Chapter X: The Upper Amazons—voyage to Ega (1)

Departure from Barra — First Day and Night on the Upper Amazons — Desolate Appearance of River in the Flood Season — Cucáma 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 — 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, in a 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 Pará 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 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 Motúca, 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 whirring 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, 900 or 1000 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 Pöppig 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 mold, which the 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 Pará 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 the mouth of the Rio Negro.

On the 28th we passed the mouth of Ariauü, 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 Manacápurú, situated on a high, rocky bank. Many citizens of Barra have _sitios_, or country-houses, in this place, although it is eighty miles distant from the town by the nearest road. Beyond Manacápurú 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 Manacápurú, 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, 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 on board. Our crew was composed of ten Indians of the Cucáma nation, whose native country is a portion of the borders of the upper river in the neighbourhood of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucámas speak the Tupí 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 canoemen 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 Cucámas 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 is often paid in goods charged one hundred per cent above Pará 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 in 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 _espia_, or oars, until almost midnight; in the third and fourth quarters they were allowed to go to sleep soon after sunset, and were 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 _espia_, trotting with bare feet on the sloppy deck in Indian file to the tune of some wild boatman’s chorus. We had a favorable wind for only two days out of the thirty-five, by which we made about forty miles, the rest of our long journey was accomplished literally by pulling our way from tree to tree. When we encountered a _remanso_ near the shore, we got along very pleasantly for a few miles by rowing: but this was a rare occurrence. During leisure hours the Indians employed themselves in sewing. Vicente was a good hand at cutting out shirts and trousers, and acted as master tailor to the whole party, each of whom had a thick steel thimble and a stock of needles and thread of his own. Vicente made for me a set of blue-check cotton shirts during the passage.

The goodness of these Indians, like that of most others amongst whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad qualities, than in the possession of good ones; in other words, it was negative rather than positive. Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament, coldness of desire and deadness of feeling, want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull, gloomy, quality and they seemed never to be stirred by the emotions:—love, pity, admiration, fear, wonder, joy, or enthusiasm. These are characteristics of the whole race. The good fellowship of our Cucámas seemed to arise not from warm sympathy, but simply from the absence of eager selfishness in small matters. On the morning when the favourable wind sprung up, one of the crew, a lad of about seventeen years of age, was absent ashore at the time of starting, having gone alone in one of the montarias to gather wild fruit. The sails were spread and we travelled for several hours at great speed, leaving the poor fellow to paddle after us against the strong current. Vicente, who might have waited a few minutes at starting, and the others, only laughed when the hardship of their companion was alluded to. He overtook us at night, having worked his way with frightful labor the whole day without a morsel of food. He grinned when he came on board, and not a dozen words were said on either side.

Their want of curiosity is extreme. One day we had an unusually sharp thunder shower. The crew were lying about the deck, and after each explosion all set up a loud laugh; the wag of the party exclaiming: “There’s my old uncle hunting again!” an expression showing the utter emptiness of mind of the spokesman. I asked Vicente what he thought was the cause of lightning and thunder? He said, “Timaá ichoquá,”—I don’t know. He had never given the subject a moment’s thought! It was the same with other things. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees? He didn’t know, and had never heard the subject mentioned amongst his tribe. The Tupí language, at least as taught by the old Jesuits, has a word—Tupána—signifying God. Vicente sometimes used this word, but he showed by his expressions that he did not attach the idea of a Creator to it. He seemed to think it meant some deity or visible image which the whites worshipped in the churches he had seen in the villages. None of the Indian tribes on the Upper Amazons have an idea of a Supreme Being, and consequently have no word to express it in their own language. Vicente thought the river on which we were travelling encircled the whole earth, and that the land was an island like those seen in the stream, but larger. Here a gleam of curiosity and imagination in the Indian mind is revealed: the necessity of a theory of the earth and water has been felt, and a theory has been suggested. In all other matters not concerning the common wants of life, the mind of Vicente was a blank and such I always found to be the case with the Indian in his natural state. Would a community of any race of men be otherwise, were they isolated for centuries in a wilderness like the Amazonian Indians, associated in small numbers wholly occupied in procuring a mere subsistence, and without a written language, or a leisured class to hand down acquired knowledge from generation to generation?

