, whose marble staircase is a wonder to Brazil; the six large churches, including the cathedral, after patterns from Lisbon; the post-office, custom-house, and convent-looking warehouses on the mole—these are the most prominent buildings. The architecture is superior to that of Quito. The houses,generally two-storied, are tiled, plastered, and whitewashed or painted; the popular colors are red, yellow, and blue. A few have porcelain facing. The majority have elegant balconies and glass windows, but not all the old projecting lattice casements have disappeared. Some of the buildings bear the marks of the cannonading in the Revolution of 1835. Instead of bedrooms and beds, the largest apartments and verandahs have hooks in the wall for hammocks. A carpeted, cushioned room is seldom seen, and is out of place in the tropics. Coaches and gas are supplanting ox-carts and candles. There are two hotels, but scant accommodations for travelers. Beef is almost the only meat used; the fish are poor and dear; the oysters are horrible. Bananas, oranges, and coffee are the best native productions on the table.
The population of Pará is thirty-five thousand, or double what it was when Wallace and Bates entered it twenty years ago. It is the largest city on the largest river in the world, and the capital of a province ten times the size of New York State. The enterprising, wealthy class consists of Portuguese and pure Brazilians, with a few English, Germans, French, and North Americans. The multitude is an amalgamation of Portuguese, Indian, and Negro. The diversity of races, and the mingled dialects of the Amazon and Europe, make an attractive street scene. Sideby side we see the corpulent Brazilian planter, the swarthy Portuguese trader, the merry Negro porter, and the apathetic Indian boatman. Some of the more recent offspring are dressedà la Adambefore the fall; numbers wear only a shirt or skirt; the negro girls who go about the streets with trays of sweetmeats on their heads are loosely yet prettily dressed in pure white, with massive gilded chains and earrings; but the middle and upper classes generally follow Paris fashions. The mechanicarts are in the hands of free Negroes and Indians, mulattoes and mamelucos.[144]Commerce is carried on almost exclusively by PortugueseFruit Peddlers.Fruit Peddlers.and other foreigners. Dry-goods come chiefly from England and France; groceries from Portugal; flour and hardware from the United States. The principal exports are rubber, cacao, coffee,[145]sugar, cotton, Brazil nuts, sarsaparilla, vanilla, farina, copaiba, tobacco, rum, hides, fish, parrots, and monkeys.[146]Pará exceeds in the number of its indigenous commodities any other port in the world, but the trade at present is insignificant when we consider the vast extent and resources of the country. The city can never have a rival at the mouth of the Amazon, and is destined to become a great emporium. But Brazilian legislation stands in the way. Heavy import duties are charged—from 35 to 45 per cent.; and on the 1st of January, 1868, it was ordered that 15 per cent. must be paid in English gold. The consequence has been that gold has risen from 28 to 30 above par, creating an additional tax. Exportation is equally discouraging. There is a duty of nine per cent. to be paid at the custom-house, and sevenper cent. more at the consulado. But this is not the sum total. Those who live outside of the province of Pará, say above Obidos, must first pay an import of thirteen per cent. to get their produce into Pará. For example: up the river crude rubber can be bought for twenty-five cents a pound; the trader pays twenty-five cents an arroba (thirty-two pounds) for transportation to Pará from Santarem, exclusive of canoe hire and shipping; thirteen per cent. duty in entering Pará, ten per cent. to the commission merchant, and sixteen per cent. more as export tax; making a total loss on labor of about fifty per cent. Brazil abounds with the most valuable woods in the world, but is prevented from competing with other nations by this system of self-strangulation. In 1867 the import duty on timber was twelve per cent. Though situated on the edge of a boundless forest, Pará consumes large quantities of North American pine. There is not a grist-mill on the Amazon, and only two or three saw-mills. A dozen boards of red cedar (a very common timber) costs 60$000 per thousand (about thirty dollars) at Santarem. There is no duty on goods going to Peru. The current money, besides foreign gold, consists of copper coins and imperial treasury notes. The basis of calculation is the imaginaryrey, equivalent to half a mill. The coins in use are the vintem (twenty reys), answering to our cent, the half vintem, and double vintem. The currency has so fluctuated in value that many of the pieces have been restamped. Fifty vintems make amilrey, expressed thus: 1$000. This is the smallest paper issue. Unfortunately, the notes may suddenly fall below par. As a great many counterfeits made in Portugal are in circulation, the government recalls the issue which has been counterfeited, notifying holders, by the provincial papers, that all such bills must be exchanged for a new issue within six months. Those not brought in at the end of thatperiod lose ten per cent. of their value, and ten per cent. for each following month, until the value of the note isnil. The result has been that many persons trading up the river have lost heavily, and now demand hard money. Change is very scarce in Pará.
The province of Pará is governed by a president chosen at Rio, and every four years sends representatives to the Imperial Parliament. The Constitution of Brazil is very liberal; every householder, without distinction of race or color, has a vote, and may work his way up to high position. There are two drawbacks—the want of intelligence and virtue in the people, and the immense staff of officials employed to administer the government. There are also many formalities which are not only useless, but a hinderance to prosperity. Thus, the internal trade of a province carried on by Brazilian subjects is not exempt from the passport system. A foreigner finds as much trouble in getting his passporten règlein Pará as in Vienna. The religion of Pará is Romish, and not so tolerant as in Rio. We arrived duringfesta. (When did a traveler enter a Portuguese town on any other than a feast day?) That night was made hideous with rockets, fire-crackers, cannon, and bells. "Music, noise, and fireworks," says Wallace, "are the three essentials to please a Brazilian populace." The most celebrated shrine in Northern Brazil is Our Lady of Nazareth. The little chapel stands about a mile out of the city, and is now rebuilding for the third time. The image is a doll about the size of a girl ten years old, wearing a silver crown and a dress of blue silk glittering with golden stars. Hosts of miracles are attributed to Our Lady, and we were shown votive offerings and models of legs, arms, heads, etc., etc., the gratefulin memoriamof wonderful cures, besides a boat whose crew were saved by invoking the protection of Mary. The facilities foredication are improving. There are several seminaries in Pará, of which the chief is theLyceo da Capital. Too many youths, however, as in Quito, are satisfied with a little rhetoric and law. The city supports four newspapers.
