The first echo of the white man's voice in the woods and across the waters of the Amazon was in the year 1540, when a party of intrepid Spaniards, after the Conquest of Peru, trusted their fortunes to its mighty bosom and floated eastwards into a world of which they had no knowledge, and, borne down by the current across an entire continent for nearly three thousand miles, were carried into the Atlantic Ocean.
The voyage is one of the most remarkable in the history of fluvial, or indeed of any navigation. Let us briefly recall it.
One day early in the above-mentioned year there was movement in the city of Quito, the ancient capital of the Shiris, in the northern kingdom of the conquered Incas, when a body of Spaniards, captained by Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the famous Conquistador of Peru, Hernando, set forth to reach a fabled land of gold, an unknown El Dorado, which Indians, imaginative or deceptive, told their white masters lay far within the forest fastnesses beyond the Andes, a land of "Oriental spices," an empire in some beautiful and languorous region which might far surpass in riches and enjoyment anything which even Peru had yielded.
A clever guerilla captain, esteemed the best lance and master of horse in Peru, Gonzalo Pizarro, fired by the idea of this fresh conquest, called together over three hundred Spaniards, part of the retinue of the Government of Quito to which his brother had appointed him. Half the company were mounted, all were well equipped: a mountain of provisions was borne by a band of four thousand Indian servants; a great herd of swine was driven in the rear, further to furnish food for the party; and a thousand dogs, some of a ferocious breed, to hunt down Indians should such be necessary, completed the outfit. Quito lies in a broad recess of the Andes, leaving which the expedition climbed the forbidding and snow-crowned slopes which lay between them and the forests beyond, and disappeared.
Little did the members of this eager band, or the folk of Quito, know of what lay in store, or how the forces of Nature should overwhelm even so well-prepared an expedition.
The many tributaries of the River Amazon that have their rise in this portion of the Andes cut their way through extremely rugged territory, profound gorges, buried in tangled forests, where passage even for a few travellers must often be cut out through the jungle, and which to a large body of horsemen offered almost impenetrable obstacles. The intense cold and rarefied air of the mountain solitudes caused considerable suffering to the explorers, and the traveller to-day, whilst impressed with the grandeur of the scenery of the high Andes of Ecuador, crowned by the magnificent avenue of snow-capped volcanoes of which Chimborazo and Cotopaxi are the chief, gladly escapes from the inclement altitudes to the warmer climate of lower elevations. Then, as now, the land was frequently shaken and devastated by terrific earthquakes and discharges from the volcanoes, and it would appear that such a state of unrest was abroad at the moment when Gonzalo and his party appeared, as if Nature resented their intrusion.
However, at length a land known as that of Canelas, or perhaps so named by the Spaniards from the profusion of beautiful cinnamon-bearing trees, the name being Castilian for that spice, was reached. This was as far as the leader had expected to come, and finding their hopes unrealized, it would indeed have been well had the band returned to Quito, reading from the dreadful forest its true lesson. But, lured onwards by the tales of the Indians, who persisted that a few days' march beyond there lay a land teeming with gold, and inhabited by civilized and docile peoples, they pressed onward. Broad plains opened to the view, those vast savannas of the Montaña of the Amazon plain, and trees of stupendous growth, such as perhaps only the equinoctial regions of America produces, interspersed with beautiful flowering shrubs.
But it is a peculiarity of these regions that Nature herein provides practically nothing for the sustenance of man. Of extreme fertility under cultivation, there is little of fruits or game such as would support life, and the traveller to-day caught in these vast solitudes without an ample supply of provisions may wander about miserably, far from human aid, until he perishes. Moreover, the incessant deluges of rain which descend upon this part of America, and which are indeed the sources of the mighty flood of the Amazon, cause provisions to deteriorate and clothing to decay, and add infinitely to the burdens of the traveller. So it befel the band of Spaniards. Their provisions, after several months of travel, had become exhausted, and their clothing was reduced to rags. Part of the herd of swine had escaped, and now they were obliged to subsist on the lean bodies of the dogs and of their horses, together with such roots—often unknown and poisonous—which they dug up in the forest.
In this condition Gonzalo and his companions reached the borders of the considerable river which, known later as the Napo, is one of the principal Ecuadorian tributaries of the Amazon, and which to them, accustomed to the comparatively small rivers of Europe, seemed an enormous stream, for so far they had not gazed upon the Amazon itself. Some encouragement was derived from this river; its waters were at least a living thing; its current might be a highway leading to the desired land.