One day a smart squall gave us a good lift onward; it came with a cold, fine, driving rain, which enveloped the desolate landscape as with a mist; the forest swayed and roared with the force of the gale, and flocks of birds were driven about in alarm over the tree tops. On another occasion a similar squall came from an unfavourable quarter; it fell upon us quite unawares, when we had all our sails out to dry, and blew us broadside foremost on the shore. The vessel was fairly lifted on to the tall bushes which lined the banks, but we sustained no injury beyond the entanglement of our rigging in the branches. The days and nights usually passed in a dead calm, or with light intermittent winds from up river, and consequently full against us. We landed twice a day to give ourselves and the Indians a little rest and change, and to cook our two meals—breakfast and dinner. There was another passenger besides myself—a cautious, middle-aged Portuguese, who was going to settle at Ega, where he had a brother long since established. He was accommodated in the fore-cabin, or arched covering over the hold. I shared the cabin-proper with Senhores Estulano and Manoel, the latter a young half-caste, son-in-law to the owner of the vessel, under whose tuition I made good progress in learning the Tupí language during the voyage.

Our men took it in turns, two at a time, to go out fishing; for which purpose we carried a spare montaria. The master had brought from Barra as provision, nothing but stale, salt pirarucú—half rotten fish, in large, thin, rusty slabs—farinha, coffee, and treacle. In these voyages, passengers are expected to provide for themselves, as no charge is made except for freight of the heavy luggage or cargo they take with them. The Portuguese and myself had brought a few luxuries, such as beans, sugar, biscuits, tea, and so forth; but we found ourselves almost obliged to share them with our two companions and the pilot, so that before the voyage was one-third finished, the small stock of most of these articles was exhausted. In return, we shared in whatever the men brought. Sometimes they were quite unsuccessful, for fish is extremely difficult to procure in the season of high water, on account of the lower lands lying between the inlets and infinite chain of pools and lakes being flooded from the main river, thus increasing tenfold the area over which the finny population has to range. On most days, however, they brought two or three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or Vacca marina. On this last-mentioned occasion we made quite a holiday; the canoe was stopped for six or seven hours, and all turned out into the forest to help skin and cook the animal. The meat was cut into cubical slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these on a long stick. Fires were made, and the spits stuck in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast. A drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails and slime which were scattered about. The meat has somewhat the taste of very coarse pork; but the fat, which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour. The animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in length, and nine in girth at the broadest part. The manatee is one of the few objects which excite the dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstanding its commonness. The fact of its suckling its young at the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, seems to strike them as something very strange. The animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, lead-coloured skin reminded me of those Egyptian tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped to the human figure.

Notwithstanding the hard fare, the confinement of the canoe, the trying weather,—frequent and drenching rains, with gleams of fiery sunshine,—and the woeful desolation of the river scenery, I enjoyed the voyage on the whole. We were not much troubled by mosquitoes, and therefore passed the nights very pleasantly, sleeping on deck wrapped in blankets or old sails. When the rains drove us below we were less comfortable, as there was only just room in the small cabin for three of us to lie close together, and the confined air was stifling. I became inured to the Piums in the course of the first week; all the exposed parts of my body, by that time, being so closely covered with black punctures that the little bloodsuckers could not very easily find an unoccupied place to operate upon. Poor Miguel, the Portuguese, suffered horribly from these pests, his ankles and wrists being so much inflamed that he was confined to his hammock, slung in the hold, for weeks. At every landing place I had a ramble in the forest, whilst the redskins made the fire and cooked the meal. The result was a large daily addition to my collection of insects, reptiles, and shells. Sometimes the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and spacious forest, pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest degree by groves of the Urucurí palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by the thousands under the crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees; their smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places where we encamped. It is similar in size and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly-flavoured juicy pulp. The Indians would not eat it; I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable. Vicente shook his head when he saw me one day eating a quantity of the Urucurí plums. I am not sure they were not the cause of a severe indigestion under which I suffered for many days afterwards.

