Across Unknown South America

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

The population of Pará is 192,230 inhabitants. Many spacious and handsome edifices, such as the Government buildings and the professional Institutes, do great credit to the city; while the Peace Theatre is one of the finest in Brazil. Many private mansions are of some architectural beauty, and some of the new avenues and the municipal gardens are handsome. The slaughter-house, the iron market, etc., are quite up to date, and the city even boasts of a crematorium.

My object in coming to Belem (Pará) was merely to see my men safely on board on their return to the Minas Geraes and Goyaz Provinces; also to buy some new cameras and instruments, so that I could start on the second part of my expedition, following the entire course of the Amazon almost up to its source, then cross over the Andes and reach the Pacific Ocean.

My English friends in Pará tried to dissuade me from attempting the journey, as I was in a pitiful condition. What was worse, civilization, instead of making me feel better, was smashing me up altogether. Every day I was getting weaker and weaker, and more exhausted. I had hardly strength to walk about, less still to go up or down stairs. Beri-beri commenced to develop in my right foot, and added to my other trials.

The English consul told me it was absolute folly to try and proceed on such a long journey in such an exhausted state.

Having bought fresh clothes and cameras for my new expedition, I left Pará on November 12th at noon on the excellent ship Anthony of the Booth line, on my way up the Amazon to Manaos.

I will not attempt here to give a description of that amazing river the Amazon—amazing because it is very big and not because it is beautiful, for indeed I do not believe that in all my travels I have ever seen a river quite so ugly and uninteresting as the Amazon.

First of all, it is so big that you seldom see both sides of the river at a time; its waters are muddy and filthy; its climate is damp, oppressive and unhealthy; its vegetation, when you are near enough the banks to see it, is entangled, half-rotted, and smelly. All along one's nostrils are offended by the fetid odour of mud and decayed vegetable matter.

People in Europe seem imbued with the idea that, as you go along the Amazon, you must be attracted by the great number of birds of beautiful plumage, insects and butterflies of all sizes and amazing colours. Occasionally, especially in the early morning and at sunset, one does notice perhaps a flock of green paroquets with yellow foreheads, notable for their peculiar, clumsy, rapid wing-flapping flight and their harsh shrieks when settling on the trees. Occasionally, too, one may see a family of larger parrots dashing across the sky; but, indeed, birds in the lower Amazon are not plentiful by any means, nor, indeed, is their plumage particularly attractive, most birds, except the parrots, being small and very soberly tinted.

As for the melodious songs of birds which civilized people always imagine in the equatorial forest—the song that will set you dreaming while you are basking under palm trees—the actual traveller will find the greatest disappointment of all in that respect. With one or two exceptions, such as the Troglodytes fuscus, a small brown wren which emits sweet musical notes, most birds of the Amazon have grating voices and harsh piercing whistles, or monotonous deep repetitions of two or three funereal notes which are more apt to drive you insane than to fascinate you. Among the most unmusical singers of the lower Amazon may be counted the several families of finches and fly-catchers, and the local thrushes, which feed on ants.

Similar disappointment awaits one in regard to the vegetation. People imagine Brazil a land of beautiful flowers, the forest made up of immense trees with luxuriant foliage, overladen with parasitic orchids—eternally in bloom, of course, in the dreamy minds of the untravelled, and just waiting to be picked and to be placed in one's buttonhole. The sky, naturally, over such a forest, could only be swarming with birds of all sizes, with plumage of the richest colours and hues; and what else could such a luxuriant country have in the way of butterflies and insects than some which resemble precious gems in the iridescent tones of their wings and bodies?