Paráenses may well be proud of their delightful climate. Wallace says the thermometer ranges from 74° to 87°; our observation made the mean annual temperature 80.2°. The mean daily temperature does not vary more than two or three degrees. The climate is more equable than that of any other observed part of the New World.[147]The greatest heat is reached at two o'clock, but it is never so oppressive as in New York. The greater the heat, the stronger the sea-breeze; and in three hundred out of three hundred and sixty-five days, the air is farther cooled by an afternoon shower. The rainiest month is April; the dryest, October or November. Lying in the delta of a great river, in the middle of the tropics, and half surrounded by swamps, its salubrity is remarkable. We readily excuse the proverb, "Quem vai para Pará para" ("He who goes to Pará stops there"); and we might have made it good, had we not been tempted by the magnificent steamer "South America," which came up from Rio on the way to New York. On the moonlit night of the 7th of January, when the ice-king had thrown his white robes over the North, we turned our backs upon the glimmering lights of Pará, and noiselessly as a canoe glided down the great river. As the sun rose for the last time to us upon the land of perpetual verdure, our gallant ship was plowing the mottled waters on the edge of the ocean—mingled yellow patches of the Amazonand dark streaks from the Pará floating on the Atlantic green. Far behind us we could see the breakers dashing against the Braganza Banks; a moment after Cape Magoary dropped beneath the horizon, and with it South America vanished from our view.
The River Amazon.— Its Source and Magnitude.— Tributaries and Tints.— Volume and Current.— Rise and Fall.— Navigation.— Expeditions on the Great River.
Near the silver mines of Cerro Pasco, in the little Lake of Lauricocha, just below the limit of perpetual winter, rises the "King of Waters."[148]For the first five hundred miles it flows northerly, in a continuous series of cataracts and rapids, through a deep valley between the parallel Cordilleras of Peru. Upon reaching the frontier of Ecuador, it turns to the right, and runs easterly two thousand five hundred miles across the great equatorial plain of the continent.[149]No other river flows in the same latitude, and retains, therefore, the same climatic conditions for so great a distance. The breadth of the Amazon, also, is well proportioned to its extraordinary length. At Tabatinga, two thousand miles above its mouth, it is a mile and a half wide; at the entrance of the Madeira, it is three miles; below Santarem, it is ten; and if the Pará be considered a part of the great river, it fronts the Atlantic one hundred and eighty miles. Brazilians proudly call it the Mediterranean of the New World. Its vast expanse, presentingbelow Teffé magnificent reaches, with blank horizons, and forming a barrier between different species of animals; its system of back channels, joining the tributaries, and linking a series of lagunes too many ever to be named; its network of navigable waters stretching over one third of the continent; its oceanic fauna—porpoises and manatis, gulls and frigate-birds—remind the traveler of a great inland sea, with endless ramifications, rather than a river. The side-channels through the forest, called by the Indiansigarapés, or canoe-paths, are one of the characteristic featuresof the Amazon.[150]They often run to a great distance parallel to the great river, and intersecting the tributaries, so that one can go from Santarem a thousand miles up the Amazon without once entering it. These natural highways will be of immense advantage for inter-communication.
Igarapé, or Canoe-path.Igarapé, or Canoe-path.
But extraordinary as is this network of natural canals, the tributaries of the Amazon are still more wonderful. They are so numerous they appear on the map like a thousand ribbons streaming from a main mast, and many of the obscure affluents, though large as the Hudson, are unknown to geography. From three degrees north to twenty degrees south, every river that flows down the eastern slope of the Andes is a contributor—as though all the rivers between Mexico and Mount Hooker united their waters in the Mississippi. While the great river of the northern continent drains an area of one million two hundred thousand square miles, the Amazon (not including the Tocantíns) is spread over a million more, or over a surface equal to two thirds of all Europe. Let us journey around the grand trunk and take a glimpse of the main branches.
The first we meet in going up the left bank is the Rio Negro. It rises in the Sierra Tunuhy, an isolated mountain group in the llanos of Colombia, and enters the Amazon at Manáos, a thousand miles from the sea. The upper part, down to the parallel of one degree north, has a very rapid current; at San Gabriel are the first rapids in ascending; between San Gabriel and Barcellos the rate is not over two or three miles per hour; between Barcellos and Manáos it is a deep but sluggish river, and in the annual rise of the Amazon its waters are stagnant for several hundred milesup, or actually flow back. Its extreme length is twelve hundred miles, and its greatest breadth is at Barcellos, where it is twelve or fifteen miles. Excepting this middle section, the usual breadth of the Negro below the equatorial line is about one mile. It is joined to the Orinoco by the navigable Cassiquiari,[151]a natural canal three fourths of a mile wide, and a portage of only two hours divides the head of its tributary, the Branco, from the Essequibo of Guiana. The Negro yields to commerce coffee, cacao, farina, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, pitch, piassaba, and valuable woods. The commerce of Brazil with Venezuela by the Rio Negro amounted in 1867 to $22,000, of which $9000 was the value of imports. The principal villages above Manáos are San Miguel and Moroa (which contain about fifty dwellings each), Tireguin, Barcellos, Toma, San Carlos, Coana, San Gabriel, and Santa Isabel.
The next great affluent is the Japurá. It rises in the mountains of New Granada, and, flowing southeasterly a thousand miles, enters the Amazon opposite Ega, five hundred miles above Manáos. Its principal mouth is three hundred feet wide, but it has a host of distributing channels, the extremes of which are two hundred miles apart. Its current is only three quarters of a mile an hour, and it has been ascended by canoes five hundred miles. A natural canal like the Cassiquiari is said to connect it with the Orinoco. The products of the Japurá are sarsaparilla, copaiba, rubber, cacao, farina, Brazil nuts, moira-piránga—a hard, fine-grained wood of a rich, cherry-red color—and carajurú, a brilliant scarlet dye.
