The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

On the 27th we reached an elevated wooded promontory, called Parentins, which now forms the boundary between the provinces of Pará and the Amazons. Here we met a small canoe descending to Santarem. The owner was a free negro named Lima, who, with his wife, was going down the river to exchange his year’s crop of tobacco for European merchandise. The long shallow canoe was laden nearly to the water level. He resided on the banks of the Abacaxí, a river which discharges its waters into the Canomá, a broad interior channel which extends from the river Madeira to the Parentins, a distance of 180 miles. Penna offered him advantageous terms, so a bargain was struck, and the man saved his long journey. The negro seemed a frank, straightforward fellow; he was a native of Pernambuco, but had settled many years ago in this part of the country. He had with him a little Indian girl belonging to the Mauhés tribe, whose native seat is the district of country lying in the rear of the Canomá, between the Madeira and the Tapajos. The Mauhés are considered, I think with truth, to be a branch of the great Mundurucú nation, having segregated from them at a remote period, and by long isolation acquired different customs and a totally different language, in a manner which seems to have been general with the Brazilian aborigines. The Mundurucús seem to have retained more of the general characteristics of the original Tupí stock than the Mauhés. Senhor Lima told me, what I afterwards found to be correct, that there were scarcely two words alike in the languages of the two peoples, although there are words closely allied to Tupí in both. The little girl had not the slightest trace of the savage in her appearance. Her features were finely shaped, the cheek-bones not at all prominent, the lips thin, and the expression of her countenance frank and smiling. She had been brought only a few weeks previously from a remote settlement of her tribe on the banks of the Abacaxí, and did not yet know five words of Portuguese. The Indians, as a general rule, are very manageable when they are young, but it is a general complaint that when they reach the age of puberty they become restless and discontented. The rooted impatience of all restraint then shows itself, and the kindest treatment will not prevent them running away from their masters; they do not return to the malocas of their tribes, but join parties who go out to collect the produce of the forests and rivers, and lead a wandering semi-savage kind of life.

We remained under the Serra dos Parentins all night. Early the next morning a light mist hung about the tree-tops, and the forest resounded with the yelping of Whaiápu-sai monkeys. I went ashore with my gun and got a glimpse of the flock, but did not succeed in obtaining a specimen. They were of small size and covered with long fur of a uniform grey colour. I think the species was the Callithrix donacophilus. The rock composing the elevated ridge of the Parentins is the same coarse iron-cemented conglomerate which I have often spoken of as occurring near Pará and in several other places. Many loose blocks were scattered about. The forest was extremely varied, and inextricable coils of woody climbers stretched from tree to tree. Thongs of cacti were spread over the rocks and tree-trunks. The variety of small, beautifully-shaped ferns, lichens, and boleti, made the place quite a museum of cryptogamic plants. I found here two exquisite species of Longicorn beetles, and a large kind of grasshopper (Pterochroza) whose broad fore-wings resembled the leaf of a plant, providing the insect with a perfect disguise when they were closed; whilst the hind wings were decorated with gaily-coloured eye-like spots.

The negro left us and turned up a narrow channel, the Paraná-mirim dos Ramos (the little river of the branches, i.e., having many ramifications), on the road to his home, 130 miles distant. We then continued our voyage, and in the evening arrived at Villa Nova, a straggling village containing about seventy houses, many of which scarcely deserve the name, being mere mud-huts roofed with palm-leaves. We stayed here four days. The village is built on a rocky bank, composed of the same coarse conglomerate as that already so often mentioned. In some places a bed of Tabatinga clay rests on the conglomerate. The soil in the neighbourhood is sandy, and the forest, most of which appears to be of second growth, is traversed by broad alleys which terminate to the south and east on the banks of pools and lakes, a chain of which extends through the interior of the land. As soon as we anchored I set off with Luco to explore the district. We walked about a mile along the marly shore, on which was a thick carpet of flowering shrubs, enlivened by a great variety of lovely little butterflies, and then entered the forest by a dry watercourse. About a furlong inland this opened on a broad placid pool, whose banks, clothed with grass of the softest green hue, sloped gently from the water’s edge to the compact wall of forest which encompassed the whole. The pool swarmed with water-fowl; snowy egrets, dark-coloured striped herons, and storks of various species standing in rows around its margins. Small flocks of macaws were stirring about the topmost branches of the trees. Long-legged piosócas (Perra Jacana) stalked over the water plants on the surface of the pool, and in the bushes on its margin were great numbers of a kind of canary (Sycalis brasiliensis) of a greenish-yellow colour, which has a short and not very melodious song. We had advanced but a few steps when we startled a pair of the Jaburú-moleque (Mycteria americana), a powerful bird of the stork family, four and a half feet in height, which flew up and alarmed the rest, so that I got only one bird out of the tumultuous flocks which passed over our heads. Passing towards the farther end of the pool I saw, resting on the surface of the water, a number of large round leaves turned up at their edges; they belonged to the Victoria water-lily. The leaves were just beginning to expand (December 3rd), some were still under water, and the largest of those which had reached the surface measured not quite three feet in diameter. We found a montaria with a paddle in it, drawn up on the bank, which I took leave to borrow of the unknown owner, and Luco paddled me amongst the noble plants to search for flowers, meeting, however, with no success. I learned afterwards that the plant is common in nearly all the lakes of this neighbourhood. The natives call it the furno do Piosoca, or oven of the Jacana, the shape of the leaves being like that of the ovens on which Mandioca meal is roasted. We saw many kinds of hawks and eagles, one of which, a black species, the Caracára-í (Milvago nudicollis), sat on the top of a tall naked stump, uttering its hypocritical whining notes. This eagle is considered a bird of ill omen by the Indians: it often perches on the tops of trees in the neighbourhood of their huts, and is then said to bring a warning of death to some member of the household. Others say that its whining cry is intended to attract other defenceless birds within its reach. The little courageous flycatcher Bem-ti-vi (Saurophagus sulphuratus) assembles in companies of four or five, and attacks it boldly, driving it from the perch where it would otherwise sit for hours. I shot three hawks of as many different species; and these, with a Magoary stork, two beautiful gilded-green jacamars (Galbula chalcocephala), and half-a-dozen leaves of the water-lily, made a heavy load, with which we trudged off back to the canoe.

