The margins of the Amazons and the Rio Negro, upwards, are infested with a small musquito, called pium, whose painful sting leaves a red mark, accompanied with insufferable itching and a disposition to ulcerate. One hundred and sixty miles is about the width of this district on the northern side.
Cratto, yet a small town, but well situated upon the margin of the Madeira, a considerable distance above Borba, has a church dedicated to St. Joam Baptista, and its inhabitants are generally Indians and Mesticoes, who collect some cocoa, cloves, and sarsaparilla, with provisions of the first necessity. They catch great numbers of the tortoise at the beach of Tamandoa, which they keep in an enclosure in the water. It is one of the ports for canoes coming from Matto-Grosso, and many circumstances concur in warranting the prediction that it will become one of the principal towns of Solimoes.
District of Coary.
This district extends between the river from which it takes its name and the principal arm of the Puru, with one hundred and twenty miles of width on the northern part. The Muras possess the environs of the Amazons; the Purupurus, and the Catauixis, the centre of the country, with other uncivilized nations. Three channels from the Puru irrigate a portion of the eastern part of this comarca in the proximity of the Amazons;—the Cochiuara which discharges itself twenty-five miles from the mouth of its superior; the Coyuanna, twenty miles above the preceding; and the Arupanna, more to the westward. The first gives also its name to this portion of the district; the margins of the whole afford cocoa, sarsaparilla, and the oil of capivi.
Alvellos, a small town, is situated upon a large bay, fifteen miles above the mouth of the Coary, of which it formerly had the name. Its inhabitants, for the main part descendants of the Uamanys, Sorimoes, Catauyseys, Jumas, Irijus, Cuchiuaras, and Uayupes, collect cloves, cocoa, capivi, and sarsaparilla, and make butter from the eggs of the Tortoise, which are very numerous; and they are also employed in making earthenware, mats, and in weaving cotton cloth. The ants are here particularly destructive.
This town was commenced upon the eastern margin and twenty-five miles above the month of the river Paratary, from whence the Padre, Frey Joze da Magdalena, removed it to the same side of the Guanama, which enters the northern side of the Amazons, below the eastern arm of the Hyapura: from hence the Padre, Frey Antonio de Miranda, removed it to the site of Guarayatyba, more to the eastward upon the margin of the Amazons, eight miles below the Puru, from whence it was finally removed by Frey Mauricio Moreyra to its present situation.
The islands with which the Amazons in this part is studded, were for some time inhabited by Cambeva, otherwise Omagoa Indians—names which signify flat heads, from the custom which the mothers had of compressing their children’s heads between two boards, thus distinguishing them from other nations. This custom ceasing, their descendants are at the present day unknown.
District of Teffe.
This comarca, situated between the river from which it is named, and the Coary, that separates it from the preceding one, is nearly ninety miles in width along the Amazons. The two first rivers are very considerable; but their origins are not yet ascertained, nor the number and names of their principal confluents, which issue from the centre of the district. All accounts are equally silent as to any mountains existing in the interior, while the lands in the vicinity of the Amazons, although flat, are never inundated by the floods, which overflow a considerable portion of its northern margin, in consequence of being lower.
The Coary discharges itself into a bay of the Amazons, almost seven miles in width, and near it the Urucuparana, and the Urauba, or Cuanu, both of short navigation.