Parallel to the Japurá is the Putumayo or Issá. Its source is the Lake of San Pablo, at the foot of the volcanoof Pasto; its mouth, as given by Herndon, is half a mile broad, and its current two and three fourths miles an hour.
Farther west are the Napo and Pastassa, starting from the volcanoes of Quito. The former is nearly seven hundred miles long, navigable five hundred. The latter is an unnavigable torrent. One of its branches, the Topo, is one continued rapid; "of those who have fallen into it, only one has come out alive." Another, the Patate, rises near Iliniza, runs through the plain to a little south of Cotopaxi, receives all streams flowing from the eastern side of the western Cordillera from Iliniza to Chimborazo, and unites near Tunguragua with the Chambo, which rises near Sangaí. Castelnau and Bates saw pumice floating on the Amazon; it was probably brought from Cotopaxi by the Pastassa.
Crossing the Marañon, and going eastward, we first pass the Huallaga, a rapid river of the size of the Cumberland, coming down the Peruvian Andes from an altitude of eight thousand six hundred feet, and entering the great river nearly opposite the Pastassa. Its mouth is a mile wide, and for a hundred miles up its average depth is three fathoms. In July, August, and September the steamers are not able to ascend to Yurimaguas. Canoe navigation begins at Tinga Maria, three hundred miles from Lima. The fertile plain through which the river flows is very attractive to an agriculturist. Cotton is gathered six months after sowing, and rice in five months. At Tarapoto a large amount of cotton-cloth is woven for export.
The next great tributary from the south is the Ucayali. This magnificent stream originates near ancient Cuzco, and has a fall of .87 of a foot per mile, and a length nearly equal to that of the Negro. For two hundred and fifty miles above its mouth it averages half a mile in width, and has a current of three miles an hour. At Sarayacu it istwenty feet deep. The Ucayali is navigable for at least seven hundred miles. The "Morona," a steamer of five hundred tons, has been up to the entrance of the Pachitéa in the dry season, a distance of six hundred miles, and in the wet season ascended that branch to Mayro. A small Peruvian steamer has recently ascended the Tambo to within sixty miles of Fort Ramon, or seven hundred and seventy-three miles from Nauta.
Leaving the Ucayali, we pass by six rivers rising in the unknown lands of Northern Bolivia: the Javarí, navigable by steam for two hundred and fifty miles; the sluggish Jutahí, half a mile broad and four hundred miles long; the Juruá, four times the size of our Connecticut, and navigable nearly its entire length; the unhealthy, little-known Teffé and Coary; and the Purus, a deep, slow river, over a thousand miles long, and open to navigation half way to its source. Soldan and Pinto claim to have ascended the Javarí, in a steamer, about one thousand miles, and it is said Chandlers went up the Purus one thousand eight hundred miles. The Teffé is narrow, with a strong current. Of all these six rivers, the Purus is the most important. It is probably the Amaru-mayu, or "serpent-river," of the Incas, and its affluents enjoy the privilege of draining the waters of those beautiful Andes which formed the eastern boundary of the empire of Manco Capac, and fertilizing the romantic valley of Paucar-tambo, or "Inn of the Flowery Meadow." The banks of this noble stream are now held by the untamable Chunchos; but the steam-whistle will accomplish what the rifle can not. The Purus communicates with the Madeira, proving the absence of rapids and of intervening mountains.
Sixty miles below the confluence of the Negro, the mighty Madeira, the largest tributary of the Amazon, blends its milky waters with the turbid king of rivers.It is about two thousand miles in length; one branch, the Beni, rising near Lake Titicaca, drains the fertile valleys of Yungus and Apollo, rich in cinchona, chocolate, and gold; the Marmoré springs from the vicinity of Chuquisaca, within fifteen miles of a source of the Paraguay, traversing the territory of the brave and intelligent Moxos; while the Itinez washes down the gold and diamonds of Matto Grosso. Were it not for the cascade four hundred and eighty miles from its mouth, large vessels might sail from the Amazon into the very heart of Bolivia. When full, it has a three-mile current, and at its junction with the Amazon it is two miles wide and sixty-six feet deep. Five hundred miles from its mouth it is a mile wide and one hundred feet deep. It contains numerous islands, and runs in a comparatively straight course. It received its name from the vast quantity of drift-wood often seen floating down. The value of Brazilian commerce with Bolivia by the Madeira was, in 1867, $43,000.[152]
At Santarem the Amazon receives another great tributary, the Tapajos (or Rio Preto, as the Portuguese call it), a thousand miles long, and, for the last eighty miles, from four to twelve miles in breadth. It rises amid the glittering mines of Matto Grosso, only twenty miles from the headwaters of the Rio Plata, and flows rapidly down through a magnificent hilly country to the last cataract, which is one hundred and sixty miles above Santarem, and is the end of navigation to sailing vessels. Thence to the Amazon it has little current and no great depth. From Santarem to Diamantino it is about twenty-six days' travel. Large quantities of sarsaparilla, rubber, tonka beans, mandioca, and guarana are brought down this river.
Parallel to the Tapajos, and about two hundred miles distant, flows the Xingú. It rises in the heart of the empire, has the length of the Ohio and Monongahela, and can be navigated one hundred and fifty miles. This is the last great tributary of the Amazon proper; if, however, we consider the Pará as only one of the outlets of the great river, we may then add to the list the grand Tocantíns.[153]This splendid river has its source in the rich province of Minas (the source, also, of the San Francisco and Uruguay), not six hundred miles from Rio Janeiro—a region possessing the finest climate in Brazil, and yielding diamonds and rubies, the sapphire, topaz and opal, gold, silver, and petroleum. The Tocantíns is sixteen hundred miles long, and ten miles broad at its mouth; but, unfortunately, rapids commence one hundred and twenty miles above Cametá. The Araguaia, its main branch, is, according to Castelnau, one mile wide, with a current of three fourths of a mile an hour.