Bulging-stemmed Palm: Pashiúba barrigudo (Iriartea ventricosa).

In passing slowly along the interminable wooded banks week after week, I observed that there were three tolerably distinct kinds of coast and corresponding forest constantly recurring on this upper river. First, there were the low and most recent alluvial deposits,—a mixture of sand and mud, covered with tall, broad-leaved grasses, or with the arrow-grass before described, whose feathery-topped flower-stem rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The only large trees which grow in these places are the Cecropiæ. Many of the smaller and newer islands were of this description. Secondly, there were the moderately high banks, which are only partially overflowed when the flood season is at its height; these are wooded with a magnificent, varied forest, in which a great variety of palms and broad-leaved Marantaceæ form a very large proportion of the vegetation. The general foliage is of a vivid light-green hue; the water frontage is sometimes covered with a diversified mass of greenery; but where the current sets strongly against the friable, earthy banks, which at low water are twenty-five to thirty feet high, these are cut away, and expose a section of forest where the trunks of trees loaded with epiphytes appear in massy colonnades. One might safely say that three-fourths of the land bordering the Upper Amazons, for a thousand miles, belong to this second class. The third description of coast is the higher, undulating, clayey land, which appears only at long intervals, but extends sometimes for many miles along the borders of the river. The coast at these places is sloping, and composed of red or variegated clay. The forest is of a different character from that of the lower tracts: it is rounder in outline, more uniform in its general aspect; palms are much less numerous and of peculiar species—the strange bulging-stemmed species, Iriartea ventricosa, and the slender, glossy-leaved Bacába-í (Œnocarpus minor), being especially characteristic; and, in short, animal life, which imparts some cheerfulness to the other parts of the river, is seldom apparent. This “terra firme,” as it is called, and a large portion of the fertile lower land, seemed well adapted for settlement; some parts were originally peopled by the aborigines, but these have long since become extinct or amalgamated with the white immigrants. I afterwards learned that there were not more than eighteen or twenty families settled throughout the whole country from Manacápurú to Quary, a distance of 240 miles; and these, as before observed, do not live on the banks of the main stream, but on the shores of inlets and lakes.

The fishermen twice brought me small rounded pieces of very porous pumice-stone, which they had picked up floating on the surface of the main current of the river. They were to me objects of great curiosity as being messengers from the distant volcanoes of the Andes: Cotopaxi, Llanganete, or Sangay, which rear their peaks amongst the rivulets that feed some of the early tributaries of the Amazons, such as the Macas, the Pastaza, and the Napo. The stones must have already travelled a distance of 1200 miles. I afterwards found them rather common; the Brazilians use them for cleaning rust from their guns, and firmly believe them to be solidified river foam. A friend once brought me, when I lived at Santarem, a large piece which had been found in the middle of the stream below Monte Alegre, about 900 miles further down the river; having reached this distance, pumice-stones would be pretty sure of being carried out to sea, and floated thence with the north-westerly Atlantic current to shores many thousand miles distant from the volcanoes which ejected them. They are sometimes stranded on the banks in different parts of the river. Reflecting on this circumstance since I arrived in England, the probability of these porous fragments serving as vehicles for the transportation of seeds of plants, eggs of insects, spawn of fresh-water fish, and so forth, has suggested itself to me. Their rounded, water-worn appearance showed that they must have been rolled about for a long time in the shallow streams near the sources of the rivers at the feet of the volcanoes, before they leapt the waterfalls and embarked on the currents which lead direct for the Amazons. They may have been originally cast on the land and afterwards carried to the rivers by freshets; in which case the eggs and seeds of land insects and plants might be accidentally introduced and safely enclosed with particles of earth in their cavities. As the speed of the current in the rainy season has been observed to be from three to five miles an hour, they might travel an immense distance before the eggs or seeds were destroyed. I am ashamed to say that I neglected the opportunity, whilst on the spot, of ascertaining whether this was actually the case. The attention of Naturalists has only lately been turned to the important subject of occasional means of wide dissemination of species of animals and plants. Unless such be shown to exist, it is impossible to solve some of the most difficult problems connected with the distribution of plants and animals. Some species, with most limited powers of locomotion, are found in opposite parts of the earth, without existing in the intermediate regions; unless it can be shown that these may have migrated or been accidentally transported from one point to the other, we shall have to come to the strange conclusion that the same species had been created in two separate districts.

