October 29th.—Yesterday, after breakfast, I retreated to the room where we had passed the night, hoping to find time and quiet for writing letters and completing my journal. But I found it already occupied by the old Senhora and her guests, who were lounging in the hammocks or squatting on the floor and smoking their pipes. The house is indeed full to overflowing, as the whole party assembled for the ball are to stay during the President’s visit. But in this way of living it is an easy matter to accommodate any number of people, for if they cannot all be received under the roof, they can hang their hammocks under the trees outside. As I went to my room last evening, I stopped to look at a pretty picture of an Indian mother with her two little children asleep on either arm, all in one hammock, in the open air. My Indian friends were too much interested in my occupations to allow of my continuing them uninterruptedly. They were delighted with my books (I happened to have “The Naturalist on the Amazons” with me, in which I showed them some pictures of Amazonian scenery and insects), and asked me many questions about my country, my voyage, and my travels here. In return they gave me much information about their own way of life. They said the present gathering of neighbors and friends was no unusual occurrence, for they have a great many festas, which, though partly religious in character, are also occasions of great festivity. These festas are celebrated at different sitios in turn, the saint of the day being carried, with all his ornaments, candles, bouquets, &c., to the house where the ceremony is to take place, and where all the people of the village congregate. Sometimes the festa lasts for several days, and is accompanied with processions, music, and dances in the evening. But the women said the forest was very sad now, because their men had all been taken as recruits, or were seeking safety in the woods. The old Senhora told me a sad story of the brutality exercised in recruiting the Indians. She assured me that they were taken wherever found, without regard to age or circumstances, women and children often being dependent upon them; and if they made resistance, were carried off by force, and frequently handcuffed or had heavy weights attached to their feet. Such proceedings are entirely illegal; but these forest villages are so remote, that the men employed to recruit may practice any cruelty without being called to account for it. If the recruits are brought in in good condition, no questions are asked. These women said that all the work of the sitios—the making of farinha, the fishing, the turtle-hunting—was stopped for want of hands. The appearance of things certainly confirms this, for we scarcely see any men in the villages, and the canoes we meet are mostly rowed by women.
Yet I must say that the life of the Indian woman, so far as we have seen it, seems enviable, in comparison with that of the Brazilian lady in the Amazonian towns. The former has a healthful out-of-door life; she has her canoe on the lake or river and her paths through the forest, with perfect liberty to come and go; she has her appointed daily occupations, being busy not only with the care of her house and children, but in making farinha or tapioca, or in drying and rolling tobacco, while the men are fishing and turtle-hunting; and she has her frequent festa-days to enliven her working life. It is, on the contrary, impossible to imagine anything more dreary and monotonous than the life of the Brazilian Senhora in the smaller towns. In the northern provinces especially the old Portuguese notions about shutting women up and making their home-life as colorless as that of a cloistered nun, without even the element of religious enthusiasm to give it zest, still prevail. Many a Brazilian lady passes day after day without stirring beyond her four walls, scarcely ever showing herself at the door or window; for she is always in a slovenly dishabille, unless she expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life, without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian Senhora in this part of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless life, or frets against her chains, and is as discontented as she is useless.
On the day of our arrival the dinner was interrupted by the entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the President; yesterday it was enlivened by quite a number of appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the dinner-table, there had probably never been gathered under the palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons just such a party before, combining so many different elements and objects. There was the President, whose chief interest was of course in administering the affairs of the province, in which the Indians shared largely his attention; there was the young statesman, whose whole heart is in the great national question of peopling the Amazons and opening it to the world, and the effect this movement is to have upon his country; there was the able engineer, much of whose scientific life has been passed in surveying the great river and its tributaries with a view to their future navigation; and there was the man of pure science, come to study the distribution of animal life in their waters, without any view to practical questions. The speeches touched upon all these different interests, and were received with enthusiasm, each one closing with a toast and music; for our little band of the night before was brought in to enliven the occasion. The Brazilians are very happy in their after-dinner speeches, expressing themselves with great facility, either from a natural gift or because speech-making is an art in which they have had much practice. The habit of drinking healths and giving toasts is very general throughout the country, and the most informal dinner among intimate friends does not conclude without some mutual greetings of this kind.