Here are six tributaries, all of them superior to any river in Europe, outside of Russia, save the Danube, and ten times greater than any stream on the west slope of theAndes. While the Arkansas joins the Mississippi four hundred miles above New Orleans, the Madeira, of equal length, enters the Amazon nine hundred miles from Pará. But, vast as are these tributary streams, they seem to make no impression on the Amazon; they are lost like brooks in the ocean. Our ideas of the magnitude of the great river are wonderfully increased when we see the Madeira coming down two thousand miles, yet its enormous contribution imperceptible half way across the giant river; or the dark waters of the Negro creeping along the shore, and becoming undistinguishable five miles from its mouth. Though the Amazon carries a larger amount of sediment than any other river, it has no true delta, the archipelago in its mouth (for, like our own St. Lawrence, it has its Bay of a Thousand Isles) not being an alluvial formation, but having a rocky base. The great island of Marajó, in physical configuration, resembles the mainland of Guiana. The deltoid outlet is confined to the tributaries, nearly all of them, like "the disembogning Nile," emptying themselves by innumerable embouchures. To several tributaries the Amazon gives water before it receives their tribute. Thus, by ascending the Negro sixty miles, we have the singular spectacle of water pouring in from the Amazon through the Guariba Channel.
The waters of this great river system are of divers tints. The Amazon, as it leaps from the Andes, and as far down as the Ucayali, is blue, passing into a clear olive-green; likewise the Pastassa, Huallaga, Tapajos, Xingú, and Tocantíns. Below the Ucayali it is of a pale, yellowish olive; the Madeira,[154]Purus, Juruá, Jutahí, Javarí, Ucayali, Napo, Iça, and Japurá are of similar color. The Negro, Coary, and Teffé are black. Humboldt observes that "a cooleratmosphere, fewer musquitoes, greater salubrity, and absence of crocodiles, as also of fish, mark the region of these black rivers." This is not altogether true. The Amazon throughout is healthy, being swept by the trade-winds. The branches, which are not so constantly refreshed by the ocean breezes, are occasionally malarious; the "white-water" tributaries, except when they have a slack current in the dry season, have the best reputation, while intermittent fevers are nearly confined to the dark-colored streams. Much of the sickness on these tropical waters, however, is due to exposure and want of proper food rather than to the climate. The river system of South America will favorably compare, in point of salubrity, with the river system of its continental neighbor.[155]
As we might expect, the volume of the Amazon is beyond all parallel. Half a million cubic feet of water pour through the narrows of Obidos every second, and fresh water may be taken up from the Atlantic far out of sight of land. The fall of the main easterly trunk of the Amazon is about six and a half inches per mile, equivalent to a slope of 21'—the same as that of the Nile, and one third that of the Mississippi. Below Jaen there are thirty cataracts and rapids; at the Pongo de Manseriche, at the altitude of 1164 feet (according to Humboldt), it bids adieu to mountain scenery. Between Tabatinga and the ocean the average current is three miles an hour. It diminishes toward Pará, and is every where at a minimum in the dry season; but it always has the "swing" of an ocean current.
Though not so rapid as the Mississippi, the Amazon is deeper. There are seven fathoms of water at Nauta (2200 miles from the Atlantic), eleven at Tabatinga, and twenty-seven on the average below Mandáos.[156]
The Amazon and its branches are subject to an annual rise of great regularity. It does not take place simultaneously over the whole river, but there is a succession of freshets. At the foot of the Andes the rise commences in January; at Ega it begins about the end of February. Coinciding with this contribution from the west, the October rains on the highlands of Bolivia and Brazil swell the southern tributaries, whose accumulated floods reach the main stream in February; and the latter, unable to discharge the avalanche of waters, inundates a vast area, and even crowds up the northern tributaries. As the Madeira, Tapajos, and Purus subside, the Negro, fed by the spring rains in Guiana and Venezuela, presses downward till the central stream rolls back the now sluggish affluents from the south. There is, therefore, a rhythmical correspondence in the rise and fall of the arms of the Amazon, so that this great fresh-water sea sways alternately north and south; while the onward swell in the grand trunk is a progressive undulation eastward. As the Cambridge Professor well says: "In this oceanic river the tidal action has an annual instead of a daily ebb and flow; it obeys a larger orb, and is ruled by the sun and not the moon." As the southern affluents have the greatest volume, the Amazon receives its largest accession after the sun has been in the southern hemisphere. The rise is gradual, increasing to one foot per day. One lowland after another sinks beneath the flood; the forest stands up to its middle in the water, andshady dells are transformed into navigable creeks.[157]Swarms of turtles leave the river for the inland lakes; flocks of wading birds migrate to the banks of the Negro and Orinoco to enjoy the cloudless sky of the dry season; alligators swim where a short time before the jaguar lay in wait for the tapir; and the natives, unable to fish, huddle in their villages to spend the "winter of their discontent." The Lower Amazon is at its minimum in September or October. The rise above this lowest level is between seven and eight fathoms. If we consider the average width of the Amazon two miles, we shall have a surface of at least five thousand square miles raised fifty feet by the inundation. An extraordinary freshet is expected every sixth year.
The Atlantic tide is perceptible at Obidos, four hundred and fifty miles above Pará, and Bates observed it up the Tapajos, five hundred and thirty miles distant. The tide, however, does not flow up; there is only a rising and falling of the waters—the momentary check of the great river in its conflict with the ocean. The "bore," orpiroróco, is a colossal wave at spring tide, rising suddenly along the whole width of the Amazon to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and then collapsing with a frightful roar.