Canoemen on the Upper Amazons live in constant dread of the “terras cahidas,” or landslips, which occasionally take place along the steep earthy banks, especially when the waters are rising. Large vessels are sometimes overwhelmed by these avalanches of earth and trees. I should have thought the accounts of them exaggerated if I had not had an opportunity during this voyage of seeing one on a large scale. One morning I was awakened before sunrise by an unusual sound resembling the roar of artillery. I was lying alone on the top of the cabin; it was very dark, and all my companions were asleep, so I lay listening. The sounds came from a considerable distance, and the crash which had aroused me was succeeded by others much less formidable. The first explanation which occurred to me was that it was an earthquake; for, although the night was breathlessly calm, the broad river was much agitated and the vessel rolled heavily. Soon after, another loud explosion took place, apparently much nearer than the former one; then followed others. The thundering peal rolled backwards and forwards, now seeming close at hand, now far off; the sudden crashes being often succeeded by a pause or a long-continued dull rumbling. At the second explosion, Vicente, who lay snoring by the helm, awoke and told me it was a “terra cahida”; but I could scarcely believe him. The day dawned after the uproar had lasted about an hour, and we then saw the work of destruction going forward on the other side of the river, about three miles off. Large masses of forest, including trees of colossal size, probably 200 feet in height, were rocking to and fro, and falling headlong one after the other into the water. After each avalanche the wave which it caused returned on the crumbly bank with tremendous force, and caused the fall of other masses by undermining them. The line of coast over which the landslip extended, was a mile or two in length; the end of it, however, was hidden from our view by an intervening island. It was a grand sight; each downfall created a cloud of spray; the concussion in one place causing other masses to give way a long distance from it, and thus the crashes continued, swaying to and fro, with little prospect of a termination. When we glided out of sight, two hours after sunrise, the destruction was still going on.

On the 22nd we threaded the Paraná-mirim of Arauána-í, one of the numerous narrow bywaters which lie conveniently for canoes away from the main river, and often save a considerable circuit around a promontory or island. We rowed for half a mile through a magnificent bed of Victoria waterlilies, the flower-buds of which were just beginning to expand. Beyond the mouth of the Catuá, a channel leading to one of the great lakes so numerous in the plains of the Amazons, which we passed on the 25th, the river appeared greatly increased in breadth. We travelled for three days along a broad reach which both up and down river presented a blank horizon of water and sky: this clear view was owing to the absence of islands, but it renewed one’s impressions of the magnitude of the stream, which here, 1200 miles from its mouth, showed so little diminution of width. Further westward, a series of large islands commences, which divides the river into two and sometimes three channels, each about a mile in breadth. We kept to the southernmost of these, travelling all day on the 30th of April along a high and rather sloping bank.

In the evening we arrived at a narrow opening, which would be taken by a stranger navigating the main channel for the cutlet of some insignificant stream: it was the mouth of the Teffé, on whose banks Ega is situated, the termination of our voyage. After having struggled for thirty-five days with the muddy currents and insect pests of the Solimoens, it was unspeakably refreshing to find one’s-self again in a dark-water river, smooth as a lake, and free from Pium and Motúca. The rounded outline, small foliage, and sombre-green of the woods, which seemed to rest on the glassy waters, made a pleasant contrast to the tumultuous piles of rank, glaring, light-green vegetation, and torn, timber-strewn banks to which we had been so long accustomed on the main river. The men rowed lazily until nightfall, when, having done a laborious day’s work, they discontinued and went to sleep, intending to make for Ega in the morning. It was not thought worthwhile to secure the vessel to the trees or cast anchor, as there was no current. I sat up for two or three hours after my companions had gone to rest, enjoying the solemn calm of the night. Not a breath of air stirred; the sky was of a deep blue, and the stars seemed to stand forth in sharp relief; there was no sound of life in the woods, except the occasional melancholy note of some nocturnal bird. I reflected on my own wandering life; I had now reached the end of the third stage of my journey, and was now more than half way across the continent. It was necessary for me, on many accounts, to find a rich locality for Natural History explorations, and settle myself in it for some months or years. Would the neighbourhood of Ega turn out to be suitable, and should I, a solitary stranger on a strange errand, find a welcome amongst its people?

