Near that fork of the great river where on the one hand the black waters of the Rio Negro come down from a thousand miles' course from Venezuelan, Colombian and Ecuadorian forests and mingle with the muddy waters borne from the Peruvian Marañon and its tributaries, there stood, in the middle of last century, a riverside village of Indians, a handful of Portuguese, negroes and half-breeds. From this humble beginning a city sprang to being, the geographical and trade centre of the Amazon, with every comfort and every vice of modern civilization. What was the cause of this transformation? It was the discovery of the uses of rubber, the exploitation of the "black gold" of the forests. Manaos grew until the place, to which all the rubber-producing lands of the neighbouring Republics are tributary, provided ninety per cent. of the world's supply of rubber. It has not, however, given its name to this commodity, which has been associated rather with that of Para, another riverside city near the mouth of the Amazon, itself created largely by this trade.
"Formerly the basin of the Amazon was almost unpopulated. In 1848 the city of Belem, the only one in Amazonia, had 15,000 inhabitants, but two years later an epidemic of yellow fever greatly diminished their number. As for Manaos, even thirty years later it was only a village; Mathews, who visited it in 1879, estimated its population at 5,000. The Indian tribes of the forest refused to work; and a few thousand half-breeds, tapuyoz, a mixture of Portuguese, Indian and negro blood—were utterly inadequate to draw upon the wealth that men were beginning to recognize in the bordering forests. Labourers were demanded on every hand. The first immigrants, who settled about Manaos, were Indians from Bolivia and Peru; but their numbers were wholly insufficient.
"It was the influx of the inhabitants of Ceará, during the draught of 1877-79, that made the development of the rubber trade possible. From that date the colonization of the forest proceeded rapidly. The seekers of rubber dispersed themselves throughout Amazonia; but the region most regularly exploited was the basin of the Rio Purus and that of the Rio Jurua. These two rivers are navigable for a greater distance upstream than any other of the affluents of the Amazon, and in the virgin forest, which the rubber-seekers were the first to invade, the exportation of rubber is only possible along the navigable water-ways. The Brazilians who mounted the Purus and the Jurua did not stop at the Bolivian frontier; a war with Bolivia very nearly broke out on the subject of these lands, which a few years earlier had not even been explored. The foundation of the independent Republic of Acré, the treaty of Petropolis, and the cession of Acré to Brazil, were the result of the westerly march of the rubber-seekers.
"The economic development of Amazonia was prodigiously rapid. In 1890 it exported 16,000 tons of rubber; in 1900, 28,000 tons; in 1905, 33,000 tons. It became, next to San Paulo, the most important centre of exportation in Brazil.[21] The cities increased in size; the population of Para surpassed 100,000; that of Manaos attained to 50,000; and this growth of the cities, which was more rapid than the growth of the total population, is an index to the rapidity of the commercial development of the country. The Amazon became one of the great river highways of the world, serving not only the Brazilian Amazon, but also the regions of Peru which are crossed by the upper tributaries, and a portion of Venezuela, where products descend to Manaos by the Rio Negro.
"The exportation of rubber created wealth on all sides. All other occupations were abandoned for the collection of rubber. The herds of cattle on Marajo and the cocoa plantations along the banks were neglected. Similarly, in the neighbouring districts of Guiana the fields and plantations were abandoned on the discovery of 'placer' gold. No one thought of anything but rubber. Up to that time the country had produced its own food; now it had to resort to importation. It became a market in which the other States of Brazil were able to sell their products at a highly profitable rate. All these changes were due to the importation of labour from Ceará."[22]
We have seen elsewhere that the ocean steamer which carries us up the Amazon will reach the Peruvian port of Iquitos, a place of much importance, due to its position in the very heart of the continent, the centre of a vast tributary region, whose value the future will better be able to estimate.
A region of the utmost interest lies before the traveller who will adventure himself upon these tributary streams and the diversified territories which they drain. There might be fleets of motor-boats upon these waterways, whether bent upon pleasurable exploration, whether upon business and trade. The civilized folk of the eastern slopes of the great Cordillera are, metaphorically, stretching out their arms towards the east, casting eager glances thereover, for from thence must come economic prosperity and civilized peoples.
And now, once more, a glance at the past in the great valley, though brief, at those influences which have tried to make for good as against evil: the forces of the Church and the missionary.
The Jesuit friars in Brazil have had terrible charges laid at their doors, but they and the Franciscan friars did noble work in the forests and the rivers among the savage or humble denizens. Had their work been allowed to continue, it might have flourished greatly. Among the missionaries the name of the Padre Samuel Fritz stands out (as did that of Las Casas in the Cordillera and the coast). Fritz gave the greater part of his life, from 1686, in work among these unfortunate Indians. But the fighting between the Spaniards and the Portuguese, around the forts built near Manaos, destroyed this work. The Portuguese dispatched armed bands against the Spaniards, and destroyed the missions and the settlements, waging war in their jealous pretensions over this savage territory.
It will be recollected by students of history that the Popes—among them Paul III—strove to protect the Indians of the Amazon. This Pontiff, in 1537, issued a decree to the effect that "the Indians were men like others." Later, alarmed by the atrocities which were perpetrated in Mexico and Peru upon the aborigines, the Pope sanctioned slavery as a means of avoiding such horrors. In 1639 Pope Urban VIII excommunicated the captors and vendors of Indians, but later the Portuguese Government allowed the establishment of slavery. Under Dom John VI, the Indians were to be considered as "orphans" in the eyes of the law, and to be protected. But the present condition of the Amazon Indians is one in which they appear to have no civil or legal rights.
As regards modern missionary work here, this is full of difficulty, for if it is to be carried out by Protestants it involves a clashing with the Roman Catholic priesthood, which naturally occupies the whole continent. The work, however, whether by Protestant or Catholic, is not by any means neglected, although much greater effort is needful. Such effort should go hand in hand with economic elevation—also a difficult problem, due, in part, to the attitude of vested interests in the field.