The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

I lived, as may already have been seen, on the best of terms with the inhabitants of Ega. Refined society, of course, there was none; but the score or so of decent quiet families which constituted the upper class of the place were very sociable; their manners offered a curious mixture of naive rusticity and formal politeness; the great desire to be thought civilised leads the most ignorant of these people (and they are all very ignorant, although of quick intelligence) to be civil and kind to strangers from Europe. I was never troubled with that impertinent curiosity on the part of the people in these interior places which some travellers complain of in other countries. The Indians and lower half-castes—at least such of them who gave any thought to the subject—seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country. The butterflies they universally concluded to be wanted as patterns for bright-coloured calico-prints. As to the better sort of people, I had no difficulty in making them understand that each European capital had a public museum, in which were sought to be stored specimens of all natural productions in the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. They could not comprehend how a man could study science for its own sake; but I told them I was collecting for the “Museo de Londres,” and was paid for it; that was very intelligible. One day, soon after my arrival, when I was explaining these things to a listening circle seated on benches in the grassy street, one of the audience, a considerable tradesman, a Mameluco native of Ega, got suddenly quite enthusiastic, and exclaimed, “How rich are these great nations of Europe! We half-civilised creatures know nothing. Let us treat this stranger well, that he may stay amongst us and teach our children.” We very frequently had social parties, with dancing and so forth; of these relaxations I shall have more to say presently. The manners of the Indian population also gave me some amusement for a long time. During the latter part of my residence, three wandering Frenchmen, and two Italians, some of them men of good education, on their road one after the other from the Andes down the Amazons, became enamoured of this delightfully situated and tranquil spot, and made up their minds to settle here for the remainder of their lives. Three of them ended by marrying native women. I found the society of these friends a very agreeable change.

There were, of course, many drawbacks to the amenities of the place as a residence for a European; but these were not of a nature that my readers would perhaps imagine. There was scarcely any danger from wild animals: it seems almost ridiculous to refute the idea of danger from the natives in a country where even incivility to an unoffending stranger is a rarity. A jaguar, however, paid us a visit one night. It was considered an extraordinary event, and so much uproar was made by the men who turned out with guns and bows and arrows, that the animal scampered off and was heard of no more. Alligators were rather troublesome in the dry season. During these months there was almost always one or two lying in wait near the bathing place for anything that might turn up at the edge of the water; dog, sheep, pig, child, or drunken Indian. When this visitor was about every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank, and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile’s tail, bathers were obliged to beat a quick retreat. I was never threatened myself, but I often saw the crowds of women and children scared whilst bathing by the beast making a movement towards them; a general scamper to the shore and peals of laughter were always the result in these cases. The men can always destroy these alligators when they like to take the trouble to set out with montarias and harpoons for the purpose; but they never do it unless one of the monsters, bolder than usual, puts some one’s life in danger. This arouses them, and they then track the enemy with the greatest pertinacity; when half-killed, they drag it ashore and dispatch it amid loud execrations. Another, however, is sure to appear some days or weeks afterwards and take the vacant place on the station. Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no fatal accident happened during the whole time of my residence.

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food. The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened by time, increased until it became almost insupportable. I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind. I got on pretty well when I received a parcel from England by the steamer, once in two or four months. I used to be very economical with my stock of reading lest it should be finished before the next arrival, and leave me utterly destitute. I went over the periodicals, the Athenæum, for instance, with great deliberation, going through every number three times; the first time devouring the more interesting articles; the second, the whole of the remainder; and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. If four months (two steamers) passed without a fresh parcel, I felt discouraged in the extreme. I was worst off in the first year, 1850, when twelve months elapsed without letters or remittances. Towards the end of this time my clothes had worn to rags; I was barefoot, a great inconvenience in tropical forests, notwithstanding statements to the contrary that have been published by travellers; my servant ran away, and I was robbed of nearly all my copper money. I was obliged then to descend to Pará, but returned, after finishing the examination of the middle part of the Lower Amazons and the Tapajos, in 1855, with my Santarem assistant and better provided for making collections on the upper river. This second visit was in pursuit of the plan before mentioned, of exploring in detail the whole valley of the Amazons, which I formed in Pará in the year 1851.

During so long a residence I witnessed, of course, many changes in the place. Some of the good friends who made me welcome on my first arrival, died, and I followed their remains to their last resting-place in the little rustic cemetery on the borders of the surrounding forest. I lived there long enough, from first to last, to see the young people grow up, attended their weddings, and the christenings of their children, and, before I left, saw them old married folks with numerous families. In 1850 Ega was only a village, dependent on Pará 1400 miles distant, as the capital of the then undivided province. In 1852, with the creation of the new province of the Amazons, it became a city; returned its members to the provincial parliament at Barra; had it assizes, its resident judges, and rose to be the chief town of the comarca or county. A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the Solimoens; and from 1855, one ran regularly every two months between the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and accomplishing the distance in ascending, about 1200 miles, in eighteen days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these changes. The people became more “civilised,” that is, they began to dress according to the latest Parisian fashions, instead of going about in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt sleeves, acquired a taste for money-getting and office-holding; became divided into parties, and lost part of their former simplicity of manners. But the place remained, when I left it in 1859, pretty nearly what it was when I first arrived in 1850—a semi-Indian village, with much in the ways and notions of its people more like those of a small country town in Northern Europe than a South American settlement. The place is healthy, and almost free from insect pests: perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle, a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!

