Manaos, 8 Septembre, 1865.
Senhor Pimenta Bueno.
Mon cher Ami:—Vous serez probablement surpris de recevoir seulement quelques lignes de moi après le temps qui s’est écoulé depuis ma dernière lettre. Le fait est que depuis Obydos je suis allé de surprise en surprise et que j’ai à peine eu le temps de prendre soin des collections que nous avons faites, sans pouvoir les étudier convenablement. C’est ainsi que pendant le semaine que nous avons passée dans les environs de Villa Bella, au Lago José Assú et Lago Maximo, nous avons recueilli cent quatre-vingts espèces de poissons dont les deux tiers au moins sont nouvelles et ceux de mes compagnons qui sont restés à Santarem et dans le Tapajoz en ont rapporté une cinquantaine, ce qui fait déjà bien au delà de trois cents espèces en comptant celles de Porto do Moz, de Gurupá, de Tajapurú et de Monte Alégre. Vous voyez qu’avant même d’avoir parcouru le tiers du cours de l’Amazone, le nombre des poissons est plus du triple de celui de toutes les espèces connues jusqu’à ce jour, et je commence à m’apercevoir que nous ne ferons qu’effleurer la surface du centre de ce grand bassin. Que sera-ce lorsqu’on pourra étudier à loisir et dans l’époque la plus favorable tous ses affluents. Aussi je prends dès-à-présent la résolution de faire de plus nombreuses stations dans la partie supérieure du fleuve et de prolonger mon séjour aussi long-temps que mes forces me le permettront. Ne croyez pas cependant que j’oublie à qui je dois un pareil succès. C’est vous qui m’avez mis sur la voie en me faisant connaître les ressources de la fôret et mieux encore en me fournissant les moyens d’en tirer parti. Merci, mille fois, merci. Je dois aussi tenir grand compte de l’assistance que m’ont fournie les agents de la compagnie sur tous les points où nous avons touché. Notre aimable commandant s’est également évertué, et pendant que j’explorais les lacs des environs de Villa Bella il a fait lui-même une très belle collection dans l’Amazone même, où il a recueilli de nombreuses petites espèces que les pecheurs négligent toujours. A l’arrivée du Belem, j’ai reçu votre aimable lettre et une partie de l’alcohol que j’avais demandé à M. Bond. Je lui écris aujourd’hui pour qu’il m’en envoie encore une partie à Teffé et plus tard davantage à Manaos. Je vous remercie pour le catalogue des poissons du Pará; je vous le restituerai à notre retour, avec les additions que je ferai pendant le reste du voyage. Adieu, mon cher ami.
Tout à vous,
L. Agassiz.[[63]]
Although no longer on board an independent steamer, we are still the guests of the company, having government passages. Nothing can be more comfortable than the travelling on these Amazonian boats. They are clean and well kept, with good-sized state-rooms, which most persons use, however, only as dressing-rooms, since it is always more agreeable to sleep on the open deck in one’s hammock. The table is very well kept, the fare good, though not varied. Bread is the greatest deficiency, but hard biscuit makes a tolerable substitute. Our life is after this fashion. We turn out of our hammocks at dawn, go down stairs to make our toilets, and have a cup of hot coffee below. By this time the decks are generally washed and dried, the hammocks removed, and we can go above again. Between then and the breakfast hour, at half past ten o’clock, I generally study Portuguese, though my lessons are somewhat interrupted by watching the shore and the trees, a constant temptation when we are coasting along near the banks. At half past ten or eleven o’clock breakfast is served, and after that the glare of the sun becomes trying, and I usually descend to the cabin, where we make up our journals, and write during the middle of the day. At three o’clock I consider that the working hours are over, and then I take a book and sit in my lounging-chair on deck, and watch the scenery, and the birds and the turtles, and the alligators if there are any, and am lazy in a general way. At five o’clock dinner is served, (the meals being always on deck,) and after that begins the delight of the day. At that hour it grows deliciously cool, the sunsets are always beautiful, and we go to the forward deck and sit there till nine o’clock in the evening. Then comes tea, and then to our hammocks; I sleep in mine most profoundly till morning.
To-day we stopped at a small station on the north side of the river called Barreira das Cudajas. The few houses stand on a bank of red drift, slightly stratified in some parts, and affording a support for the river-mud, shored up against it. Since then, in our progress, we have seen the same formation in several localities.
