The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

This upper river, the Alto-Amazonas, or Solimoens, is always spoken of by the Brazilians as a distinct stream. This is partly owing, as before remarked, to the direction it seems to take at the fork of the Rio Negro; the inhabitants of the country, from their partial knowledge, not being able to comprehend the whole river system in one view. It has, however, many peculiarities to distinguish it from the lower course of the river. The trade-wind, or sea-breeze, which reaches, in the height of the dry season, as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro, 900 or 1000 miles from the Atlantic, never blows on the upper river. The atmosphere is therefore more stagnant and sultry, and the winds that do prevail are of irregular direction and short duration. A great part of the land on the borders of the Lower Amazons is hilly; there are extensive campos, or open plains, and long stretches of sandy soil clothed with thinner forests. The climate, in consequence, is comparatively dry many months in succession during the fine season passing without rain. All this is changed on the Solimoens. A fortnight of clear sunny weather is a rarity: the whole region through which the river and its affluents flow, after leaving the easternmost ridges of the Andes, which Pöppig describes as rising like a wall from the level country, 240 miles from the Pacific, is a vast plain, about 1000 miles in length, and 500 or 600 in breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest. The soil is nowhere sandy, but always either a stiff clay, alluvium, or vegetable mold, which the latter, in many places, is seen in water-worn sections of the river banks to be twenty or thirty feet in depth. With such a soil and climate, the luxuriance of vegetation, and the abundance and beauty of animal forms which are already so great in the region nearer the Atlantic, increase on the upper river. The fruits, both wild and cultivated, common to the two sections of the country, reach a progressively larger size in advancing westward, and some trees, which blossom only once a year at Pará and Santarem, yield flower and fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region whilst we are yet on its threshold. I resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the Andes amounting only to a few score acres. Man, indeed, in any condition, from his small numbers, makes but an insignificant figure in these vast solitudes. It may be mentioned that the Solimoens is 2130 miles in length, if we reckon from the source of what is usually considered the main stream (Lake Lauricocha, near Lima); but 2500 miles by the route of the Ucayali, the most considerable and practicable fork of the upper part of the river. It is navigable at all seasons by large steamers for upwards of 1400 miles from the mouth of the Rio Negro.

On the 28th we passed the mouth of Ariauü, a narrow inlet which communicates with the Rio Negro, emerging in front of Barra. Our vessel was nearly drawn into this by the violent current which set from the Solimoens. The towing-cable was lashed to a strong tree about thirty yards ahead, and it took the whole strength of crew and passengers to pull across. We passed the Guariba, a second channel connecting the two rivers, on the 30th, and on the 31st sailed past a straggling settlement called Manacápurú, situated on a high, rocky bank. Many citizens of Barra have sitios, or country-houses, in this place, although it is eighty miles distant from the town by the nearest road. Beyond Manacápurú all traces of high land cease; both shores of the river, henceforward for many hundred miles, are flat, except in places where the Tabatinga formation appears in clayey elevations of from twenty to forty feet above the line of highest water. The country is so completely destitute of rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is seen during many weeks’ journey. Our voyage was now very monotonous. After leaving the last house at Manacápurú, we travelled nineteen days without seeing a human habitation, the few settlers being located on the banks of inlets or lakes some distance from the shores of the main river. We met only one vessel during the whole of the time, and this did not come within hail, as it was drifting down in the middle of the current in a broad part of the river, two miles from the bank along which we were laboriously warping our course upwards.

After the first two or three days we fell into a regular way of life on board. Our crew was composed of ten Indians of the Cucáma nation, whose native country is a portion of the borders of the upper river in the neighbourhood of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucámas speak the Tupí language, using, however, a harsher accent than is common amongst the semi-civilised Indians from Ega downwards. They are a shrewd, hard-working people, and are the only Indians who willingly, and in a body, engage themselves to navigate the canoes of traders. The pilot, a steady and faithful fellow named Vicente, told me that he and his companions had now been fifteen months absent from their wives and families, and that on arriving at Ega they intended to take the first chance of a passage to Nauta. There was nothing in the appearance of these men to distinguish them from canoemen in general. Some were tall and well built, others had squat figures with broad shoulders and excessively thick arms and legs. No two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head: Vicente had an oval visage, with fine regular features, whilst a little dumpy fellow, the wag of the party, was quite a Mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of eyes; but these two formed the extremes as to face and figure. None of them were tattooed or disfigured in any way and they were all quite destitute of beard. The Cucámas are notorious on the river for their provident habits. The desire of acquiring property is so rare a trait in Indians, that the habits of these people are remarked on with surprise by the Brazilians. The first possession which they strive to acquire on descending the river into Brazil, which all the Peruvian Indians look upon as a richer country than their own, is a wooden trunk with lock and key; in this they stow away carefully all their earnings converted into clothing, hatchets, knives, harpoon heads, needles and thread, and so forth. Their wages are only fourpence or sixpence a day, which is often paid in goods charged one hundred per cent above Pará prices, so that it takes them a long time to fill their chest.