After speaking of Ega as a city, it will have a ludicrous effect to mention that the total number of its inhabitants is only about 1200. It contains just 107 houses, about half of which are miserably built mud-walled cottages, thatched with palm-leaves. A fourth of the population are almost always absent, trading or collecting produce on the rivers. The neighbourhood within a radius of thirty miles, and including two other small villages, contains probably 2000 more people. The settlement is one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1688 by Father Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian Jesuit, who induced several of the docile tribes of Indians, then scattered over the neighbouring region, to settle on the site. From 100 to 200 acres of sloping ground around the place were afterwards cleared of timber; but such is the encroaching vigour of vegetation in this country that the site would quickly relapse into jungle if the inhabitants neglected to pull up the young shoots as they arose. There is a stringent municipal law which compels each resident to weed a given space around his dwelling. Every month, whilst I resided here, an inspector came round with his wand of authority, and fined every one who had not complied with the regulation. The Indians of the surrounding country have never been hostile to the European settlers. The rebels of Pará and the Lower Amazons, in 1835-6, did not succeed in rousing the natives of the Solimoens against the whites. A party of forty of them ascended the river for that purpose, but on arriving at Ega, instead of meeting with sympathisers as in other places, they were surrounded by a small body of armed residents, and shot down without mercy. The military commandant at the time, who was the prime mover in this orderly resistance to anarchy, was a courageous and loyal negro, named José Patricio, an officer known throughout the Upper Amazons for his unflinching honesty and love of order, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at St. Paulo in 1858. Ega was the headquarters of the great scientific commission, which met in the years from 1781 to 1791 to settle the boundaries between the Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America. The chief commissioner for Spain, Don Francisco Requena, lived some time in the village with his family. I found only one person at Ega, my old friend Romao de Oliveira, who recollected, or had any knowledge of this important time, when a numerous staff of astronomers, surveyors, and draughtsmen, explored much of the surrounding country with large bodies of soldiers and natives.

More than half the inhabitants of Ega are Mamelucos; there are not more than forty or fifty pure whites; the number of negroes and mulattos is probably a little less, and the rest of the population consists of pure blood Indians. Every householder, including Indians and free negroes, is entitled to a vote in the elections, municipal, provincial, and imperial, and is liable to be called on juries, and to serve in the national guard. These privileges and duties of citizenship do not seem at present to be appreciated by the more ignorant coloured people. There is, however, a gradual improvement taking place in this respect. Before I left there was a rather sharp contest for the Presidency of the Municipal Chamber, and most of the voters took a lively interest in it. There was also an election of members to represent the province in the Imperial Parliament at Rio Janeiro, in which each party strove hard to return its candidate. On this occasion, an unscrupulous lawyer was sent by the government party from the capital to overawe the opposition to its nominee; many of the half-castes, headed by my old friend John da Cunha, who was then settled at Ega, fought hard, but with perfect legality and good humour, against this powerful interest. They did not succeed; and although the government agent committed many tyrannical and illegal acts, the losing party submitted quietly to their defeat. In a larger town, I believe, the government would not have dared to attempt thus to control the elections. I think I saw enough to warrant the conclusion that the machinery of constitutional government would, with a little longer trial, work well amongst the mixed Indian, white, and negro population, even in this remote part of the Brazilian empire. I attended also, before I left, several assize meetings at Ega, and witnessed the novel sight of negro, white, half-caste, and Indian, sitting gravely side by side on the jury bench.

The way in which the coloured races act under the conditions of free citizenship is a very interesting subject. Brazilian statesmen seem to have abandoned the idea, if they ever entertained it, of making this tropical empire a nation of whites with a slave labouring class. The greatest difficulty on the Amazons is with the Indians. The general inflexibility of character of the race, and their abhorrence of the restraints of civilised life, make them very intractable subjects. Some of them, however, who have learned to read and write, and whose dislike to live in towns has been overcome by some cause acting early in life, make very good citizens. I have already mentioned the priest, who is a good example of what early training can do. There can be no doubt that if the docile Amazonian Indians were kindly treated by their white fellow-citizens, and educated, they would not be so quick as they have hitherto shown themselves to be to leave the towns and return into their half wild condition on the advancing civilisation of the places. The inflexibility of character, although probably organic, is seen to be sometimes overcome. The principal blacksmith of Ega, Senhor Macedo, was also an Indian, and a very sensible fellow. He sometimes filled minor offices in the government of the place. He used to come very frequently to my house to chat, and was always striving to acquire solid information about things. When Donati’s comet appeared, he took a great interest in it. We saw it at its best from the 3rd to the 10th of October (1858), between which dates it was visible near the western horizon just after sunset, the tail extending in a broad curve towards the north, and forming a sublime object. Macedo consulted all the old almanacs in the place to ascertain whether it was the same comet as that of 1811, which he said he well remembered. Before the Indians can be reclaimed in large numbers, it is most likely they will become extinct as a race; but there is less difficulty with regard to the Mamelucos, who, even when the proportion of white blood is small, sometimes become enterprising and versatile people.