September 13th.—This morning the steamer dropped anchor at the little town of Coari on the Coari River,—one of the rivers of black water. We were detained at this place for some hours, taking in wood; so slow a process here, that an American, accustomed to the rapid methods of work at home, looks on in incredulous astonishment. A crazy old canoe, with its load of wood, creeps out from the shore, the slowness of its advance accounted for by the fact that of its two rowers one has a broken paddle, the other a long stick, to serve as apologies for oars. When the boat reaches the side of the steamer, a line of men is formed some eight or ten in number, and the wood is passed from hand to hand, log by log, each log counted as it arrives. Mr. Agassiz timed them this morning, and found that they averaged about seven logs a minute. Under these circumstances, one can understand that stopping to wood is a long affair. Since we left Coari we have been coasting along close to the land, the continental shore, and not that of an island. The islands are so large and numerous in the Amazons, that often when we believe ourselves between the northern and southern margins of the river, we are in fact between island shores. We have followed the drift almost constantly to-day,—the same red drift with which we have become so familiar in South America. Sometimes it rises in cliffs and banks above the mud deposit, sometimes it crops out through the mud, occasionally mingling with it and partially stratified, and in one locality it overlaid a gray rock in place, the nature of which Mr. Agassiz could not determine, but which was distinctly stratified and slightly tilted. The drift is certainly more conspicuous as we ascend the river; is this because we approach its source, or because the nature of the vegetation allows us to see more of the soil? Since we left Manaos the forest has been less luxuriant; it is lower on the Solimoens than on the Amazons, more ragged and more open. The palms are also less numerous than hitherto, but there is a tree here which rivals them in dignity. Its flat dome, rounded but not conical, towers above the forest, and, when seen from a distance, has an almost architectural character, so regular is its form. This majestic tree, called the Sumaumeira (Eriodendron Sumauma), is one of the few trees in this climate which shed their leaves periodically, and now it lifts its broad rounded summit above the green mass of vegetation around it, quite bare of foliage. Symmetrical as it is, the branches are greatly ramified and very knotty. The bark is white. It would seem that the season approaches when the Sumaumeiras should take on their green garb again, for a few are already beginning to put out young leaves. Beside this giant of the forest, the Imbauba (Cecropia), much lower here, however, than in Southern Brazil, and the Taxi, with its white flowers and brown buds, are very conspicuous along the banks. Close upon the shore the arrow-grass, some five or six feet in height, grows in quantity; it is called “frexas” here, being used by the Indians to make their arrows.
September 14th.—For the last day or two the shore has been higher than we have seen it since leaving Manaos. We constantly pass cliffs of red drift with a shallow beach of mud deposit resting against them; not infrequently a gray rock, somewhat like clay slate, crops out below the drift; this rock is very distinctly stratified, tilting sometimes to the west, sometimes to the east, always unconformable with the overlying drift.[[64]] The color of the drift changes occasionally, being sometimes nearly white in this neighborhood instead of red. We are coming now to that part of the Amazons where the wide sand-beaches occur, the breeding-places of the turtles and alligators. It is not yet quite the season for gathering the turtle-eggs, making the turtle-butter, &c., but we frequently see the Indian huts on the beaches, and their stakes set up for spreading and drying fish, which is one of the great articles of commerce here. This morning we have passed several hours off the town of Ega, or Teffé as the Brazilians call it. It takes its name from the river Teffé, but the town itself stands on a small lake, formed by the river just before it joins the Amazons. The entrance to the lake, which is broken by a number of little channels or igarapés, and the approach to the town, are exceedingly pretty. The town itself, with a wide beach in front, standing on the slope of a green hill, where sheep and cattle, a rare sight in this region, are grazing, looks very inviting. We examined it with interest, for some of the party at least will return to this station for the purpose of making collections.
September 15th.—For the last two or three days we have been holding frequent discussions as to the best disposition of our forces after reaching Tabatinga;—a source of great anxiety to Mr. Agassiz, the time we have to spend being so short, and the subjects of investigation so various and so important. Should he give up the idea of continuing, in person, his study of the fishes in the upper Amazons, leaving only some parties to make collections, and going himself into Peru, to visit at least the first spur of the Andes, with the purpose of ascertaining whether any vestiges of glaciers are to be found in the valleys, and also of making a collection of fishes from the mountain streams; or should he renounce the journey into Peru for the present, and, making a station somewhere in this region for the next month or two, complete, as far as may be, his investigation of the distribution and development of fishes in the Solimoens? Had the result of the Peruvian journey been more certain, the decision would have been easier; but it is more than likely that the torrential rains of this latitude have decomposed the surface and swept away all traces of glaciers, if they ever existed at so low a level. To go on, therefore, seemed a little like giving up a certain for an uncertain result. Earnestly desirous of making the best use of his time and opportunities here, this doubt has disturbed Mr. Agassiz’s waking and sleeping thoughts for several days past. Yesterday morning, at Teffé, a most unexpected adviser appeared in the midst of our council of war. Insignificant in size, this individual, nevertheless, brought great weight to the decision. The intruder was a small fish with his mouth full of young ones. The practical plea was irresistible,—embryology carried the day. A chance of investigating so extraordinary a process of development, not only in this species but in several others said to rear their young in the same fashion, was not to be thrown away; and, besides, there was the prospect of making a collection and a series of colored drawings, from the life, of the immense variety of fishes in the river and lake of Teffé, and perhaps of studying the embryology of the turtles and alligators in their breeding season. Mr. Agassiz, therefore, decides to return to Teffé with his artist and two or three other assistants, and to make a station there for a month at least, leaving Mr. Bourget, with our Indian fisherman, at Tabatinga to collect in that region, and sending Mr. James and Mr. Talisman to the river Putumayo, or Iça, and afterwards to the Hyutahy for the same purpose. This dispersion of parties to collect simultaneously in different areas, divided from each other by considerable distances, will show how the fishes are distributed, and whether their combinations differ in these localities as they have been found to do in the Lower Amazons.