[2] The mixed breeds which now form, probably, the greater part of the population, each have a distinguishing name. Mameluco denotes the offspring of White with Indian; Mulatto, that of White with Negro; Cafuzo, the mixture of the Indian and Negro; Curiboco, the cross between the Cafuzo and the Indian; Xibaro, that between the Cafuzo and Negro. These are seldom, however, well-demarcated, and all shades of colour exist; the names are generally applied only approximatively. The term Creole is confined to negroes born in the country. The civilised Indian is called Tapuyo or Caboclo.
The city is built on the best available site for a port of entry to the Amazons region, and must in time become a vast emporium; the northern shore of the main river, where alone a rival capital could be founded, is much more difficult of access to vessels, and is besides extremely unhealthy. Although lying so near the equator (1° 28′ S. lat.) the climate is not excessively hot. The temperature during three years only once reached 95° Fahrenheit. The greatest heat of the day, about 2 p.m., ranges generally between 89° and 94°; but on the other hand, the air is never cooler than 73°, so that a uniformly high temperature exists, and the mean of the year is 81°. North American residents say that the heat is not so oppressive as it is in summer in New York and Philadelphia. The humidity is, of course, excessive, but the rains are not so heavy and continuous in the wet season as in many other tropical climates. The country had for a long time a reputation for extreme salubrity. Since the small-pox in 1819, which attacked chiefly the Indians, no serious epidemic had visited the province. We were agreeably surprised to find no danger from exposure to the night air or residence in the low swampy lands. A few English residents, who had been established here for twenty or thirty years, looked almost as fresh in colour as if they had never left their native country. The native women, too, seemed to preserve their good looks and plump condition until late in life. I nowhere observed that early decay of appearance in Brazilian ladies, which is said to be so general in the women of North America. Up to 1848 the salubrity of Pará was quite remarkable for a city lying in the delta of a great river, in the middle of the tropics and half surrounded by swamps. It did not much longer enjoy its immunity from epidemics. In 1850 the yellow fever visited the province for the first time, and carried off in a few weeks more than four per cent of the population. One disease after another succeeded, until in 1855 cholera swept through the country and caused fearful havoc. Since then, the healthfulness of the climate has been gradually restored, and it is now fast recovering its former good reputation. Pará is free from serious endemic disorders, and was once a resort of invalids from New York and Massachusetts. The equable temperature, the perpetual verdure, the coolness of the dry season when the sun’s heat is tempered by the strong sea- breezes and the moderation of the periodical rains, make the climate one of the most enjoyable on the face of the earth.
The province is governed, like all others in the empire, by a President, as chief civil authority. At the time of our arrival he also held, exceptionally, the chief military command. This functionary, together with the head of the police administration and the judges, is nominated by the central Government at Rio Janeiro. The municipal and internal affairs are managed by a provincial assembly elected by the people. Every villa or borough throughout the province also possesses its municipal council, and in thinly-populated districts the inhabitants choose every four years a justice of the peace, who adjudicates in small disputes between neighbours. A system of popular education exists, and every village has its school of first letters, the master being paid by the government, the salary amounting to about £70, or the same sum as the priests receive. Besides common schools, a well-endowed classical seminary is maintained at Pará, to which the sons of most of the planters and traders in the interior are sent to complete their education. The province returns its quota of members every four years to the lower and upper houses of the imperial parliament. Every householder has a vote. Trial by jury has been established, the jurymen being selected from householders, no matter what their race or colour; and I have seen the white merchant, the negro husbandman, the mameluco, the mulatto, and the Indian, all sitting side by side on the same bench. Altogether the constitution of government in Brazil seems to combine happily the principles of local self-government and centralisation, and only requires a proper degree of virtue and intelligence in the people to lead the nation to great prosperity.
The province of Pará, or, as we may now say, the two provinces of Pará and the Amazons, contain an area of 800,000 square miles, the population of which is only about 230,000, or in the ratio of one person to four square miles! The country is covered with forests, and the soil is fertile in the extreme, even for a tropical country. It is intersected throughout by broad and deep navigable rivers. It is the pride of the Paráenses to call the Amazons the Mediterranean of South America. The colossal stream perhaps deserves the name, for not only have the main river and its principal tributaries an immense expanse of water bathing the shores of extensive and varied regions, but there is also throughout a system of back channels, connected with the main rivers by narrow outlets and linking together a series of lakes, some of which are fifteen, twenty, and thirty miles in length. The whole Amazons valley is thus covered by a network of navigable waters, forming a vast inland freshwater sea with endless ramifications—rather than a river.