The Amazon presents an unparalleled extent of water communication. So many and far reaching are its tributaries, it touches every country on the continent except Chile and Patagonia. South America is well nigh quartered by its river system: the Amazon starts within sixty miles of the Pacific; the Tapajos and Madeira reach down to the La Plata; while the Negro mingles its waters with those of the Orinoco. The tributaries also communicate with each other by intersecting canals, so numerous that central Amazonia is truly a cluster of islands. Wagonsand railroads will be out of the question for ages hence in this aquatic basin. No other river runs in so deep a channel to so great a distance. For two thousand miles from its month there are not less than seven fathoms of water. Not a fall interrupts navigation on the main stream for two thousand five hundred miles; and it so happens that while the current is ever east (for even the ocean can not send up its tide against it), there is a constant trade-wind westward, so that navigation up or down has always something in its favor. As a general rule, the breeze is not so strong during the rise of the river. There are at least six thousand miles of navigation for large vessels. It was lately said that the Mississippi carries more vessels in a month, and the Yang-tse-Kiang in a day, than the Amazon all the year round. But this is no longer true. Steamers already ascend regularly to the port of Moyabamba, which is less than twenty days' travel from the Pacific coast. The Amazon was opened to the world September 7, 1867; and the time can not be far distant when the exhaustless wealth of the great valley—its timber, fruit, medicinal plants, gums, and dye-stuffs—will be emptied by this great highway into the commercial lap of the Atlantic; when crowded steamers will plow all these waters—yellow, black, and blue—and the sloths and alligators, monkeys and jaguars, toucans and turtles, will have a bad time of it.
Officially free to the world, the great river is, however, for the present practically closed to foreign shipping, as it is difficult to compete with the Brazilian steamers. For, by the contract which lasts till 1877, the company is allowed an annual subsidy of $4,000,000, which has since been increased by 250 milreys per voyage. In 1867 the steamers and sailing vessels on the Amazon were divided as follows, though it must be remembered that few of the foreign ships, excepting Portuguese, ascended beyond Pará:
The vessels carrying the stars and stripes exported from Pará to the value of 3,235,073$950, or eight times the amount carried by Brazilian craft, and 50,000 milreys more than England. While, therefore, the Imperial Company has the monopoly of trade on the Amazon, our ships distribute one third of the products to the world. The United States is the natural commercial partner with Brazil; for not only is New York the half-way house between Pará and Liverpool, but a chip thrown into the sea at the mouth of the Amazon will float close by Cape Hatteras. The official value of exports from Pará in 1867 was 9,926,912$557, or about five millions of dollars, an increase of one million over 1866.
The early expeditions into the Valley of the Amazon, in search of the "Gilded King," are the most romantic episodes in the history of Spanish discovery. To the wild wanderings of these worshipers of gold succeeded the more earnest explorations of the Jesuits, those pioneers of geographical knowledge. Pinzon discovered the mouth of the river in 1500; but Orellana, who came down the Napo in 1541, was the first to navigate its waters. Twenty years later Aguirre descended from Cuzco; in 1637, Texeira ascended to Quito by the Napo; Cabrera descended from Peru in 1639; Juan de Palacios by the Napo in 1725; La Condamine from Jaen in 1744, and Madame Godin by the Pastassa in 1769. The principal travelers who preceded us in crossing the continent this century were Mawe (1828), Pœppig (1831), Smyth (1834), Von Tschudi (1845),Castelnau (1846), Herndon and Gibbon (1851), and Marcoy (1867), who came down through Peru, and a Spanish commission (Almagro, Spada, Martinez, and Isern), who made the Napo transit in 1865. To Spix and Martius (1820), Bates and Wallace (1848-1857), Azevedo and Pinto (1862-1864), and Agassiz (1865), the world is indebted for the most scientific surveys of the river in Brazil.
Such is the Amazon, the mightiest river in the world, rising amid the loftiest volcanoes on the globe, and flowing through a forest unparalleled in extent. "It only wants (wrote Father Acuña), in order to surpass the Ganges, Euphrates, and the Nile in felicity, that its source should be in Paradise." As if one name were not sufficient for its grandeur, it has three appellations: Marañon, Solimoens, and Amazon; the first applied to the part in Peru, the second to the portion between Tabatinga and Manáos, and the third to all below the Rio Negro.[158]We have no proper conception of the vast dimensions of the thousand-armed river till we sail for weeks over its broad bosom,beholding it sweeping disdainfully by the great Madeira as if its contribution was of no account, discharging into the sea one hundred thousand cubic feet of water per second more than our Mississippi, rolling its turbid waves thousands of miles exactly as it pleases,—plowing a new channel every year, with tributaries twenty miles wide, and an island in its mouth twice the size of Massachusetts.
The Valley of the Amazon.— Its Physical Geography.— Geology.— Climate.— Vegetation.
From the Atlantic shore to the foot of the Andes, and from the Orinoco to the Paraguay, stretches the great Valley of the Amazon. In this vast area the United States might be packed without touching its boundaries. It could contain the basins of the Mississippi, the Danube, the Nile, and the Hoang-Ho. It is girt on three sides by a wall of mountains: on the north are the highlands of Guiana and Venezuela; on the west stand the Andes; on the south rise the table-lands of Matto Grosso. The valley begins at such an altitude, that on the western edge vegetation differs as much from the vegetation at Pará, though in the same latitude, as the flora of Canada from the flora of the West Indies.
The greater part of the region drained by the Amazon, however, is not a valley proper, but an extensive plain. From the mouth of the Napo to the ocean, a distance of eighteen hundred miles in a straight line, the slope is one foot in five miles.[159]At Coca, on the Napo, the altitude is 850 feet, according to our observations; at Tinga Maria. on the Huallaga, it is 2200 according to Herndon; at the junction of the Negro with the Cassiquiari, it is 400 according to Wallace; at the mouth of the Marmoré, it is 800 according to Gibbon; at the Pongo de Manseriche, belowall rapids, it is 1160 according to Humboldt; and at the junction of Araguaia with the Tocantíns, it is 200 according to Castelnau. These barometrical measurements represent the basin of the Amazon as a shallow trough lying parallel to the equator, the southern side having double the inclination of the northern, and the whole gently sloping eastward. Farthermore, the channel of the great river is not in the centre of the basin, but lies to the north of it: thus, the hills of Almeyrim rise directly from the river, while the first falls on the Tocantíns, Xingú, and Tapajos are nearly two hundred miles above their mouths; the rapids of San Gabriel, on the Negro, are one hundred and seventy-five miles from the Amazon, while the first obstruction to the navigation of the Madeira is a hundred miles farther from the great river.
