Travels on the Amazon

by Alfred Russel Wallace

Most of the wild fruits—which are great favourites with these people, especially the women and children—are of an acrid or bitter taste, to which long practice only can reconcile a foreigner. Often, when seeing a little child gnawing away at some strange fruit, I have asked to taste it, thinking that it must be sweet to please at that lollipop-loving age, and have found a flavour like aloes or quassia, that I could not get out of my mouth for an hour; others equally relished are like yellow soap, and some as sour as verjuice.

These people almost always seem at work, but have very little to show for it. The women go to dig up mandiocca or yams, or they have weeding or planting to do, and at other times have earthen pots to make, and their scanty clothing to mend and wash. The men are always busy, either clearing the forest or cutting down timber for a canoe or for paddles, or to make a board for some purpose or other; and their houses always want mending, and then there is thatch to be brought from a long distance; or they want baskets, or bows and arrows, or some other thing which occupies nearly their whole time, and yet does not produce them the bare necessaries of life, or allow them leisure to hunt the game that abounds in the forest around them. This is principally the result of everybody doing everything for himself, slowly and with much unnecessary labour, instead of occupying himself with one kind of industry, and exchanging its produce for the articles he requires. An Indian spends a week in cutting down a tree in the forest, and fashioning an article which, by the division of labour, can be made for sixpence: the consequence is, that his work produces but sixpence a week, and he is therefore all his life earning a scanty supply of clothing, in a country where food may be had almost for nothing.

Having remained here a month, and obtained twenty-five specimens of the umbrella-bird, I prepared to return to Barra. On the last day my hunter went out he brought me a fine male bird alive. It had been wounded slightly on the head, just behind the eye, and had fallen to the ground stunned, for in a short time it became very active, and when he brought it me was as strong and fierce as if it was quite uninjured. I put it in a large wicker basket, but as it would take no food during two days I fed it by thrusting pieces of banana down its throat; this I continued for several days, with much difficulty, as its claws were very sharp and powerful. On our way to Barra I found by the river-side a small fruit which it ate readily; this fruit was about the size of a cherry, of an acid taste, and was swallowed whole. The bird arrived safely in the city, and lived a fortnight; when one day it suddenly fell off its perch and died. On skinning it, I found the shot had broken the skull and entered to the brain, though it seems surprising that it should have remained so long apparently in perfect health. I had had, however, an excellent opportunity of observing its habits, and its method of expanding and closing its beautiful crest and neck-plume.

I had now a dull time of it in Barra. The wet season had regularly set in; a day hardly ever passed without rain, and on many days it was incessant. We seized every opportunity for a walk in the forest, but scarcely anything was to be found when we got there, and what we did get was with the greatest difficulty preserved; for the atmosphere was so saturated with moisture that insects moulded, and the feathers and hair dropped from the skins of birds and animals so as to render them quite unserviceable. Luckily, however, there were a good number of foreigners in Barra, so we had a little company. Two traders on the Amazon, an American and an Irishman, had arrived. Mr. Bates had reached Barra a few weeks after me, and was now here, unwilling, like myself, to go further up the country in such uninviting weather. There were also three Germans, one of whom spoke English well and was a bit of a naturalist, and all were good singers, and contributed a little amusement.

There was also a deaf and dumb American, named Baker, a very humorous and intelligent fellow, who was a constant fund of amusement both for the Brazilians and ourselves. He had been educated in the same institution with Laura Bridgman, as a teacher of the deaf and dumb. He seemed to have a passion for travelling, probably as the only means of furnishing through his one sense the necessary amount of exercise and stimulus to his mind. He had travelled alone through Peru and Chile, across to Brazil, through Pará to Barra, and now proposed going by the Rio Branco to Demerara, and so to the United States. He supported himself by selling the deaf and dumb alphabet, with explanations in Spanish and Portuguese. He carried a little slate, on which he could write anything in English or French, and also a good deal in Spanish, so that he could always make his wants known. He made himself at home in every house in Barra, walking in and out as he liked, and asking by signs for whatever he wanted. He was very merry, fond of practical jokes, and of making strange gesticulations. He pretended to be a phrenologist; and on feeling the head of a Portuguese or Brazilian would always write down on his slate, "Very fond of the ladies;" which on being translated would invariably elicit, "He verdade" (that's very true), and signs of astonishment at his penetration. He was a great smoker, and would drink wine and spirits so freely as sometimes to make him carry his antics to a great length; still he was much liked, and will be long remembered by the people of Barra. But, poor fellow! he was never to see his native land again: he died a few months after, at the fortress of São Joaquim, on the Rio Branco,—it was said, of jaundice.

Notwithstanding all this, the time passed heavily enough; and though Mr. Hauxwell soon after arrived to add to our party, still nothing could make up for the desolation and death which the incessant rains appeared to have produced in all animated nature. Between two and three months passed away in this unexciting monotony, when, the river having nearly risen to its height, and there being some appearance of the weather improving, I determined on taking a journey to the Solimões (as the Amazon is called above the entrance of the Rio Negro), to the estate of Senhor Brandão, my kind host's father-in-law.