It would be difficult to find a better-behaved set of men in a voyage than these poor Indians. During our thirty-five days’ journey they lived and worked together in the most perfect good fellowship. I never heard an angry word pass amongst them. Senhor Estulano let them navigate the vessel in their own way, exerting his authority only now and then when they were inclined to be lazy. Vicente regulated the working hours. These depended on the darkness of the nights. In the first and second quarters of the moon they kept it up with espia, or oars, until almost midnight; in the third and fourth quarters they were allowed to go to sleep soon after sunset, and were aroused at three or four o’clock in the morning to resume their work. On cool, rainy days we all bore a hand at the espia, trotting with bare feet on the sloppy deck in Indian file to the tune of some wild boatman’s chorus. We had a favorable wind for only two days out of the thirty-five, by which we made about forty miles, the rest of our long journey was accomplished literally by pulling our way from tree to tree. When we encountered a remanso near the shore, we got along very pleasantly for a few miles by rowing: but this was a rare occurrence. During leisure hours the Indians employed themselves in sewing. Vicente was a good hand at cutting out shirts and trousers, and acted as master tailor to the whole party, each of whom had a thick steel thimble and a stock of needles and thread of his own. Vicente made for me a set of blue-check cotton shirts during the passage.

The goodness of these Indians, like that of most others amongst whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad qualities, than in the possession of good ones; in other words, it was negative rather than positive. Their phlegmatic, apathetic temperament, coldness of desire and deadness of feeling, want of curiosity and slowness of intellect, make the Amazonian Indians very uninteresting companions anywhere. Their imagination is of a dull, gloomy, quality and they seemed never to be stirred by the emotions:—love, pity, admiration, fear, wonder, joy, or enthusiasm. These are characteristics of the whole race. The good fellowship of our Cucámas seemed to arise not from warm sympathy, but simply from the absence of eager selfishness in small matters. On the morning when the favourable wind sprung up, one of the crew, a lad of about seventeen years of age, was absent ashore at the time of starting, having gone alone in one of the montarias to gather wild fruit. The sails were spread and we travelled for several hours at great speed, leaving the poor fellow to paddle after us against the strong current. Vicente, who might have waited a few minutes at starting, and the others, only laughed when the hardship of their companion was alluded to. He overtook us at night, having worked his way with frightful labor the whole day without a morsel of food. He grinned when he came on board, and not a dozen words were said on either side.

Their want of curiosity is extreme. One day we had an unusually sharp thunder shower. The crew were lying about the deck, and after each explosion all set up a loud laugh; the wag of the party exclaiming: “There’s my old uncle hunting again!” an expression showing the utter emptiness of mind of the spokesman. I asked Vicente what he thought was the cause of lightning and thunder? He said, “Timaá ichoquá,”—I don’t know. He had never given the subject a moment’s thought! It was the same with other things. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees? He didn’t know, and had never heard the subject mentioned amongst his tribe. The Tupí language, at least as taught by the old Jesuits, has a word—Tupána—signifying God. Vicente sometimes used this word, but he showed by his expressions that he did not attach the idea of a Creator to it. He seemed to think it meant some deity or visible image which the whites worshipped in the churches he had seen in the villages. None of the Indian tribes on the Upper Amazons have an idea of a Supreme Being, and consequently have no word to express it in their own language. Vicente thought the river on which we were travelling encircled the whole earth, and that the land was an island like those seen in the stream, but larger. Here a gleam of curiosity and imagination in the Indian mind is revealed: the necessity of a theory of the earth and water has been felt, and a theory has been suggested. In all other matters not concerning the common wants of life, the mind of Vicente was a blank and such I always found to be the case with the Indian in his natural state. Would a community of any race of men be otherwise, were they isolated for centuries in a wilderness like the Amazonian Indians, associated in small numbers wholly occupied in procuring a mere subsistence, and without a written language, or a leisured class to hand down acquired knowledge from generation to generation?