As we were taking coffee under the trees afterwards, having yielded our places, in the primitive dining-room, to the Indian guests, the President suggested a sunset row on the lake. The hour and the light were most tempting, and we were soon off in the canoe, taking no boatmen, the gentlemen preferring to row themselves. We went through the same lovely region, half water, half land, which we had passed in the morning, floating between patches of greenest grass, and by large forest trees, and blackened trunks standing out of the lake like ruins. We did not go very fast nor very far, for our amateur boatmen found the evening warm, and their rowing was rather play than work; they stopped, too, every now and then, to get a shot at a white heron or to shoot into a flock of parroquets or ciganas, whereby they wasted a good deal of powder to no effect. As we turned to come back we were met by one of the prettiest sights I have ever seen. The Indian women, having finished their dinner, had taken the little two-masted canoe, dressed with flags, which had been prepared for the President’s reception, and had come out to meet us. They had the music on board and there were two or three men in the boat; but the women were some twelve or fifteen in number, and seemed, like genuine Amazons, to have taken things into their own hands. They were rowing with a will; and as the canoe drew near, with music playing and flags flying, the purple lake, dyed in the sunset and smooth as a mirror, gave back the picture. Every tawny figure at the oars, every flutter of the crimson and blue streamers, every fold of the green and yellow national flag at the prow, was as distinct below the surface as above it. The fairy boat—for so it looked—floating between glowing sky and water, and seeming to borrow color from both, came on apace; and as it approached, our friends greeted us with many a Viva, to which we responded as heartily. Then the two canoes joined company and we went on together, the guitar sometimes being taken into one canoe and sometimes into the other, while Brazilian and Indian songs followed each other. Anything more national, more completely imbued with tropical coloring and character than this evening scene on the lake, can hardly be conceived. When we reached the landing, the gold and rose-colored clouds were fading into soft masses of white and ashen gray, and moonlight was taking the place of sunset. As we went up the green slope to the sitio, a dance on the grass was proposed, and the Indian girls formed a quadrille; for thus much of civilization has crept into their native manners, though they throw into it so much of their own characteristic movements, that it loses something of its conventional aspect. Then we returned to the house, where the dancing and singing were renewed, while here and there groups sat about on the ground laughing and talking, the women smoking with as much enjoyment as the men. Smoking is almost universal among the common women here, yet is not confined to the lower classes. Many a Senhora (at least in this part of Brazil, for we must distinguish between the civilization on the banks of the Amazons and in the interior and that in the cities along the coast) enjoys her pipe, while she lounges in her hammock through the heat of the day.
October 30th.—Yesterday our party broke up. The Indian women came to bid us good-by after breakfast, and dispersed to their several homes, going off in various directions through the forest-paths in little groups, their babies, of whom there were a goodly number, astride on their hips, as usual, and the older children following. Mr. Agassiz passed the morning in packing and arranging his fishes, having collected in those two days more than seventy new species.[[81]] His studies have been the subject of great curiosity to the people about the sitio; one or two were always hovering about to look at his work and to watch Mr. Burkhardt’s drawing. They seemed to think it extraordinary that any one should care to take the portrait of a fish. The familiarity of these children of the forest with the natural objects about them—plants, birds, insects, fishes, etc.—is remarkable. They frequently ask to see the drawings; and in turning over a pile containing several hundred colored sketches of fishes, they scarcely make a mistake,—even the children giving the name instantly, and often adding, “É filho d’este,” (it is the child of such an one,) thus distinguishing the young from the adult, and pointing out their relation.