Many of the Ega Indians, including all the domestic servants, are savages who have been brought from the neighbouring rivers; the Japurá, the Issá, and the Solimoens. I saw here individuals of at least sixteen different tribes, most of whom had been bought, when children, of the native chiefs. This species of slave-dealing, although forbidden by the laws of Brazil, is winked at by the authorities, because without it, there would be no means of obtaining servants. They all become their own masters when they grow up, and never show the slightest inclination to return to utter savage life. But the boys generally run away and embark on the canoes of traders; and the girls are often badly treated by their mistresses; the jealous, passionate, and ill-educated Brazilian women. Nearly all the enmities which arise amongst residents at Ega and other place, are caused by disputes about Indian servants. No one who has lived only in old settled countries, where service can be readily bought, can imagine the difficulties and annoyances of a land where the servant class are ignorant of the value of money, and hands cannot be obtained except by coaxing them from the employ of other masters.

Great mortality takes place amongst the poor captive children on their arrival at Ega. It is a singular circumstance that the Indians residing on the Japura and other tributaries always fall ill on descending to the Solimoens, whilst the reverse takes place with the inhabitants of the banks of the main river, who never fail of taking intermittent fever when they first ascend these branch rivers, and of getting well when they return. The finest tribes of savages who inhabit the country near Ega are the Jurís and Passés: these are now, however, nearly extinct, a few families only remaining on the banks of the retired creeks connected with the Teffé, and on other branch rivers between the Teffé and the Jutahí. They are a peaceable, gentle, and industrious people, devoted to agriculture and fishing, and have always been friendly to the whites. I shall have occasion to speak again of the Passés, who are a slenderly-built and superior race of Indians, distinguished by a large, square tattooed patch in the middle of their faces. The principal cause of their decay in numbers seems to be a disease which always appears amongst them when a village is visited by people from the civilised settlements—a slow fever, accompanied by the symptoms of a common cold, “defluxo,” as the Brazilians term it, ending probably in consumption. The disorder has been known to break out when the visitors were entirely free from it; the simple contact of civilised men, in some mysterious way, being sufficient to create it. It is generally fatal to the Jurís and Passés; the first question the poor, patient Indians now put to an advancing canoe is, “Do you bring defluxo?”

My assistant, José, in the last year of our residence at Ega, “resgatou” (ransomed, the euphemism in use for purchased) two Indian children, a boy and a girl, through a Japurá trader. The boy was about twelve years of age, and of an unusually dark colour of skin: he had, in fact, the tint of a Cafuzo, the offspring of Indian and negro. It was thought he had belonged to some perfectly wild and houseless tribe, similar to the Parárauátes of the Tapajos, of which there are several in different parts of the interior of South America. His face was of regular, oval shape, but his glistening black eyes had a wary, distrustful expression, like that of a wild animal; his hands and feet were small and delicately formed. Soon after his arrival, finding that none of the Indian boys and girls in the houses of our neighbours understood his language, he became sulky and reserved; not a word could be got from him until many weeks afterwards, when he suddenly broke out with complete phrases of Portuguese. He was ill of swollen liver and spleen, the result of intermittent fever, for a long time after coming into our hands. We found it difficult to cure him, owing to his almost invincible habit of eating earth, baked clay, pitch, wax, and other similar substances. Very many children on the upper parts of the Amazons have this strange habit; not only Indians, but negroes and whites. It is not, therefore, peculiar to the famous Otomacs of the Orinoco, described by Humboldt, or to Indians at all, and seems to originate in a morbid craving, the result of a meagre diet of fish, wild-fruits, and mandioca-meal. We gave our little savage the name of Sebastian. The use of these Indian children is to fill water-jars from the river, gather firewood in the forest, cook, assist in paddling the montaria in excursions, and so forth. Sebastian was often my companion in the woods, where he was very useful in finding the small birds I shot, which sometimes fell in the thickets amongst confused masses of fallen branches and dead leaves. He was wonderfully expert at catching lizards with his hands, and at climbing. The smoothest stems of palm-trees offered little difficulty to him; he would gather a few lengths of tough, flexible lianas, tie them in a short, endless band to support his feet with, in embracing the slippery shaft, and then mount upwards by a succession of slight jerks. It was very amusing, during the first few weeks, to witness the glee and pride with which he would bring to me the bunches of fruit he had gathered from almost inaccessible trees. He avoided the company of boys of his own race, and was evidently proud of being the servant of a real white man. We brought him down with us to Pará, but he showed no emotion at any of the strange sights of the capital; the steam-vessels, large ships and houses, horses and carriages, the pomp of church ceremonies, and so forth. In this he exhibited the usual dullness of feeling and poverty of thought of the Indian; he had, nevertheless, very keen perceptions, and was quick at learning any mechanical art. José, who had resumed, some time before I left the country, his old trade of goldsmith, made him his apprentice, and he made very rapid progress; for after about three months’ teaching he came to me one day with radiant countenance and showed me a gold ring of his own making.