Of the creation of this valley we have already spoken. No region on the face of the globe of equal extent has such a monotonous geology. Around the rim of the basin are the outcroppings of a cretaceous deposit; this rests on the hidden mezozoic and palæozoic strata which form the ribs of the Andes. Above it, covering the whole basin from New Granada to the Argentine Republic,[160]are the following formations: first, a stratified accumulation of sand; second, a series of laminated clays, of divers colors, without a pebble; third, a fine, compact sandstone; fourth, a coarse, porous sandstone, so ferruginous as to resemble bog iron-ore. This last was, originally, a thousand feet in thickness, but was worn down,perhaps, in some sudden escape of thepent-up waters of the valley. The table-topped hills of Almeyrim are almost the sole relics.[161]Finally, over the undulating surface of the denuded sandstone an ochraceous, unstratified sandy clay was deposited.
It is a question to what period this great accumulation is to be assigned. Humboldt called it "Old Red Sandstone;" Martius pronounced it "New Red;" Agassiz says "Drift"—the glacial deposit brought down from the Andes and worked over by the melting of the ice which transported it.[162]The Professor farther declares that "these deposits are fresh-water deposits; they show no sign of a marine origin; no sea-shells nor remains of any marine animal have as yet been found throughout their whole extent; tertiary deposits have never been observed in any part of the Amazonian basin." This was true up to 1867. Neither Bates, Wallace, nor Agassiz found any marine fossil on the banks of the great river. But there is danger in building a theory on negative evidence. These explorers ascended no farther than Tabatinga. Two hundred miles west of that fort is the little Peruvian village of Pebas, at the confluence of the Ambiyacu. We came down the Napo and Marañon, and stopped at this place. Here we discovered a fossiliferous bed intercalated between the variegated clays so peculiar to the Amazon.It was crowded with marine tertiary shells!This was Pebasvs. Cambridge. It was unmistakable proof that the formation was not drift, but tertiary; not of fresh, but salt water origin. The species,as determined by W.M. Gabb, Esq., of Philadelphia, are:Neritina pupa, Turbonilla minuscula,Mesalia Ortoni,Tellina Amazonenis,Pachydon obliqua, andP. tenua.[163]All of these are new forms excepting the first, and the last is a new genus. It is a singular fact that theNeritinais now living in the West India waters, and the species found at Pebas retains its peculiar markings. So that we have some ground for the supposition that not many years ago there was a connection between the Caribbean Sea and the Upper Amazon; in other words, that Guiana has only very lately ceased to be an island. There is no mountain range on the water-shed between the Orinoco and the Negro and Japurá, but the three rivers are linked by natural canals.[164]Interstratified with the clay deposit are seams of a highly bituminous lignite; we traced it from near the mouth of the Curaray on the Rio Napo to Loreto on the Marañon, a distance of about four hundred miles. It occurs also at Iquitos. This is farther testimony against the glacial theory of the formation of the Amazonian Valley. The paucity of shells in such a vast deposit is not astonishing. It is as remarkable in the similar accumulation of reddish argillaceous earth, called "Pampean mud," which overspreads the Rio Plata region.[165]Some of the Pampa shells, like those at Pebas, are proper to brackish water, and occur only on the highest banks. The Pampean formation is believed by Mr. Darwin to be an estuary or delta deposit. We will mention, in this connection, that silicified wood is found at thehead waters of the Napo; the Indians use it instead of flint (which does not occur there) in striking a light. Darwin found silicified trees on the same slope of the Andes as the Uspallata Pass.
The climatology of the Valley of the Amazon is as simple as its physical geography. There is no circle of the seasons as with us—nature moves in a straight line. The daily order of the weather is uniform for months. There is very little difference between the dry and hot seasons; the former, lasting from July to December, is varied with showers, and the latter, from January to June, with sunny days, while the daily temperature is the same within two or three degrees throughout the year. On the water-shed between the Orinoco and Negro it rains throughout the year, but most water falls between May and November, the coolest season in that region. On the Middle Negro the wet season extends from June 1st to December 1st, and is the most sultry time.
Comparatively few insects, birds, or beasts are to be seen in summer; but it is the harvest-time of the inhabitants, who spend the glorious weather rambling over the plaias and beaches, fishing and turtle-hunting. The middle of September is the midsummer of the valley. The rainy season, or winter, is ushered in by violent thunder-storms from the west. It is then that the woods are eloquent with buzzing insects, shrill cicadas, screaming parrots, chattering monkeys, and roaring jaguars. The greatest activity of animal and vegetable life is in June and July. The heaviest rains fall in April, May, and June. Scarcely ever is there a continuous rain for twenty-four hours. Castelnau witnessed at Pebas a fall of not less than thirty inches in a single storm. The greatest amount noticed in New York during the whole month of September was 12.2 inches. The humidity of the atmosphere, as likewise the luxuriance of vegetation andthe abundance and beauty of animal forms, increases from the Atlantic to the Andes. At the foot of the Andes, Pœppig found that the most refined sugar in a few days dissolved into sirup, and the best gunpowder became liquid even when inclosed in canisters. So we found the Napo steaming with vapor. Fogs, however, are rarely seen on the Amazon.