Our Indians resumed their oars at sunrise the next morning (May 1st), and after an hour’s rowing along the narrow channel, which varies in breadth from 100 to 500 yards, we doubled a low wooded point, and emerged suddenly on the so-called Lake of Ega: a magnificent sheet of water, five miles broad, the expanded portion of the Teffé. It is quite clear of islands, and curves away to the west and south, so that its full extent is not visible from this side. To the left, on a gentle grassy slope at the point of junction of a broad tributary with the Teffé, lay the little settlement: a cluster of a hundred or so of palm-thatched cottages and white-washed red-tiled houses, each with its neatly-enclosed orchard of orange, lemon, banana, and guava trees. Groups of palms, with their tall slender shafts and feathery crowns, overtopped the buildings and lower trees. A broad grass-carpeted street led from the narrow strip of white sandy beach to the rudely-built barn-like church, with its wooden crucifix on the green before it, in the centre of the town. Cattle were grazing before the houses, and a number of dark-skinned natives were taking their morning bath amongst the canoes of various sizes, which were anchored or moored to stakes in the port. We let off rockets and fired salutes, according to custom, in token of our safe arrival, and shortly afterwards went ashore.

A few days’ experience of the people and the forests of the vicinity showed me that I might lay myself out for a long, pleasant, and busy residence at this place. An idea of the kind of people I had fallen amongst may be conveyed by an account of my earliest acquaintances in the place. On landing, the owner of the canoe killed an ox in honour of our arrival, and the next day took me round the town to introduce me to the principal residents. We first went to the Delegado of police, Senhor Antonio Cardozo, of whom I shall have to make frequent mention by-and-by. He was a stout, broad-featured man, ranking as a white, but having a tinge of negro blood, his complexion, however, was ruddy, and scarcely betrayed the mixture. He received us in a very cordial, winning manner; I had afterwards occasion to be astonished at the boundless good nature of this excellent fellow, whose greatest pleasure seemed to be to make sacrifices for his friends. He was a Paraense, and came to Ega originally as a trader; but, not succeeding in this, he turned planter on a small scale and collector of the natural commodities of the country, employing half-a-dozen Indians in the business. We then visited the military commandant, an officer in the Brazilian army, named Praia. He was breakfasting with the Vicar, and we found the two in dishabille (morning-gown, loose round the neck, and slippers), seated at a rude wooden table in an open mud-floored verandah, at the back of the house. Commander Praia was a little curly-headed man (also somewhat of a mulatto), always merry and fond of practical jokes. His wife, Donna Anna, a dressy dame from Santarem, was the leader of fashion in the settlement. The Vicar, Father Luiz Gonsalvo Gomez, was a nearly pure-blood Indian, a native of one of the neighbouring villages, but educated at Maranham, a city on the Atlantic seaboard. I afterwards saw a good deal of him, as he was an agreeable, sociable fellow, fond of reading and hearing about foreign countries, and quite free from the prejudices which might be expected in a man of his profession. I found him, moreover, a thoroughly upright, sincere, and virtuous man. He supported his aged mother and unmarried sisters in a very creditable way out of his small salary and emoluments. It is a pleasure to be able to speak in these terms of a Brazilian priest, for the opportunity occurs rarely enough.