The city of Pará was founded in 1615, and was a place of considerable importance towards the latter half of the eighteenth century, under the government of the brother of Pombal, the famous Portuguese statesman. The province was the last in Brazil to declare its independence of the mother-country and acknowledge the authority of the first emperor, Don Pedro. This was owing to the great numbers and influence of the Portuguese, and the rage of the native party was so great in consequence, that immediately after independence was proclaimed in 1823, a counter revolution broke out, during which many hundred lives were lost and much hatred engendered. The antagonism continued for many years, partial insurrections taking place when the populace thought that the immigrants from Portugal were favoured by the governors sent from the capital of the empire. At length, in 1835, a serious revolt took place which in a short time involved the entire province. It began by the assassination of the President and the leading members of the government; the struggle was severe, and the native party in an evil hour called to their aid the ignorant and fanatic part of the mongrel and Indian population. The cry of death to the Portuguese was soon changed to death to the freemasons, then a powerfully organised society embracing the greater part of the male white inhabitants. The victorious native party endeavoured to establish a government of their own. After this state of things had endured six months, they accepted a new President sent from Rio Janeiro, who, however, again irritated them by imprisoning their favourite leader, Vinagre. The revenge which followed was frightful. A vast host of half- savage coloured people assembled in the retired creeks behind Pará, and on a day fixed, after Vinagre’s brother had sent a message three times to the President demanding, in vain, the release of their leader, the whole body poured into the city through the gloomy pathways of the forest which encircles it. A cruel battle, lasting nine days, was fought in the streets; an English, French, and Portuguese man-of-war, from the side of the river, assisting the legal authorities. All the latter, however, together with every friend of peace and order, were finally obliged to retire to an island a few miles distant. The city and province were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory, proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and American residents. The mistaken principals who had first aroused all this hatred of races were obliged now to make their escape. In the interior, the supporters of lawful authority including, it must be stated, whole tribes of friendly Indians and numbers of the better disposed negroes and mulattos, concentrated themselves in certain strong positions and defended themselves, until the reconquest of the capital and large towns of the interior in 1836 by a force sent from Rio Janeiro—after ten months of anarchy.
Years of conciliatory government, the lesson learned by the native party and the moderation of the Portuguese, aided by the indolence and passive goodness of the Paráenses of all classes and colours, were only beginning to produce their good effects about the time I am speaking of. Life, however, was now and had been for some time quite safe throughout the country. Some few of the worst characters had been transported or imprisoned, and the remainder, after being pardoned, were converted once more into quiet and peaceable citizens.
I resided at Pará nearly a year and a half altogether, returning thither and making a stay of a few months after each of my shorter excursions into the interior, until the 6th of November, 1851, when I started on my long voyage to the Tapajos and the Upper Amazons, which occupied me seven years and a half. I became during this time tolerably familiar with the capital of the Amazons region, and its inhabitants. Compared with other Brazilian seaport towns, I was always told, Pará shone to great advantage. It was cleaner, the suburbs were fresher, more rural and much pleasanter on account of their verdure, shade, and magnificent vegetation. The people were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, were almost unknown. At the same time the Pará people were much inferior to Southern Brazilians in energy and industry. Provisions and house rents being cheap and the wants of the people few—for they were content with food and lodging of a quality which would be spurned by paupers in England—they spent the greater part of their time in sensual indulgences and in amusements which the government and wealthier citizens provided for them gratis. The trade, wholesale and retail, was in the hands of the Portuguese, of whom there were about 2500 in the place. Many handicrafts were exercised by coloured people, mulattos, mamelucos, free negroes, and Indians. The better sort of Brazilians dislike the petty details of shop-keeping, and if they cannot be wholesale merchants, prefer the life of planters in the country, however small may be the estate and the gains. The negroes constituted the class of field-labourers and porters; Indians were universally the watermen, and formed the crews of the numberless canoes of all sizes and shapes which traded between Pará and the interior. The educated Brazilians, not many of whom are of pure Caucasian descent—for the immigration of Portuguese, for many years, has been almost exclusively of the male sex—are courteous, lively, and intelligent people. They were gradually weaning themselves of the ignorant, bigoted notions which they inherited from their Portuguese ancestors, especially those entertained with regard to the treatment of women. Formerly, the Portuguese would not allow their wives to go into society, or their daughters to learn reading and writing. In 1848, Brazilian ladies were only just beginning to emerge from this inferior position, and Brazilian fathers were opening their eyes to the advantages of education for their daughters. Reforms of this kind are slow. It is, perhaps, in part owing to the degrading position always held by women, that the relations between the sexes were, and are still, on so unsatisfactory a footing, and private morality at so low an ebb, in Brazil. In Pará, I believe that an improvement is now taking place, but formerly promiscuous intercourse seemed to be the general rule amongst all classes, and intrigues and love-making the serious business of the greater part of the population. That this state of things is a necessity depending on the climate and institutions I do not believe, as I have resided at small towns in the interior, where the habits, and the general standard of morality of the inhabitants, were as pure as they are in similar places in England.
Chapter II.
PARÁ
The Swampy Forests of Pará — A Portuguese Landed Proprietor — Country House at Nazareth — Life of a Naturalist under the Equator — The drier Virgin Forests —Magoary — Retired Creeks — Aborigines.
After having resided about a fortnight at Mr. Miller’s rocinha, we heard of another similar country-house to be let, much better situated for our purpose, in the village of Nazareth, a mile and a half from the city and close to the forest. The owner was an old Portuguese gentleman named Danin, who lived at his tile manufactory at the mouth of the Una, a small river lying two miles below Pará. We resolved to walk to his place through the forest, a distance of three miles, although the road was said to be scarcely passable at this season of the year, and the Una much more easily accessible by boat. We were glad, however, of this early opportunity of traversing the rich swampy forest which we had admired so much from the deck of the ship; so, about eleven o’clock one sunny morning, after procuring the necessary information about the road, we set off in that direction. This part of the forest afterwards became one of my best hunting-grounds. I will narrate the incidents of the walk, giving my first impressions and some remarks on the wonderful vegetation. The forest is very similar on most of the low lands, and therefore, one description will do for all.