The animals and plants are not all simultaneously affected by the change of seasons. The trees retain their verdure through the dryveraō, and have no set time for renewing their foliage. There are a few trees, like Mongruba, which drop their leaves at particular seasons; but they are so few in number they create the impression of a few dead leaves in a thick-growing forest. Leaves are falling and flowers drooping all the year round. Each species, and, in some cases, each individual, has its own particular autumn and spring. There is no hibernation nor æstivation (except by land shells); birds have not one uniform time for nidification; and moulting extends from February to May.
Amazonia, though equatorially situated, has a temperate climate. It is cooler than Guinea or Guiana. This is owing to the constant evaporation from so much submerged land, and the ceaseless trade winds. The mean annual temperature of the air is about 81°.[166]The nights are always cool. There are no sudden changes, and no fiery "dog days." Venereal and cutaneous affections are found among the people; but they spring from an irregular life. A traveler on the slow black tributaries may take the tertiana, but only after weeks of exposure. Yellow fever and cholera seldom ascend the river above Pará; and on the Middle Amazon there are neither endemics nor epidemics,though the trades are feebly felt there, and the air is stagnant and sultry. According to Bates, swampy and weedy places on the Amazon are generally more healthy than dry ones. Whatever exceptions be taken to the branches, the main river is certainly as healthy as the Mississippi: the rapid current of the water and the continual movement of the air maintaining its salubrity. The few English residents (Messrs. Hislop, Jeffreys, and Hauxwell), who have lived here thirty or forty years, are as fresh and florid as if they had never left their native country. The native women preserve their beauty until late in life. Great is the contrast between the gloomy winters and dusty summers, the chilly springs and frosty autumns of the temperate zone, and the perennial beauty of the equator! No traveler on the Amazon would exchange what Wallace calls "the magic half-hour after sunset" for the long gray twilight of the north. "The man accustomed to this climate (wrote Herndon) is ever unwilling to give it up for a more bracing one."
The mineral kingdom is represented only by sand, clay, and loam. The solid rock (except the sandstone already mentioned) begins above the falls on the tributaries. The precious gems and metals are confined to the still higher lands of Goyaz, Matto Grosso, and the slopes of the Andes. The soil on the Lower Amazon is sandy; on the Solimoens and Marañon it is a stiff loam or vegetable mould, in many places twenty feet deep.
Both in botany and zoology, South America is a natural and strongly-marked division, quite as distinct from North America as from the Old World; and as there are no transverse barriers, there is a remarkable unity in the character of the vegetation. No spot on the globe contains so much vegetable matter as the Valley of the Amazon. From the grassy steppes of Venezuela to the treeless Pampas of BuenosAyres, expands a sea of verdure, in which we may draw a circle of eleven hundred miles in diameter, which shall include an ever green, unbroken forest. There is a most bewildering diversity of grand and beautiful trees—a wild, unconquered race of vegetable giants, draped, festooned, corded, matted, and ribboned with climbing and creeping plants, woody and succulent, in endless variety. The exuberance of nature displayed in these million square acres of tangled, impenetrable forest offers a bar to civilization nearly as great as its sterility in the African deserts. Amachetais a necessary predecessor: the moment you land (and it is often difficult to get a footing on the bank), you are confronted by a wall of vegetation. Lithe lianas, starred with flowers, coil up the stately trees, and then hang down like strung jewels; they can be counted only by myriads, yet they are mere superfluities. The dense dome of green overhead is supported by crowded columns, often branchless for eighty feet. The reckless competition among both small and great adds to the solemnity and gloom of a tropical forest. Individual struggles with individual, and species with species, to monopolize the air, light, and soil. In the effort to spread their roots, some of the weaker sort, unable to find a footing, climb a powerful neighbor, and let their roots dangle in the air; while many a full-grown tree has been lifted up, as it were, in the strife, and now stands on the ends of its stilt-like roots, so that a man may walk upright between the roots and under the trunk.[167]
The mass of the forest on the banks of the great river is composed of palms (about thirty species[168]), leguminous orpod-bearing trees, colossal nut-trees, broad-leaved Musaceæ or bananas, and giant grasses. The most prominent palms are the architectural Pupunha, or "peach-palm," with spiny stems, drooping, deep green leaves, and bunches of mealy, nutritious fruit; the slender Assaï, with a graceful head of delicate green plumes; the Ubussú, with mammoth, undivided fronds; the stiff, serrated-leaved Bussú, and gigantic Mirití. One of the noblest trees of the forest is the Massaranduba, or "cow-tree" (Brosimum galactodendron), often rising one hundred and fifty feet. It is a hard, fine-grained, durable timber, and has a red bark, and leathery, fig-like foliage. The milk has the consistency of cream, and may be used for tea, coffee, or custards. It hardens by exposure, so as to resemble gutta-percha. Another interesting tree, and one which yields the chief article of export, is the Caucho, or India-rubber tree[169](Siphonia Brasiliensis), growing in the lowlands of the Amazon for eighteen hundred miles above Pará. It has an erect, tall trunk, from forty to eighty feet high, a smooth, gray bark, and thick, glossy leaves. The milk resembles thick, yellow cream, and is colored by a dense smoke obtained by burning palm-nuts. It is gathered between August and December. A man can collect six pounds a day, though this is rarely done. It is frequently adulterated with sand. The tree belongs to the same apetalous family as our castor-oil and the mandioca; while the tree which furnishes the caoutchouc of the East Indies and Africa is a species of Ficus, and yields an inferior article to the rubber of America. Other characteristic trees are the Mongruba, one of the few which shed their foliagebefore the new leaf-buds expand; the giant Samaüma, or silk-cotton tree (calledhuimbain Peru); the Calabash, orcuieira, whose gourd-like fruit furnishes the cups used throughout the Amazon; the Itauba, or stone-wood, furnishing ship-timber as durable as teak; the red and white Cedar, used for canoes (not coniferous like the northern evergreen, but allied to the mahogany); the Jacarandá, or rose-wood, resembling our locust; Palo de sangre, one of the most valuable woods on the river; Huacapú, a very common timber; Capirona, used as fuel on the steamers; and Tauarí, a heavy, close-grained wood, the bark of which splits into thin leaves, much used in making cigarettes. The Piassaba, a palm yielding a fibre extensively manufactured into cables and ropes, and exported to foreign countries for brushes and brooms, being singularly elastic, strong, and more durable than hemp; and the Moira-pinima, or "tortoise-shell wood," the most beautiful wood in all Amazonia, if not in the world, grow on the Upper Rio Negro. A small willow represents the great catkin family.
