The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

There were other strangers under Senhor Joaquim’s roof besides myself—mulattos, mamelucos, and Indian,—so we formed altogether a large party. Houses occur at rare intervals in this wild country, and hospitality is freely given to the few passing travellers. After a frugal supper, a large wood fire was lighted in the middle of the shed, and all turned in to their hammocks, and began to converse. A few of the party soon dropped asleep; others, however, kept awake until a very late hour telling stories. Some related adventures which had happened to them whilst hunting or fishing; others recounted myths about the Curupíra, and other demons or spirits of the forest. They were all very appropriate to the time and place, for now and then a yell or a shriek resounded through the gloomy wilderness around the shed. One old parchment-faced fellow, with a skin the colour of mahogany, seemed to be a capital story-teller; but I was sorry I did not know enough of the language to follow him in all the details which he gave. Amongst other things, he related an adventure he had once had with a jaguar. He got up from his hammock in the course of the narrative to give it the greater effect by means of gestures; he seized a bow and a large taquará arrow to show how he slew the beast, imitated its hoarse growl, and danced about the fire like a demon.

In descending the river we landed frequently, and Mr. Wallace and I lost no chance of adding to our collections, so that before the end of our journey, we had got together a very considerable number of birds, insects, and shells, chiefly taken, however, in the low country. Leaving Baiao, we took our last farewell of the limpid waters and varied scenery of the upper river, and found ourselves again in the humid flat region of the Amazons valley. We sailed down this lower part of the river by a different channel from the one we travelled along in ascending, and frequently went ashore on the low islands in mid-river. As already stated, these are covered with water in the wet season; but at this time, there having been three months of fine weather, they were dry throughout, and by the subsidence of the waters, placed four or five feet above the level of the river. They are covered with a most luxuriant forest, comprising a large number of india-rubber trees. We found several people encamped here, who were engaged in collecting and preparing the rubber, and thus had an opportunity of observing the process.

The tree which yields this valuable sap is the Siphonia elastica, a member of the Euphorbiaceous order; it belongs, therefore, to a group of plants quite different from that which furnishes the caoutchouc of the East Indies and Africa. This latter is the product of different species of Ficus, and is considered, I believe, in commerce, an inferior article to the India-rubber of Pará. The Siphonia elastica grows only on the lowlands in the Amazons region; hitherto, the rubber has been collected chiefly in the islands and swampy parts of the mainland within a distance of fifty to a hundred miles to the west of Pará; but there are plenty of untapped trees still growing in the wilds of the Tapajos, Madeira, Juruá, and Jauarí, as far as 1800 miles from the Atlantic coast. The tree is not remarkable in appearance; in bark and foliage it is not unlike the European ash. But the trunk, like that of all forest trees, shoots up to an immense height before throwing off branches. The trees seem to be no man’s property hereabout. The people we met with told us they came every year to collect rubber on these islands as soon as the waters had subsided, namely in August, and remained until January or February. The process is very simple. Every morning each person, man or woman, to whom is allotted a certain number of trees, goes the round of the whole and collects in a large vessel the milky sap which trickles from gashes made in the bark on the preceding evening, and which is received in little clay cups, or in ampullaria shells stuck beneath the wounds. The sap, which at first is of the consistence of cream, soon thickens; the collectors are provided with a great number of wooden moulds of the shape in which the rubber is wanted, and when they return to the camp, they dip them into the liquid, laying on, in the course of several days, one coat after another. When this is done, the substance is white and hard; the proper colour and consistency are given by passing it repeatedly through a thick black smoke obtained by burning the nuts of certain palm trees, after which process the article is ready for sale. India-rubber is known throughout the province only by the name of seringa, the Portuguese word for syringe; it owes this appellation to the circumstance that it was only in this form that the first Portuguese settlers noticed it to be employed by the aborigines. It is said that the Indians were first taught to make syringes of rubber by seeing natural tubes formed by it when the spontaneously-flowing sap gathered round projecting twigs. Brazilians of all classes still use it extensively in the form of syringes, for injections form a great feature in the popular system of cures; the rubber for this purpose is made into a pear- shaped bottle, and a quill fixed in the long neck.

