The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

Chapter XIII.
EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA

Steamboat Travelling on the Amazons — Passengers — Tunantins — Caishána Indians — The Jutahí — The Sapó — Marauá Indians — Fonte Boa — Journey to St. Paulo — Tucúna Indians — Illness — Descent to Pará — Changes at Pará — Departure for England

November 7th, 1856.—Embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, the Tabatinga, for an excursion to Tunantins, a small semi-Indian settlement, lying 240 miles beyond Ega. The Tabatinga is an iron boat of about 170 tons burthen, built at Rio de Janeiro, and fitted with engines of fifty horse-power. The saloon, with berths on each side for twenty passengers, is above deck, and open at both ends to admit a free current of air. The captain or “commandante,” was a lieutenant in the Brazilian navy, a man of polished, sailor-like address, and a rigid disciplinarian; his name, Senhor Nunes Mello Cardozo. I was obliged, as usual, to take with me a stock of all articles of food, except meat and fish, for the time I intended to be absent (three months); and the luggage, including hammocks, cooking utensils, crockery, and so forth, formed fifteen large packages. One bundle consisted of a mosquito tent, an article I had not yet had occasion to use on the river, but which was indispensable in all excursions beyond Ega, every person, man, woman and child, requiring one, as without it existence would be scarcely possible. My tent was about eight feet long and five feet broad, and was made of coarse calico in an oblong shape, with sleeves at each end through which to pass the cords of a hammock. Under this shelter, which is fixed up every evening before sundown, one can read and write, or swing in one’s hammock during the long hours which intervene before bedtime, and feel one’s sense of comfort increased by having cheated the thirsty swarms of mosquitoes which fill the chamber.

We were four days on the road. The pilot, a Mameluco of Ega, whom I knew very well, exhibited a knowledge of the river and powers of endurance which were quite remarkable. He stood all this time at his post, with the exception of three or four hours in the middle of each day, when he was relieved by a young man who served as apprentice, and he knew the breadth and windings of the channel, and the extent of all the yearly-shifting shoals from the Rio Negro to Loreto, a distance of more than a thousand miles. There was no slackening of speed at night, except during the brief but violent storms which occasionally broke upon us, and then the engines were stopped by the command of Lieutenant Nunes, sometimes against the wish of the pilot. The nights were often so dark that we passengers on the poop deck could not discern the hardy fellow on the bridge, but the steamer drove on at full speed, men being stationed on the look-out at the prow, to watch for floating logs, and one man placed to pass orders to the helmsman; the keel scraped against a sand-bank only once during the passage.

The passengers were chiefly Peruvians, mostly thin, anxious, Yankee-looking men, who were returning home to the cities of Moyobamba and Chachapoyas, on the Andes, after a trading trip to the Brazilian towns on the Atlantic seaboard, whither they had gone six months previously, with cargoes of Panama hats to exchange for European wares. These hats are made of the young leaflets of a palm tree, by the Indians and half-caste people who inhabit the eastern parts of Peru. They form almost the only article of export from Peru by way of the Amazons, but the money value is very great compared with the bulk of the goods, as the hats are generally of very fine quality, and cost from twelve shillings to six pounds sterling each; some traders bring down two or three thousand pounds’ worth, folded into small compass in their trunks. The return cargoes consist of hardware, crockery, glass, and other bulky or heavy goods, but not of cloth, which, being of light weight, can be carried across the Andes from the ports on the Pacific to the eastern parts of Peru. All kinds of European cloth can be obtained at a much cheaper rate by this route than by the more direct way of the Amazons, the import duties of Peru being, as I was told, lower than those of Brazil, and the difference not being counter-balanced by increased expense of transit, on account of weight, over the passes of the Andes.

There was a great lack of amusement on board. The table was very well served, professed cooks being employed in these Amazonian steamers, and fresh meat insured by keeping on deck a supply of live bullocks and fowls, which are purchased whenever there is an opportunity on the road. The river scenery was similar to that already described as presented between the Rio Negro and Ega: long reaches of similar aspect, with two long, low lines of forest, varied sometimes with cliffs of red clay, appearing one after the other; an horizon of water and sky on some days limiting the view both up stream and down. We travelled, however, always near the bank, and, for my part, I was never weary of admiring the picturesque grouping and variety of trees, and the varied mantles of creeping plants which clothed the green wall of forest every step of the way. With the exception of a small village called Fonte Boa, retired from the main river, where we stopped to take in firewood, and which I shall have to speak of presently, we saw no human habitation the whole of the distance. The mornings were delightfully cool; coffee was served at sunrise, and a bountiful breakfast at ten o’clock; after that hour the heat rapidly increased until it became almost unbearable. How the engine-drivers and firemen stood it without exhaustion I cannot tell; it diminished after four o’clock in the afternoon, about which time dinner-bell rung, and the evenings were always pleasant.

November 11th to 30th.—The Tunantins is a sluggish black-water stream, about sixty miles in length, and towards its mouth from 100 to 200 yards in breadth. The vegetation on its banks has a similar aspect to that of the Rio Negro, the trees having small foliage of a sombre hue, and the dark piles of greenery resting on the surface of the inky water. The village is situated on the left bank, about a mile from the mouth of the river, and contains twenty habitations, nearly all of which are merely hovels, built of lath-work and mud. The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable on account of the many puddles, and are choked up with weeds—leguminous shrubs, and scarlet-flowered asclepias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it is by the lofty forest, and surrounded by swamps, is always close, warm, and reeking; and the hum and chirp of insects and birds cause a continual din. The small patch of weedy ground around the village swarms with plovers, sandpipers, striped herons, and scissor-tailed fly-catchers; and alligators are always seen floating lazily on the surface of the river in front of the houses.

On landing, I presented myself to Senhor Paulo Bitancourt, a good-natured half-caste, director of Indians of the neighbouring river Issá, who quickly ordered a small house to be cleared for me. This exhilarating abode contained only one room, the walls of which were disfigured by large and ugly patches of mud, the work of white ants. The floor was the bare earth, dirty and damp, the wretched chamber was darkened by a sheet of calico being stretched over the windows, a plan adopted here to keep out the Pium-flies, which float about in all shady places like thin clouds of smoke, rendering all repose impossible in the daytime wherever they can effect an entrance. My baggage was soon landed, and before the steamer departed I had taken gun, insect-net, and game-bag, to make a preliminary exploration of my new locality.

I remained here nineteen days, and, considering the shortness of the time, made a very good collection of monkeys, birds, and insects. A considerable number of the species (especially of insects) were different from those of the four other stations, which I examined on the south side of the Solimoens, and as many of these were “representative forms”[^[1]] of others found on the opposite banks of the broad river, I concluded that there could have been no land connection between the two shores during, at least, the recent geological period. This conclusion is confirmed by the case of the Uakarí monkeys, described in the last chapter. All these strongly modified local races of insects confined to one side of the Solimoens (like the Uakarís), are such as have not been able to cross a wide treeless space such as a river. The acquisition which pleased me most, in this place, was a new species of butterfly (a Catagramma), which has since been named C. excelsior, owing to its surpassing in size and beauty all the previously-known species of its singularly beautiful genus. The upper surface of the wings is of the richest blue, varying in shade with the play of light, and on each side is a broad curved stripe of an orange colour. It is a bold flyer, and is not confined, as I afterwards found, to the northern side of the river, for I once saw a specimen amidst a number of richly-coloured butterflies, flying about the deck of the steamer when we were anchored off Fonte Boa, 200 miles, lower down the river.

[1] Species or races which take the place of other allied species or races.