One day a smart squall gave us a good lift onward; it came with a cold, fine, driving rain, which enveloped the desolate landscape as with a mist; the forest swayed and roared with the force of the gale, and flocks of birds were driven about in alarm over the tree tops. On another occasion a similar squall came from an unfavourable quarter; it fell upon us quite unawares, when we had all our sails out to dry, and blew us broadside foremost on the shore. The vessel was fairly lifted on to the tall bushes which lined the banks, but we sustained no injury beyond the entanglement of our rigging in the branches. The days and nights usually passed in a dead calm, or with light intermittent winds from up river, and consequently full against us. We landed twice a day to give ourselves and the Indians a little rest and change, and to cook our two meals—breakfast and dinner. There was another passenger besides myself—a cautious, middle-aged Portuguese, who was going to settle at Ega, where he had a brother long since established. He was accommodated in the fore-cabin, or arched covering over the hold. I shared the cabin-proper with Senhores Estulano and Manoel, the latter a young half-caste, son-in-law to the owner of the vessel, under whose tuition I made good progress in learning the Tupí language during the voyage.

Our men took it in turns, two at a time, to go out fishing; for which purpose we carried a spare montaria. The master had brought from Barra as provision, nothing but stale, salt pirarucú—half rotten fish, in large, thin, rusty slabs—farinha, coffee, and treacle. In these voyages, passengers are expected to provide for themselves, as no charge is made except for freight of the heavy luggage or cargo they take with them. The Portuguese and myself had brought a few luxuries, such as beans, sugar, biscuits, tea, and so forth; but we found ourselves almost obliged to share them with our two companions and the pilot, so that before the voyage was one-third finished, the small stock of most of these articles was exhausted. In return, we shared in whatever the men brought. Sometimes they were quite unsuccessful, for fish is extremely difficult to procure in the season of high water, on account of the lower lands lying between the inlets and infinite chain of pools and lakes being flooded from the main river, thus increasing tenfold the area over which the finny population has to range. On most days, however, they brought two or three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or Vacca marina. On this last-mentioned occasion we made quite a holiday; the canoe was stopped for six or seven hours, and all turned out into the forest to help skin and cook the animal. The meat was cut into cubical slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these on a long stick. Fires were made, and the spits stuck in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast. A drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails and slime which were scattered about. The meat has somewhat the taste of very coarse pork; but the fat, which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour. The animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in length, and nine in girth at the broadest part. The manatee is one of the few objects which excite the dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstanding its commonness. The fact of its suckling its young at the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, seems to strike them as something very strange. The animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, lead-coloured skin reminded me of those Egyptian tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped to the human figure.

Notwithstanding the hard fare, the confinement of the canoe, the trying weather,—frequent and drenching rains, with gleams of fiery sunshine,—and the woeful desolation of the river scenery, I enjoyed the voyage on the whole. We were not much troubled by mosquitoes, and therefore passed the nights very pleasantly, sleeping on deck wrapped in blankets or old sails. When the rains drove us below we were less comfortable, as there was only just room in the small cabin for three of us to lie close together, and the confined air was stifling. I became inured to the Piums in the course of the first week; all the exposed parts of my body, by that time, being so closely covered with black punctures that the little bloodsuckers could not very easily find an unoccupied place to operate upon. Poor Miguel, the Portuguese, suffered horribly from these pests, his ankles and wrists being so much inflamed that he was confined to his hammock, slung in the hold, for weeks. At every landing place I had a ramble in the forest, whilst the redskins made the fire and cooked the meal. The result was a large daily addition to my collection of insects, reptiles, and shells. Sometimes the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and spacious forest, pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind or other. The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest degree by groves of the Urucurí palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by the thousands under the crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees; their smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The fruit of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places where we encamped. It is similar in size and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly-flavoured juicy pulp. The Indians would not eat it; I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable. Vicente shook his head when he saw me one day eating a quantity of the Urucurí plums. I am not sure they were not the cause of a severe indigestion under which I suffered for many days afterwards.