A colony of Spaniards had been imported to work, but they were dissatisfied and had left. Tobacco, made up into fusiform sticks 6 ft. long and tied into bundles, was exported from that place in considerable quantities; the inhabitants were also engaged in breeding cattle, growing Indian corn, and drying fish—the pirarucú (Vastres gigas), a salmonoid vulgarly called the cod-fish of the Amazon. A big trade was done in that dried fish all over that region.
In the full moon of a glorious night we could discern to the north a mountain region with elevations of over 3,000 ft. Between those mountains—the Serra de Almerin—and ourselves, lay a long flat island, the vegetation on which was, for that particular region, comparatively sparse. That island of mud had formed during the last fifteen or twenty years, and was at the time of my visit several kilometres in length. It was called the Pesqueiro. Islands have a way of forming in a very short time in the Amazon, while others change their shape or disappear altogether.
On November 7th we were facing the principal outlet of the Amazon to the north-east. That main estuary is, however, not as navigable as the one south of it, through which most of the big ships pass. An archipelago had formed at that spot. The fortress of Matapa, very ancient, stood on the largest outlet.
We went through the channel called the Itoquara. Another, the Tajapurozinho, was to the south, forming a boundary on that side of the large island, which we skirted to the north in the Itoquara channel. The beautiful island of Uruttahi was now in sight, to the north of the largest outlet. Like all other islands in that neighbourhood, it was flat and of alluvial formation.
In order to avoid the open waters, where the small ship upon which I was tossed about considerably, we kept to the smaller channels between the islands, going first through the channel of Limão and after that through the Tajapuru. It was practically the same course as the Itoquara, which was called by different names in different parts. It was narrow and tortuous, and required great skill in the navigation of it; but it was extraordinarily deep—so deep that all the big ocean steamers entering the Amazon followed this channel in preference to the main outlet of the river, which is not navigable owing to many sandbanks.
We were there in a regular maze of islands, composed mostly of mud and of recent formation, not more than one or two feet above the water. For Brazil, they were fairly thickly inhabited, miserable huts being visible every few hundred metres or so.
On our right as we went through we had a luxuriant growth of mirichi palms, some of great height and close together—a regular forest of them. At the first glance as you looked at those islands, it seemed as if all along the coast-line a low palisade had been erected. It was indeed a natural palisade of aninga, an aquatic plant growing in profusion on the edge of mud-banks. The aninga is said to contain a powerful poison, the touch of which produces violent itching.
All the houses and huts on those islands necessarily had to be built on high piles, as the country was constantly inundated, the tide rising and falling some three feet in that particular channel.
Campas Indian Children.