DISCHARGING AND RECEIVING CARGO.
In the absence of wharves on the Upper Amazon and its tributaries, vessels lay alongside of the banks whilst discharging or receiving cargo. The banks at the usual stopping places afford good landings; wharves are not needed and it would be difficult to construct them so that they could be used at all stages of the water.
IMPORTS.
It may be well to say a word about the trade of the Upper Amazon. There are no import or export duties for this part of Peru, nor are any duties paid on goods passing up the Brazilian Amazon to Peru. Coarse cotton cloth is worn by nine-tenths of the inhabitants who are civilized enough to wear clothes at all. The demand for this cloth is large and will grow from year to year, and of all coarse cotton cloth in the market the American is preferred. The plantain is the native substitute for bread, but wheat flour is used by the mercantile and official classes; there is a steady demand for Baltimore and Richmond flour, which brands are supposed, probably with reason, to stand the climate better than flour manufactured elsewhere. Bacon hams sell for one dollar per pound, but the demand for them is small and the article is soon spoiled by the climate. Axes, hoes, spades and machettes are much in demand, and there is a limited demand for improved firearms; ready made clothing, and articles of household furniture for the houses of the richer persons of the community, are usually imported from Europe.
EXPORTS.
The exports of the region of the Upper Amazon are not as valuable as they are destined to become when the productions of the rich valleys of eastern Peru find an outlet to market by way of the river. Among the principal articles of export may be enumerated, hats, from Mayubamba (Panama hats); rum, made from the sugar cane (cachaça); dried fish (payshi); and Indian rubber (jebe). The Indian-rubber tree abounds in the forests of the Upper Amazon, and the gathering of the gum is a profitable industry. Specimens of gold have been obtained from the natives about the pongo de Manseriche, and rich deposits of the precious metal will without doubt be discovered at some future time, but no search even can be made for it until the fierce and cruel savages, who have undisputed possession of the country beyond Borja, shall have been subdued.
MOUTH OF THE YAVARI RIVER.
Commencing at the Yavari river, which forms the boundary between Peru and Brazil on the south side of the Amazon river, and following the Upper Amazon and its principal tributaries up to the head of navigation, the first place to be noted is the mouth of the Yavari river:[2] Latitude 4° 18' 45" south; longitude, 69° 53' 10" west of Greenwich; magnetic variation, 5° 38' 54" east; thermometer (Fahrenheit), 76°; elevation above sea-level, 266 feet; distance from the Atlantic ocean, following the course of the river, 1811 miles; current, in the Amazon, 4-1/2 miles per hour; width of the Yavari river at its mouth, 500 yards; width of the Amazon, 1200 yards; depth of water in the channel of the Amazon, 36 feet. As the Yavari river marks the boundary between Peru and Brazil on the south side of the Amazon, special pains were taken to ascertain correctly the latitude and longitude of its mouth; the observations for the latitude and longitude were taken on a small islet, probably overflowed at high water, in the middle of the lower mouth of the river.
It was said in Iquitos that, in 1874, Captain Guillermo Black, President of the Peruvian Boundary Commission, ascended the Yavari in a small steamer a distance of 500 miles from its mouth, and 300 miles farther in canoes to a point where there was barely two feet of water in the channel, at which point the latitude was determined to be 7° 1' 22" south, and the longitude 74° 8' 25" west of Greenwich; elevation above the sea-level, 800 feet.