Leaving these agreeable new acquaintances to finish their breakfast, we next called on the Director of the Indians of the Japura, Senhor José Chrysostomo Monteiro, a thin wiry Mameluco, the most enterprising person in the settlement. Each of the neighbouring rivers with its numerous wild tribes is under the control of a Director, who is nominated by the Imperial Government. There are now no missions in the regions of the Upper Amazons; the “gentios” (heathens, or unbaptised Indians) being considered under the management and protection of these despots, who, like the captains of Trabalhadores, before mentioned, use the natives for their own private ends. Senhor Chrysostomo had, at this time, 200 of the Japura Indians in his employ. He was half Indian himself, but was a far worse master to the redskins than the whites usually are. We finished our rounds by paying our respects to a venerable native merchant, Senhor Romao de Oliveira, a tall, corpulent, fine-looking old man, who received us with a naive courtesy quite original in its way. He had been an industrious, enterprising man in his younger days, and had built a substantial range of houses and warehouses. The shrewd and able old gentleman knew nothing of the world beyond the wilderness of the Solimoens and its few thousands of isolated inhabitants, yet he could converse well and sensibly, making observations on men and things as sagaciously as though he had drawn them from long experience of life in a European capital. The semi-civilised Indians respected old Romao, and he had, consequently, a great number in his employ in different parts of the river: his vessels were always filled quicker with produce than those of his neighbours. On our leaving, he placed his house and store at my disposal. This was not a piece of empty politeness, for some time afterwards, when I wished to settle for the goods I had had of him, he refused to take any payment.

I made Ega my headquarters during the whole of the time I remained on the Upper Amazons (four years and a half). My excursions into the neighbouring region extended sometimes as far as 300 and 400 miles from the place. An account of these excursions will be given in subsequent chapters; in the intervals between them I led a quiet, uneventful life in the settlement, following my pursuit in the same peaceful, regular way as a Naturalist might do in a European village. For many weeks in succession my journal records little more than the notes made on my daily captures. I had a dry and specious cottage, the principal room of which was made a workshop and study; here a large table was placed, and my little library of reference arranged on shelves in rough wooden boxes. Cages for drying specimens were suspended from the rafters by cords well anointed, to prevent ants from descending, with a bitter vegetable oil; rats and mice were kept from them by inverted _ cuyas_, placed half way down the cords. I always kept on hand a large portion of my private collection, which contained a pair of each species and variety, for the sake of comparing the old with the new acquisitions. My cottage was whitewashed inside and out about once a year by the proprietor, a native trader; the floor was of earth; the ventilation was perfect, for the outside air, and sometimes the rain as well, entered freely through gaps at the top of the walls under the eaves and through wide crevices in the doorways. Rude as the dwelling was, I look back with pleasure on the many happy months I spent in it. I rose generally with the sun, when the grassy streets were wet with dew, and walked down to the river to bathe; five or six hours of every morning were spent in collecting in the forest, whose borders lay only five minutes’ walk from my house; the hot hours of the afternoon, between three and six o’clock, and the rainy days, were occupied in preparing and ticketing the specimens, making notes, dissecting, and drawing. I frequently had short rambles by water in a small montaria, with an Indian lad to paddle. The neighbourhood yielded me, up to the last day of my residence, an uninterrupted succession of new and curious forms in the different classes of the animal kingdom, and especially insects.

I lived, as may already have been seen, on the best of terms with the inhabitants of Ega. Refined society, of course, there was none; but the score or so of decent quiet families which constituted the upper class of the place were very sociable; their manners offered a curious mixture of naive rusticity and formal politeness; the great desire to be thought civilised leads the most ignorant of these people (and they are all very ignorant, although of quick intelligence) to be civil and kind to strangers from Europe. I was never troubled with that impertinent curiosity on the part of the people in these interior places which some travellers complain of in other countries. The Indians and lower half-castes—at least such of them who gave any thought to the subject—seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country. The butterflies they universally concluded to be wanted as patterns for bright-coloured calico-prints. As to the better sort of people, I had no difficulty in making them understand that each European capital had a public museum, in which were sought to be stored specimens of all natural productions in the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. They could not comprehend how a man could study science for its own sake; but I told them I was collecting for the “Museo de Londres,” and was paid for it; _ that_ was very intelligible. One day, soon after my arrival, when I was explaining these things to a listening circle seated on benches in the grassy street, one of the audience, a considerable tradesman, a Mameluco native of Ega, got suddenly quite enthusiastic, and exclaimed, “How rich are these great nations of Europe! We half-civilised creatures know nothing. Let us treat this stranger well, that he may stay amongst us and teach our children.” We very frequently had social parties, with dancing and so forth; of these relaxations I shall have more to say presently. The manners of the Indian population also gave me some amusement for a long time. During the latter part of my residence, three wandering Frenchmen, and two Italians, some of them men of good education, on their road one after the other from the Andes down the Amazons, became enamoured of this delightfully situated and tranquil spot, and made up their minds to settle here for the remainder of their lives. Three of them ended by marrying native women. I found the society of these friends a very agreeable change.