The river was now so high that a great portion of the lowlands between the Rio Negro and the Amazon was flooded, being what is called "Gapó." This is one of the most singular features of the Amazon. It extends from a little above Santarem up to the confines of Peru—a distance of about seventeen hundred miles—and varies in width on each side of the river from one to ten or twenty miles. From Santarem to Coarí, a little town on the Solimões, a person may go by canoe in the wet season without once entering into the main river. He will pass through small streams, lakes, and swamps, and everywhere around him will stretch out an illimitable waste of waters, but all covered with a lofty virgin forest. For days he will travel through this forest, scraping against tree-trunks, and stooping to pass beneath the leaves of prickly palms, now level with the water, though raised on stems forty feet high. In this trackless maze the Indian finds his way with unerring certainty, and by slight indications of broken twigs or scraped bark, goes on day by day as if travelling on a beaten road. In the Gapó peculiar animals are found, attracted by the fruits of trees which grow only there. In fact, the Indians assert that every tree that grows in the Gapó is distinct from all those found in other districts; and when we consider the extraordinary conditions under which these plants exist, being submerged for six months of the year till they are sufficiently lofty to rise above the highest water-level, it does not seem improbable that such may be the case. Many species of trogons are peculiar to the Gapó, others to the dry virgin forest. The umbrella chatterer is entirely confined to it, as is also the little bristle-tailed manakin. Some monkeys are found there only in the wet season, and whole tribes of Indians, such as the Purupurús and Múras, entirely inhabit it, building small, easily-removable huts on the sandy shores in the dry season, and on rafts in the wet; spending a great part of their lives in canoes, sleeping suspended in rude hammocks from trees over the deep water, cultivating no vegetables, but subsisting entirely on the fish, turtle, and cow-fish which they obtain from the river.

On crossing the Rio Negro from the city of Barra, we entered into a tract of this description. Our canoe was forced under branches and among dense bushes, till we got into a part where the trees were loftier, and a deep gloom prevailed. Here the lowest branches of the trees were level with the surface of the water, and were many of them putting forth flowers. As we proceeded we sometimes came to a grove of small palms, the leaves being now only a few feet above us, and among them was the marajá, bearing bunches of agreeable fruit, which, as we passed, the Indians cut off with their long knives. Sometimes the rustling of leaves overhead told us that monkeys were near, and we would soon perhaps discover them peeping down from among the thick foliage, and then bounding rapidly away as soon as we had caught a glimpse of them. Presently we came out into the sunshine, in a grassy lake filled with lilies and beautiful water-plants, little yellow bladder-worts (Utricularia), and the bright-blue flowers and curious leaves with swollen stalks of the Pontederias. Again in the gloom of the forest, among the lofty cylindrical trunks rising like columns out of the deep water: now a splashing of falling fruit around us would announce that birds were feeding overhead, and we could discover a flock of paroquets, or some bright-blue chatterers, or the lovely pompadour, with its delicate white wings and claret-coloured plumage; now with a whirr a trogon would seize a fruit on the wing, or some clumsy toucan make the branches shake as he alighted.

But what lovely yellow flower is that suspended in the air between two trunks, yet far from either? It shines in the gloom as if its petals were of gold. Now we pass close by it, and see its stalk, like a slender wire a yard and a half long, springing from a cluster of thick leaves on the bark of a tree. It is an Oncidium, one of the lovely orchis tribe, making these gloomy shades gay with its airy and brilliant flowers. Presently there are more of them, and then others appear, with white and spotted and purple blossoms, some growing on rotten logs floating in the water, but most on moss and decaying bark just above it. There is one magnificent species, four inches across, called by the natives St. Ann's flower (Flor de Santa Anna), of a brilliant purple colour, and emitting a most delightful odour; it is a new species, and the most magnificent flower of its kind in these regions; even the natives will sometimes deign to admire it, and to wonder how such a beautiful flower grows "atóa" (uselessly) in the Gapó.

At length, after about eight hours' paddling, we came out again into the broad waters of the Solimões. How bright shone the sun! how gay flowed the stream! how pleasant it was again to see the floating grass islands, and the huge logs and trees, with their cargoes of gulls sitting gravely upon them! These, with the white-leaved and straggling umboöbas (Cecropia) give an aspect to the Amazon quite distinct from that of the Rio Negro, independently of their differently-coloured waters. Now, however, there was no land to be reached, and we feared we should have to sup on farinha and water, but luckily found a huge floating trunk fast moored amongst some grass near the side, and on it, with the assistance of a few dead twigs, we soon made a fire, roasted our fish, and boiled some coffee. But we had intruded on a colony of stinging ants, who, not liking the vicinity of fire, and not choosing to take to the water, swarmed into our canoe and made us pay for our supper in a very unpleasant manner. Dusk soon came on, and we had to stay for the night; but the mosquitoes made their presence known, and we lay uncomfortable and feverish till the morning. By the next night we had reached the mouth of the small stream that leads us to Manaquery, and had few mosquitoes to annoy us. In the morning we went on, and soon plunged again into the Gapó, passing through some small lakes so choked up with grass that the canoe could hardly be forced over it. Again we emerged into the igaripé—here about a quarter of a mile wide—and at ten in the morning reached Manaquery.