Point Jaguararí forms at this season of the year a high sandbank, which is prolonged as a narrow spit, stretching about three miles towards the middle of the river. We rounded this with great difficulty on the night of the 29th, reaching before daylight a good shelter behind a similar sandbank at Point Acarátingari, a headland situated not more than five miles in a straight line from our last anchoring place. We remained here all day; the men beating timbó in a quiet pool between the sandbank and the mainland, and obtaining a great quantity of fish, from which I selected six species new to my collection. We made rather better progress the two following nights, but the terral now always blew strongly from the north-north-east after midnight, and thus limited the hours during which we could navigate, forcing us to seek the nearest shelter to avoid being driven back faster than we came.
On the 2nd of October, we reached Point Cajetúba and had a pleasant day ashore. The river scenery in this neighbourhood is of the greatest beauty. A few houses of settlers are seen at the bottom of the broad bay of Aramána-í at the foot of a range of richly-timbered hills, the high beach of snow-white sand stretching in a bold curve from point to point. The opposite shores of the river are ten or eleven miles distant, but towards the north is a clear horizon of water and sky. The country near Point Cajetúba is similar to the neighbourhood of Santarem: namely, campos with scattered trees. We gathered a large quantity of wild fruit: Cajú, Umirí, and Aápiránga. The Umirí berry (Humirium floribundum) is a black drupe similar in appearance to the Damascene plum, and not greatly unlike it in taste. The Aápiránga is a bright vermilion-coloured berry, with a hard skin and a sweet viscid pulp enclosing the seeds. Between the point and Altar do Chao was a long stretch of sandy beach with moderately deep water; our men, therefore, took a rope ashore and towed the cuberta at merry speed until we reached the village. A long, deeply laden canoe with miners from the interior provinces passed us here. It was manned by ten Indians, who propelled the boat by poles; the men, five on each side, trotting one after the other along a plank arranged for the purpose from stem to stern.
It took us two nights to double Point Cururú, where, as already mentioned, the river bends from its northerly course beyond Altar do Chao. A confused pile of rocks, on which many a vessel heavily laden with farinha has been wrecked, extends at the season of low water from the foot of a high bluff far into the stream. We were driven back on the first night (October 3rd) by a squall. The light terral was carrying us pleasantly round the spit, when a small black cloud which lay near the rising moon suddenly spread over the sky to the northward; the land breeze then ceased, and furious blasts began to blow across the river. We regained, with great difficulty, the shelter of the point. It blew almost a hurricane for two hours, during the whole of which time the sky over our heads was beautifully clear and starlit. Our shelter at first was not very secure, for the wind blew away the lashings of our sails, and caused our anchor to drag. Angelo Custodio, however, seized a rope which was attached to the foremast, and leapt ashore; had he not done so, we should probably have been driven many miles backwards up the storm-tossed river. After the cloud had passed, the regular east wind began to blow, and our further progress was effectually stopped for the night. The next day we all went ashore, after securing well the canoe, and slept from eleven o’clock till five under the shade of trees.
The distance between Point Cururú and Santarem was accomplished in three days, against the same difficulties of contrary and furious winds, shoaly water, and rocky coasts. I was thankful at length to be safely housed, with the whole of my collections, made under so many privations and perils, landed without the loss or damage of a specimen. The men, after unloading the canoe and delivering it to its owner, came to receive their payment. They took part in goods and part in money, and after a good supper, on the night of the 7th October, shouldered their bundles and set off to walk by land some eighty miles to their homes. I was rather surprised at the good feeling exhibited by these poor Indians at parting. Angelo Custodio said that whenever I should wish to make another voyage up the Tapajos, he would be always ready to serve me as pilot. Alberto was undemonstrative as usual; but Ricardo, with whom I had had many sharp quarrels, actually shed tears when he shook hands and bid me the final “adios.”
Chapter X.
THE UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA
Departure from Barra — First Day and Night on the Upper Amazons — Desolate Appearance of River in the Flood Season — Cucáma Indians — Mental Condition of Indians — Squalls — Manatee — Forest — Floating Pumice Stones from the Andes — Falling Banks — Ega and its Inhabitants — Daily Life of a Naturalist at Ega — The Four Seasons of the Upper Amazons.
I must now take the reader from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters, to the boundless wooded plains, and yellow turbid current of the Upper Amazons or Solimoens. I will resume the narrative of my first voyage up the river, which was interrupted at the Barra of the Rio Negro in the seventh chapter, to make way for the description of Santarem and its neighbourhood.
I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent, with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars. The owner, an old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra attending the assizes as juryman, a public duty performed without remuneration, which took him six weeks away from his business. He was about to leave Barra himself, in a small boat, and recommended me to send forward my heavy baggage in the cuberta and make the journey with him. He would reach Ega, 370 miles distant from Barra, in twelve or fourteen days; whilst the large vessel would be thirty or forty days on the road. I preferred, however, to go in company with my luggage, looking forward to the many opportunities I should have of landing and making collections on the banks of the river.
I shipped the collections made between Pará and the Rio Negro in a large cutter which was about descending to the capital, and after a heavy day’s work got all my chests aboard the Ega canoe by eight o’clock at night. The Indians were then all embarked, one of them being brought dead drunk by his companions, and laid to sober himself all night on the wet boards of the tombadilha. The cabo, a spirited young white, named Estulano Alves Carneiro, who has since risen to be a distinguished citizen of the new province of the Upper Amazons, soon after gave orders to get up the anchor. The men took to the oars, and in a few hours we crossed the broad mouth of the Rio Negro; the night being clear, calm, and starlit, and the surface of the inky waters smooth as a lake.
When I awoke the next morning, we were progressing by espia along the left bank of the Solimoens. The rainy season had now set in over the region through which the great river flows; the sand-banks and all the lower lands were already under water, and the tearing current, two or three miles in breadth, bore along a continuous line of uprooted trees and islets of floating plants. The prospect was most melancholy; no sound was heard but the dull murmur of the waters; the coast along which we travelled all day was encumbered every step of the way with fallen trees, some of which quivered in the currents which set around projecting points of land. Our old pest, the Motúca, began to torment us as soon as the sun gained power in the morning. White egrets were plentiful at the edge of the water, and humming-birds, in some places, were whirring about the flowers overhead. The desolate appearance of the landscape increased after sunset, when the moon rose in mist.