Its beginning was an aldeia with the name of the river, and founded by the Jesuits for the habitation of an Indian horde. It has a church of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao, and many houses of one story. The fort, which first defended it against the Indians, is now occupied by a detachment for registering the canoes that ascend and descend both rivers. The inhabitants, principally whites, do not yet breed many cattle.
Alter do Cham, originally Hybirarybe, is yet a small town, but advantageously situated upon a lake, near the Tapajos, (with which it communicates,) almost in the skirts of a rock, rising pyramidically to a considerable height, and ten miles south of Santaram. Its inhabitants are principally Indians, and, besides the usual necessaries, cultivate some excellent cocoa; but hunting and fishing are their favourite pursuits.
Aveyro, situated upon the margin of the Tapajos, has the title of a town, but is only an inferior village, its houses being thatched with straw, and disposed without regularity, in a beautiful situation. The inhabitants are Indians, and incapable of improving it; consequently the advantages of being upon a navigable river, and in the midst of a rich and fertile soil, will not be available until it obtains a supply of white people. It is about sixty miles distant from Alter do Cham.
District of Mundrucania.
This district, limited on the south by that of Juruenna, has on the north the river Amazons, on the west the river Madeira, and on the east the river Tapajos. Its length from north to south, on the eastern side, is near three hundred miles, and its medium width two hundred. Along the banks of the rivers which limit it, the country is mainly swampy, with extensive morasses, inhabited by a profusion of birds, drawn thither by the shell fish. The intervals and the interior are covered with widely-extending woods, possessing trees of every magnitude. The banks of the rivers and lakes afford a species of cane, upon which the ox-fish and tortoise feed. In some parts the granite-stone is common; but there are no accounts of ore having been discovered any where in this district.
Amongst other small rivers which run into the Madeira, are the Anhangating, the mouth of which is in 5° 30′; the Mataura, which empties itself twenty miles lower down, and communicates with the Canoma in the interior of the district; and the Marmellos, originally Araxia, whose mouth is seven miles above the entrance to the lake Marucutuba.
The interior of the district is watered by the rivers Canoma, Abacachy, Apiuquiribo, Mauhe-Guassu, Mauhe-Mirim, Massary, Andira, Tuppynambarana, all of which run into a branch of the Madeira, which, under the name of Canoma, frequently denominated the Furo, or fury of the Tuppynambaranas, describes many windings, traversing some lakes until it enters the Amazons by a spacious embouchure, called the river Mauhes, which is one hundred and fifty miles below the principal mouth of the Madeira.
The Mauhes, so called from the Mauhe nation inhabiting its banks, has acquired also the appellation of the river of the Nambaranas, derived from a village or aldeia of the Tuppynambas, which existed near the eastern margins of the lake Uaycurapa, and thirty miles above its mouth.
In the space of forty miles from the Furo dos Tuppynambaranas to the town of Borbai there are the following lakes: Annamaha, Guarybas, Cauhintu, Taboca, Frechal, Macacos, and Jatuaranna, all in the proximity of the river, into which their superfluous waters are discharged. Forty miles above the said town is the entrance to the lake Mattary, and beyond it that of the lake Murucutuba.
Between the Furo dos Tuppynambaranas and the mouth of the Madeira, is the outlet of the lake Massurany. The domestic animals of this district are at present very inconsiderable; but the wild ones peculiar to the other comarcas are met with in much greater numbers, in consequence of the gun not having been yet so much introduced. With the exception of some portions of territory upon the banks of the rivers which encompass this district, the whole is in the power of various savage tribes, of whom, we are best acquainted with the Jummas, the Mauhes, the Pammas, the Parintintins, the Muras, the Andiras, the Araras, and the Mundrucus, from which latter the district borrows its name. Each has its peculiar idiom, and the whole are divided into hordes; of which some wander about the woods and forests without any fixed residence: others are established in aldeias, where they intermix with the Christians, and have learned to cultivate various necessaries of life. So far are some of them influenced by the power of example, that they begin to cover, in part, their naked bodies; and many demonstrate their knowledge of the advantage of friendship with the Christians, by subduing their native ferocity into a tractable observance of the rules of the white settlers.