September 24th.—Opposite Cametá, the islands are all planted with cacao, the tree which yields the chocolate nut. The forest is not cleared for the purpose, but the cacao plants are stuck in here and there almost at random amongst the trees. There are many houses on the banks of the river, all elevated above the swampy soil on wooden piles, and furnished with broad ladders by which to mount to the ground floor. As we passed by in our canoe, we could see the people at their occupations in the open verandas, and in one place saw a ball going on in broad daylight; there were fiddles and guitars hard at work, and a number of lads in white shirts and trousers dancing with brown damsels clad in showy print dresses. The cacao tree produces a curious impression on account of the flowers and fruit growing directly out of the trunk and branches. There is a whole group of wild fruit trees which have the same habit in this country. In the wildernesses where the cacao is planted, the collecting of the fruit is dangerous due to the number of poisonous snakes which inhabit the places. One day, when we were running our montaria to a landing-place, we saw a large serpent on the trees overhead as we were about to brush past; the boat was stopped just in the nick of time, and Mr. Leavens brought the reptile down with a charge of shot.

September 26th.—At length we got clear of the islands, and saw once more before us the sea-like expanse of waters which forms the mouth of the Tocantins. The river had now sunk to its lowest point, and numbers of fresh-water dolphins were rolling about in shoaly places. There are here two species, one of which was new to science when I sent specimens to England; it is called the Tucuxí (Steno tucuxi of Gray). When it comes to the surface to breathe, it rises horizontally, showing first its back fin, then draws an inspiration, and dives gently down, head foremost. This mode of proceeding distinguishes the Tucuxí at once from the other species, which is called Bouto or porpoise by the natives (Inia Geoffroyi of Desmarest). When this rises the top of the head is the part first seen; it then blows, and immediately afterwards dips head downwards, its back curving over, exposing successively the whole dorsal ridge with its fin. It seems thus to pitch heels over head, but does not show the tail fin. Besides this peculiar motion, it is distinguished from the Tucuxí by its habit of generally going in pairs. Both species are exceedingly numerous throughout the Amazons and its larger tributaries, but they are nowhere more plentiful than in the shoaly water at the mouth of the Tocantins, especially in the dry season. In the Upper Amazons a third pale flesh-coloured species is also abundant (the Delphinus pallidus of Gervais). With the exception of a species found in the Ganges, all other varieties of dolphin inhabit the sea exclusively. In the broader parts of the Amazons, from its mouth to a distance of fifteen hundred miles in the interior, one or other of the three kinds here mentioned are always heard rolling, blowing, and snorting, especially at night, and these noises contribute much to the impression of sea-wide vastness and desolation which haunts the traveller. Besides dolphins in the water, frigate birds in the air are characteristic of this lower part of the Tocantins. Flocks of them were seen the last two or three days of our journey, hovering above at an immense height. Towards night, we were obliged to cast anchor over a shoal in the middle of the river to await the ebb tide. The wind blew very strongly, and this, together with the incoming flow, caused such a heavy sea that it was impossible to sleep. The vessel rolled and pitched until every bone in our bodies ached with the bumps we received, and we were all more or less sea-sick. On the following day we entered the Anapú, and on the 30th September, after threading again the labyrinth of channels communicating between the Tocantins and the Moju, arrived at Pará.