A few years after this visit, namely, in 1854-5, I passed eight months at Villa Nova. The district of which it is the chief town is very extensive, for it has about forty miles of linear extent along the banks of the river; but, the whole does not contain more than 4000 inhabitants. More than half of these are pure-blood Indians who live in a semi-civilised condition on the banks of the numerous channels and lakes. The trade of the place is chiefly in India-rubber, balsam of Copaiba (which are collected on the banks of the Madeira and the numerous rivers that enter the Canomá channel), and salt fish, prepared in the dry season, nearer home. These articles are sent to Pará in exchange for European goods. The few Indian and half-breed families who reside in the town are many shades inferior in personal qualities and social condition to those I lived amongst near Pará and Cametá. They live in wretched dilapidated mud-hovels; the women cultivate small patches of mandioca; the men spend most of their time in fishing, selling what they do not require themselves and getting drunk with the most exemplary regularity on cashaca, purchased with the proceeds.

I made, in this second visit to Villa Nova, an extensive collection of the natural productions of the neighbourhood. A few remarks on some of the more interesting of these must suffice. The forests are very different in their general character from those of Pará, and in fact those of humid districts generally throughout the Amazons. The same scarcity of large-leaved Musaceous and Marantaceous plants was noticeable here as at Obydos. The low-lying areas of forest or Ygapós, which alternate everywhere with the more elevated districts, did not furnish the same luxuriant vegetation as they do in the Delta region of the Amazons. They are flooded during three or four months in the year, and when the waters retire, the soil—to which the very thin coating of alluvial deposit imparts little fertility—remains bare, or covered with a matted bed of dead leaves until the next flood season. These tracts have then a barren appearance; the trunks and lower branches of the trees are coated with dried slime, and disfigured by rounded masses of fresh-water sponges, whose long horny spiculæ and dingy colours give them the appearance of hedgehogs. Dense bushes of a harsh, cutting grass, called Tiriríca, form almost the only fresh vegetation in the dry season. Perhaps the dense shade, the long period during which the land remains under water, and the excessively rapid desiccation when the waters retire, all contribute to the barrenness of these Ygapós. The higher and drier land is everywhere sandy, and tall coarse grasses line the borders of the broad alleys which have been cut through the second-growth woods. These places swarm with carapatos, ugly ticks belonging to the genus Ixodes, which mount to the tips of blades of grass, and attach themselves to the clothes of passers-by. They are a great annoyance. It occupied me a full hour daily to pick them off my flesh after my diurnal ramble. There are two species; both are much flattened in shape, have four pairs of legs, a thick short proboscis and a horny integument. Their habit is to attach themselves to the skin by plunging their proboscides into it, and then suck the blood until their flat bodies are distended into a globular form. The whole proceeding, however, is very slow, and it takes them several days to pump their fill. No pain or itching is felt, but serious sores are caused if care is not taken in removing them, as the proboscis is liable to break off and remain in the wound. A little tobacco juice is generally applied to make them loosen their hold. They do not cling firmly to the skin by their legs, although each of these has a pair of sharp and fine claws connected with the tips of the member by means of a flexible pedicle. When they mount to the summits of slender blades of grass, or the tips of leaves, they hold on by their forelegs only, the other three pairs being stretched out so as to fasten onto any animal which comes their way. The smaller of the two species is of a yellowish colour; it is the most abundant, and sometimes falls upon one by scores. When distended, it is about the size of a No. 8 shot; the larger kind, which fortunately comes only singly to the work, swells to the size of a pea.