There were, of course, many drawbacks to the amenities of the place as a residence for a European; but these were not of a nature that my readers would perhaps imagine. There was scarcely any danger from wild animals: it seems almost ridiculous to refute the idea of danger from the natives in a country where even incivility to an unoffending stranger is a rarity. A jaguar, however, paid us a visit one night. It was considered an extraordinary event, and so much uproar was made by the men who turned out with guns and bows and arrows, that the animal scampered off and was heard of no more. Alligators were rather troublesome in the dry season. During these months there was almost always one or two lying in wait near the bathing place for anything that might turn up at the edge of the water; dog, sheep, pig, child, or drunken Indian. When this visitor was about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile’s tail, bathers were obliged to beat a quick retreat. I was never threatened myself, but I often saw the crowds of women and children scared whilst bathing by the beast making a movement towards them; a general scamper to the shore and peals of laughter were always the result in these cases. The men can always destroy these alligators when they like to take the trouble to set out with montarias and harpoons for the purpose; but they never do it unless one of the monsters, bolder than usual, puts some one’s life in danger. This arouses them, and they then track the enemy with the greatest pertinacity; when half-killed, they drag it ashore and dispatch it amid loud execrations. Another, however, is sure to appear some days or weeks afterwards and take the vacant place on the station. Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no fatal accident happened during the whole time of my residence.

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened by time, increased until it became almost insupportable. I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind. I got on pretty well when I received a parcel from England by the steamer, once in two or four months. I used to be very economical with my stock of reading lest it should be finished before the next arrival, and leave me utterly destitute. I went over the periodicals, the _Athenæum_, for instance, with great deliberation, going through every number three times; the first time devouring the more interesting articles; the second, the whole of the remainder; and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. If four months (two steamers) passed without a fresh parcel, I felt discouraged in the extreme. I was worst off in the first year, 1850, when twelve months elapsed without letters or remittances. Towards the end of this time my clothes had worn to rags; I was barefoot, a great inconvenience in tropical forests, notwithstanding statements to the contrary that have been published by travellers; my servant ran away, and I was robbed of nearly all my copper money. I was obliged then to descend to Pará, but returned, after finishing the examination of the middle part of the Lower Amazons and the Tapajos, in 1855, with my Santarem assistant and better provided for making collections on the upper river. This second visit was in pursuit of the plan before mentioned, of exploring in detail the whole valley of the Amazons, which I formed in Pará in the year 1851.

During so long a residence I witnessed, of course, many changes in the place. Some of the good friends who made me welcome on my first arrival, died, and I followed their remains to their last resting-place in the little rustic cemetery on the borders of the surrounding forest. I lived there long enough, from first to last, to see the young people grow up, attended their weddings, and the christenings of their children, and, before I left, saw them old married folks with numerous families. In 1850 Ega was only a village, dependent on Pará 1400 miles distant, as the capital of the then undivided province. In 1852, with the creation of the new province of the Amazons, it became a city; returned its members to the provincial parliament at Barra; had it assizes, its resident judges, and rose to be the chief town of the _ comarca_ or county. A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the Solimoens; and from 1855, one ran regularly every two months between the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and accomplishing the distance in ascending, about 1200 miles, in eighteen days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these changes. The people became more “civilised,” that is, they began to dress according to the latest Parisian fashions, instead of going about in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt sleeves, acquired a taste for money-getting and office-holding; became divided into parties, and lost part of their former simplicity of manners. But the place remained, when I left it in 1859, pretty nearly what it was when I first arrived in 1850—a semi-Indian village, with much in the ways and notions of its people more like those of a small country town in Northern Europe than a South American settlement. The place is healthy, and almost free from insect pests: perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle, a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!