I will now give a short account of Cametá, the principal town on the banks of the Tocantins, which I visited for the second time, in June, 1849; Mr. Wallace, in the same month, departed from Pará to explore the rivers Guamá and Capim. I embarked as passenger in a Cametá trading vessel, the St. John, a small schooner of thirty tons burthen. I had learnt by this time that the only way to attain the objects for which I had come to this country was to accustom myself to the ways of life of the humbler classes of the inhabitants. A traveller on the Amazons gains little by being furnished with letters of recommendation to persons of note, for in the great interior wildernesses of forest and river the canoe-men have pretty much their own way; the authorities cannot force them to grant passages or to hire themselves to travellers, and therefore, a stranger is obliged to ingratiate himself with them in order to get conveyed from place to place. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey to Cametá; the weather was again beautiful in the extreme. We started from Pará at sunrise on the 8th of June, and on the 10th emerged from the narrow channels of the Anapu into the broad Tocantins. The vessel was so full of cargo that there was no room to sleep in the cabin; so we passed the nights on deck. The captain or supercargo, called in Portuguese cabo, was a mameluco, named Manoel, a quiet, good-humoured person, who treated me with the most unaffected civility during the three days’ journey. The pilot was also a mameluco, named John Mendez, a handsome young fellow, full of life and spirit. He had on board a wire guitar or viola, as it is here called; and in the bright moonlight nights, as we lay at anchor hour after hour waiting for the tide, he enlivened us all with songs and music. He was on the best of terms with the cabo, both sleeping in the same hammock slung between the masts. I passed the nights wrapped in an old sail outside the roof of the cabin. The crew, five in number, were Indians and half-breeds, all of whom treated their two superiors with the most amusing familiarity, yet I never sailed in a better managed vessel than the St. John.

In crossing to Cametá we had to await the flood-tide in a channel called Entre-as-Ilhas, which lies between two islands in mid- river, and John Mendez, being in good tune, gave us an extempore song, consisting of a great number of verses. The crew lay about the deck listening, and all joined in the chorus. Some stanzas related to me, telling how I had come all the way from “Inglaterra,” to skin monkeys and birds and catch insects; the last-mentioned employment of course giving ample scope for fun. He passed from this to the subject of political parties in Cametá; and then, as all the hearers were Cametaenses and understood the hits, there were roars of laughter, some of them rolling over and over on the deck, so much were they tickled. Party spirit runs high at Cametá, not merely in connection with local politics, but in relation to affairs of general concern, such as the election of members to the Imperial Parliament, and so forth. This political strife is partly attributable to the circumstance that a native of Cametá, Dr. Angelo Custodio Correia, had been in almost every election, one of the candidates for the representation of the province. I fancied these shrewd but unsophisticated canoe-men saw through the absurdities attending these local contests, and hence their inclination to satirise them; they were, however, evidently partisans of Dr. Angelo. The brother of Dr. Angelo, Joao Augusto Correia, a distinguished merchant, was an active canvasser. The party of the Correias was the Liberal, or, as it is called throughout Brazil, the Santa Luzia faction; the opposite side, at the head of which was one Pedro Moraes, was the Conservative, or Saquarema party. I preserved one of the stanzas of the song, which, however, does not contain much point; it ran thus:—

Ora paná, tana paná!, pana taná,
Joao Augusto hé bonito e homem pimpao,
Mas Pedro hé feio e hum grande ladrao,
(Chorus) Ora paná, etc.
John Augustus is handsome and as a man ought to be,
But Peter is ugly and a great thief.
(Chorus) Ora paná, etc.

The canoe-men of the Amazons have many songs and choruses, with which they are in the habit of relieving the monotony of their slow voyages, and which are known all over the interior. The choruses consist of a simple strain, repeated almost to weariness, and sung generally in unison, but sometimes with an attempt at harmony. There is a wildness and sadness about the tunes which harmonise well with, and in fact are born of, the circumstances of the canoe-man’s life: the echoing channels, the endless gloomy forests, the solemn nights, and the desolate scenes of broad and stormy waters and falling banks. Whether they were invented by the Indians or introduced by the Portuguese it is hard to decide, as many of the customs of the lower classes of Portuguese are so similar to those of the Indians that they have become blended with them. One of the commonest songs is very wild and pretty. It has for refrain the words “Mai, Mai” (“Mother, Mother”), with a long drawl on the second word. The stanzas are quite variable; the best wit on board starts the verse, improvising as he goes on, and the others join in the chorus. They all relate to the lonely river life and the events of the voyage—the shoals, the wind, how far they shall go before they stop to sleep, and so forth. The sonorous native names of places, Goajará, Tucumandúba, etc., add greatly to the charm of the wild music. Sometimes they bring in the stars thus:—

A lua está sahindo,
Mai, Mai!
A lua está sahindo,
Mai, Mai!
As sete estrellas estao chorando,
Mai, Mai!
Por s’acharem desamparados,
Mai, Mai!