In some parts of the interior, the soil is composed of very coarse sand and small fragments of quartz; in these places no trees grow. I visited, in company with the priest, Padre Torquato, one of these treeless spaces or campos, as they are called, situated five miles from the village. The road thither led through a varied and beautiful forest, containing many gigantic trees. I missed the Assai, Mirtí, Paxiúba, and other palms which are all found only on rich moist soils, but the noble Bacába was not uncommon, and there was a great diversity of dwarf species of Marajá palms (Bactris), one of which, called the Peuriríma, was very elegant, growing to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, with a stem no thicker than a man’s finger. On arriving at the campo, all this beautiful forest abruptly ceased, and we saw before us an oval tract of land three or four miles in circumference, destitute even of the smallest bush. The only vegetation was a crop of coarse hairy grass growing in patches. The forest formed a hedge all round the isolated field, and its borders were composed in great part of trees which do not grow in the dense virgin forest, such as a great variety of bushy Melastomas, low Byrsomina trees, myrtles, and Lacre-trees, whose berries exude globules of wax resembling gamboge. On the margins of the campo wild pine-apples also grew in great quantity. The fruit was of the same shape as our cultivated kind, but much smaller, the size being that of a moderately large apple. We gathered several quite ripe ones; they were pleasant to the taste, of the true pine-apple flavour, but had an abundance of fully developed seeds, and only a small quantity of eatable pulp. There was no path beyond this campo; in fact, all beyond is terra incognita to the inhabitants of Villa Nova.

The only interesting Mammalian animal which I saw at Villa Nova was a monkey of a species new to me; it was not, however, a native of the district, having been brought by a trader from the river Madeira, a few miles above Borba. It was a howler, probably the Mycetes stramineus of Geoffroy St. Hilaire. The howlers are the only kinds of monkey which the natives have not succeeded in taming. They are often caught, but they do not survive captivity many weeks. The one of which I am speaking was not quite full grown. It measured sixteen inches in length, exclusive of the tail; the whole body was covered with rather long and shining dingy-white hair, the whiskers and beard only being of a tawny hue. It was kept in a house, together with a Coaitá and a Caiarára monkey (Cebus albifrons). Both these lively members of the monkey order seemed rather to court attention, but the Mycetes slunk away when anyone approached it. When it first arrived, it occasionally made a gruff subdued howling noise early in the morning. The deep volume of sound in the voice of the howling monkeys, as is well known, is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the larynx. It was curious to watch the animal whilst venting its hollow cavernous roar, and observe how small was the muscular exertion employed. When howlers are seen in the forest, there are generally three or four of them mounted on the topmost branches of a tree. It does not appear that their harrowing roar is emitted from sudden alarm; at least, it was not so in captive individuals. It is probable, however, that the noise serves to intimidate their enemies. I did not meet with the Mycetes stramineus in any other part of the Amazons region; in the neighbourhood of Pará a reddish-coloured species prevails (M. Belzebuth); in the narrow channels near Breves I shot a large, entirely black kind; another yellow-handed species, according to the report of the natives, inhabits the island of Macajó, which is probably the M. flavimanus of Kuhl; some distance up the Tapajos the only howler found is a brownish-black species; and on the Upper Amazons, the sole species seen was the Mycetes ursinus, whose fur is of a shining yellowish-red colour.

In the dry forests of Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time. I was returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering noise close to me. Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the noise was a warning that it was about to fall. The wind lulled for a few moments, and then there was no doubt that the noise proceeded from the ground. On turning my head in that direction, a sudden plunge startled me, and a heavy gliding motion betrayed a large serpent making off almost from beneath my feet. The ground is always so encumbered with rotting leaves and branches that one only discovers snakes when they are in the act of moving away. The residents of Villa Nova would not believe that I had seen a rattlesnake in their neighbourhood; in fact, it is not known to occur in the forests at all, its place being the open campos, where, near Santarem, I killed several. On my second visit to Villa Nova I saw another. I had then a favourite little dog, named Diamante, who used to accompany me in my rambles. One day he rushed into the thicket, and made a dead set at a large snake, whose head I saw raised above the herbage. The foolish little brute approached quite close, and then the serpent reared its tail slightly in a horizontal position and shook its terrible rattle. It was many minutes before I could get the dog away; and this incident, as well as the one already related, shows how slow the reptile is to make the fatal spring.