The country around Manáos is quite romantic for the Amazonian Valley. The land is undulating and furrowed by ravines, and the vegetation covering it is marvelously rich and diversified. In the forest, two miles from the city, there is a natural curiosity celebrated by all travelers from Spix and Martius down. A rivulet coming out of the wilderness falls over a ledge of red sandstone ten feet high and fifty feet broad, forming a beautiful cascade. The water is cool, and of a deep orange color. The foundation of a fine stone cathedral was laid in Manáos fourteen years ago, but this generation is not likely to witness the dedication. Life in this Amazonian city is dull enough: commerce is not brisk, and society is stiff; balls are about the only amusements. On Sunday (the holiday) every body who can afford it comes out in Paris fashions. There are carts, hut no coaches. We called upon the President at his "Palace"—an odd term for a two-storied, whitewashed edifice. His excellency received us with less formality and more cordiality than we expected to find in the solemn officials of the empire. The first glance at the reception-room, with the four chairs for visitors set in two lines at right angles to the chair of state, promised cold etiquette; but he addressed us with considerable familiarity and evident good-will. We found, however, that his authority was quite limited, for a written order which he gave us for a subordinate did not receive the slightest consideration. At the house of a Jew named Levy we met a party of Southerners, Captains Mallory, Jones, Sandedge, and Winn, commanded by Dr. Dowsing, who, since "the late onpleasantness," as Nasby calls it, have determined to settle in this country. The government grants them twenty square leagues of land on any tributary, on condition that they will colonize it. They were about to start for the Rio Branco on an exploring tour.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

Down the Amazon.— Serpa.—Villa Nova.— Obidos.— Santarem.— A Colony of Southerners.— Monte Alégre.— Porto do Moz.— Leaving the Amazon.—Breves.— Pará River.— The City of Pará.— Legislation and Currency.— Religion and Education.— Nonpareil Climate.

At 10 p.m. we left Manáos in the "Tapajos," an iron steamer of seven hundred tons. We missed the snow-white cleanliness and rigid regularity of the "Icamiaba," and Captain José Antunes Rodrigues de Oliveira Catramby was quite a contrast to Lieutenant Nuno. There were only five first-class passengers besides ourselves (and four of these were "dead-heads"), though there were accommodations for sixty-four. Between Manáos and Pará, a distance of one thousand miles, there were fourteen additions. Passing the mouth of the Madeira, the largest tributary to the Amazon, we anchored thirty miles below at Serpa, after nine hours' sailing. Serpa is a village of ninety houses, built on a high bank of variegated clay, whence its Indian name, Ita-coatiara, or painted rock. It was the most animated place we had seen on the river. The town is irregularly laid out and overrun with weeds, but there is a busy tile factory, and the port was full of canoes, montarias, and cubertas. The African element in the population began to show itself prominently here, and increased in importance as we neared Pará. The Negroes are very ebony, and are employed as stevedores. The Indians are well-featured, and wear a long gown of bark-cloth reaching to the knees.

Taking on board rubber and salt fish, the "Tapajos" steamed down stream, passing the perpendicular pink-clay cliffs of Cararaucú, arriving in ten hours at Villa Nova,[142] one hundred and fifty miles below Serpa. Villa Nova is a straggling village of mud huts standing on a conglomerate bank. The trade is chiefly in rubber, copaiba, and fish. The location is healthy, and in many respects is one of the most desirable places on the river. Here the Amazon begins to narrow, being scarcely three miles wide; but the channel, which has a rocky bed, is very deep. One hundred miles from Villa Nova is Obidos, airily situated on a bluff of pink and yellow clay one hundred feet above the river. The clay rests on a white calcareous earth, and this on red sandstone. It is a picturesque, substantially-built town, with a population, mostly white, engaged in raising cacao and cattle. Cacao is the most valuable product on the Amazon below Villa Nova. The soil is fertile, and the surrounding forest is alive with monkeys, birds, and insects, and abounds with precious woods and fruits. Obidos is blessed with a church, a school, and a weekly newspaper, and is defended by thirty-two guns. This is the Thermopylæ of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with tremendous velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the current 2.4 feet per second. As Bates remarks, however, the river valley is not contracted to this breadth, the southern shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial tract subject to inundation. Back of Obidos is an eminence which has been named Mount Agassiz in honor of the Naturalist. There is no mountain between it and Cotopaxi save the spurs from the Eastern Cordillera. Five miles above the town is the mouth of the Trombetas, where Orellana had his celebrated fight with the fabulous Amazons.

[Santarem.]

Adding to her cargo wood, hides, horses, and Paraguayan prisoners (short, athletic men), the "Tapajos" sailed for Santarem. The river scenery below Obidos loses its wild and solitary character, and is relieved with scattered habitations, factories, and cacao plantations. We arrived at Santarem in seven hours from Obidos, a distance of fifty miles. This city, the largest on the Amazon save Pará, stands on a pretty slope at the mouth of the Rio Tapajos, and five hundred miles from the sea.[143] It mainly consists of three long-rows of whitewashed, tiled houses, girt with green gardens. The citizens, made up of Brazilians, Portuguese, mulattoes, and blacks, number about two thousand five hundred. The surrounding country, which is an undulating campo, with patches of wood, is sparsely inhabited by Tapajocos. Cattle estates and cacao plantations are the great investments, but the soil is poor. Considerable sarsaparilla of superior quality, rubber, copaiba, Brazil nuts, and farina come down the Tapajos. The climate is delightful, the trade-winds tempering the heat and driving away all insect pests. Leprosy is somewhat common among the poorer class. At Santarem is one of the largest colonies which migrated from the disaffected Gulf States for Brazil. One hundred and sixty Southerners pitched their tents here. Many of them, however, were soon disgusted with the country, and, if we are to believe reports, the country was disgusted with them. On the 1st of January, 1868, only seventy-five remained. The colony does not fairly represent the United States, being made up in great part of the "roughs" of Mobile. A few are contented and are doing well. Amazonia will be indebted to them for some valuable ideas. Bates says: "Butter-making is unknown in this country; the milk, I was told, was too poor." But these Anglo-Saxon immigrants have no difficulty in making butter. Santarem sends to Pará for sugar; but the cavaliers of Alabama are proving that the sugar-cane grows better than in Louisiana, attaining the height of twenty feet, and that it will yield for ten or twelve years without transplanting or cultivation. It is not, however, so sweet or juicy as the Southern cane. Some of the colonists are making tapioca and cashaça or Brazilian rum; others have gone into the pork business; while one, Dr. Jones, expects to realize a fortune burning lime. Here we met the rebel ex-General Dobbins, who had been prospecting on the Tapajos River, but had not yet located himself.