The valley is as remarkable for the abundance, variety, and value of its timber as for any thing else. Within an area of half a mile square, Agassiz counted one hundred and seventeen different kinds of woods, many of them eminently fitted, by their hardness, tints, and beautiful grain, for the finest cabinet-work. Enough palo de sangre or moira-pinima is doubtless wasted annually to veneer all the palaces of Europe.
While most of our fruits belong to the rose family, those of the Amazon come from the myrtle tribe. The delicious flavor, for which our fruits are indebted to centuries of cultivation, is wanting in many of the torrid productions. We prefer the sweetness of Pomona in temperate climes to her savage beauty in the sunny south. It is a curious fact, noticed by Herndon, that nearly all the valuable fruits of the valley are inclosed in hard shells or acidpulps. They also reach a larger size in advancing westward. The common Brazil nut is the product of one of the tallest trees in the forest (Bertholletia excelsa). The fruit is a hard, round shell, resembling a common ball, which contains from twenty to twenty-four nuts. Eighteen months are required for the bud to reach maturity. This tree, says Humboldt, offers the most remarkable example of high organic development. Akin to it is the Sapucaya or "chickens' nuts" (Lecythis sapucaya), whose capsule has a natural lid, and is called "monkey's drinking-cup." The nuts, about a dozen in number, are of irregular shape and much richer than the preceding. But they do not find their way to market, because they drop out of the capsule as soon as ripe, and are devoured by peccaries and monkeys. The most luscious fruit on the Amazon is the atta of Santarem. It has the color, taste, and size of the chirimoya; but the rind, which incloses a rich, custardly pulp, frosted with sugar, is scaled. Next in rank are the melting pine-apples of Pará, and the golden papayas, fully equal to those on the western coast. This is the original home of the cacao. It grows abundantly in the forests of the upper river, and particularly on the banks of the Madeira. The wild nut is smaller but more oily than the cultivated. The Amazon is destined to supply the world with the bulk of chocolate. The aromatic tonka beans (Cumarú) used in flavoring snuff, and the Brazilian nutmegs (Puxiri), inferior to the Ceylon, grow on lofty trees on the Negro and Lower Amazon. The Guaraná beans are the seeds of a trailing plant; from these the Mauhés prepare the great medicine, on the Amazon, for diarrhœa and intermittent fevers. Its active principle, caffeine, is more abundant than in any other substance, amounting to 5.07 per cent.; while black tea contains only 2.13. Coffee, rice, tobacco, and sugar-cane are grown to a limited extent. Rio Negro coffee,if put into the market, would probably eclipse that of Ceará, the best Brazilian. Wild rice grows abundantly on the banks of the rivers and lakes. The cultivated grain is said to yield forty fold. Most of the tobacco comes down from the Marañon and Madeira. It is put up in slender rolls from three to six feet long, tapering at each end, and wound with palm fibre. The sugar-cane is an exotic from Southeastern Asia, but grows well. The first sugar made in the New World was by the Dutch in the island of St. Thomas, 1610. Farina is the principal farinaceous production of Brazil. The mandioca or cassava (Manihot utilissima) from which it is made is supposed to be indigenous, though it is not found wild. It does not grow at a higher altitude than 2000 feet. Life and death are blended in the plant, yet every part is useful. The cattle eat the leaves and stalks, while the roots are ground into pulp, which, when pressed and baked, forms farina, the bread of all classes. The juice is a deadly poison: thirty-five drops were sufficient to kill, in six minutes, a negro convicted of murder; but it deposits a fine sediment of pure starch that is the well-known tapioca; and the juice, when fermented and boiled, forms a drink. On the upper waters grow the celebrated coca, a shrub with small, light-green leaves, having a bitter, aromatic taste. The powdered leaves, mixed with lime, formypadú. This is to Peruvians what opium is to the Turk, betel to the Malay, and tobacco to the Yankee. Thirty million pounds are annually consumed in South America. It is not, however, an opiate, but a powerful stimulant. With it the Indian will perform prodigies of labor, traveling days without fatigue or food. Von Tschudi considers its moderate consumption wholesome, and instances the fact that one coca-chewer attained the good old age of one hundred and thirty years; but when used to excess it leads to idiocy. Thesigns of intemperance are an uncertain step, sallow complexion, black-rimmed, deeply-sunken eyes, trembling lips, incoherent speech, and stolid apathy. Coca played an important part in the religious rights of the Incas, and divine honors were paid to it. Even to-day the miners of Peru throw a quid of coca against the hard veins of ore, affirming that it renders them more easily worked; and the Indians sometimes put coca in the mouth of the dead to insure them a welcome in the other world. The alkaloid cocaïne was discovered by Wöhler.
Flowers are nearly confined to the edges of the dense forest, the banks of the rivers and lagunes. There are a greater number of species under the equator, but we have brighter colors in the temperate zone. "There is grandeur and sublimity in the tropical forest (wrote Wallace, after four years of observation), but little of beauty or brilliancy of color." Perhaps the finest example of inflorescence in the world is seen in theVictoria Regia, the magnificent water-lily discovered by Schömberg in 1837. It inhabits the tranquil waters of the shallow lakes which border the Amazon. The leaves are from fifteen to eighteen feet in circumference, and will bear up a child twelve years old; the upper part is dark, glossy green, the under side violet or crimson. The flowers are a foot in diameter, at first pure white, passing, in twenty-four hours, through successive hues from rose to bright red. This queen of water-plants was dedicated to the Queen whose empire is never at once shrouded in night.