We dined rather earlier than usual, our chief dish being a stew of parrots and toucans, and left the sitio at about five o’clock, in three canoes, the music accompanying us in the smaller boat. Our Indian friends stood on the shore as we left, giving us farewell greetings, waving their hats and hands, and cheering heartily. The afternoon row through the lake and igarapé was delicious; but the sun had long set as we issued from the little river, and the Rio Negro, where it opens broadly out into the Amazons, was a sea of silver. The boat with the music presently joined our canoe, and we had a number of the Brazilian “modinhas,” as they call them,—songs which seem especially adapted for the guitar. These modinhas have a quite peculiar character. They are little graceful, lyrical snatches of song, with a rather melancholy cadence; even those of which the words are gay not being quite free from this undertone of sadness. This put us all into a somewhat dreamy mood, and we approached the end of our journey rather silently. But as we drew near the landing, we heard the sound of a band of brass instruments, effectually drowning our feeble efforts, and saw a crowded canoe coming towards us. They were the boys from the Indian school which we visited on our previous stay at Manaos. The canoe looked very pretty as it came towards us in the moonlight; it seemed full to overflowing, the children all dressed in white uniforms and standing up. This little band comes always on Sunday evenings and festa-days to play before the President’s house. They were just going home, it being nearly ten o’clock; but the President called to them to turn back, and they accompanied us to the beach, playing all the while. Thus our pleasant three days’ picnic ended with music and moonlight.
CHAPTER IX.
MANAOS AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.
Photographic Establishment.—Indian Portraits.—Excursion to the “Great Cascade.”—Its Geological Formation.—Bathing Pool.—Parasitic Plants.—Return by the Igarapé.—Public Ball.—Severity in Recruiting, and its Effects.—Collecting Parties.—Scenes of Indian Life.—Fête Champêtre at the “Casa dos Educandos.”—Prison at Manaos.—Prison Discipline on the Amazons.—Extracts from Presidential Reports on this Subject.—Prison at Teffé.—General Character of Brazilian Institutions.—Emperor’s Birthday.—Illuminations and Public Festivities.—Return of Collecting Parties.—Remarks on the Races.—Leave Manaos for Mauhes.
Saturday, November 4th.—Manaos. This week has been rather uneventful. Mr. Agassiz is prevented from undertaking new expeditions by the want of alcohol. The next steamer will bring a fresh supply from Pará; and meanwhile, being interrupted in his collections, he is making a study of the various intermixture of races, Indians and Negroes, with their crossings, of which a great number are found here. Our picturesque barrack of a room, which we have left for more comfortable quarters in Mr. Honorio’s house, serves as a photographic saloon, and here Mr. Agassiz is at work half the day with his young friend Mr. Hunnewell, who spent almost the whole time of our stay in Rio in learning photography, and has become quite expert in taking likenesses. The grand difficulty is found in the prejudices of the people themselves. There is a prevalent superstition among the Indians and Negroes that a portrait absorbs into itself something of the vitality of the sitter, and that any one is liable to die shortly after his picture is taken. This notion is so deeply rooted that it has been no easy matter to overcome it. However, of late the desire to see themselves in a picture is gradually gaining the ascendant, the example of a few courageous ones having emboldened the more timid, and models are much more easily obtained now than they were at first.
Yesterday our quiet life was interrupted by an excursion to the great cascade, where we went with a party of friends to breakfast and dine. We were called with the dawn, and were on the road at six o’clock, the servants following laden with baskets of provisions. The dewy walk through the woods in the early morning was very pleasant, and we arrived at the little house above the cascade before the heat of the day began. This house stands on a hill in a cleared ground entirely surrounded by forest; just below it the river comes rushing through the wood, and falls some ten feet over a thin platform of rock. By its formation, this cascade is a Niagara in miniature; that is, the lower layer of rock being softer than the upper, the water has worn it away until there now remains only a thin slab of harder rock across the river. Deprived of its support, this slab must break down eventually, as Table-rock has done, when the cascade will, of course, retreat by so much and begin the same process a little higher up. It has, no doubt, thus worn its way upward already from a distant point. The lower deposit is clay, the upper consists of the constantly recurring reddish sandstone,—in other words, drift worked over by water. Below the fall, the water goes tearing along through a narrow passage, over boulders, fallen trees, and decaying logs, which break it into rapids. At a little distance from the cascade there is a deep, broad basin in the wood, with a sand bottom, so overshadowed by great trees that it looks dark even in tropical midday. The bathing here, as we found by experience at a later hour, is most delicious. The shade over the pool is so profound and the current runs through it so swiftly that the water is exceedingly cold,—an unusual thing here,—and it seems very refreshing to those coming from the hot sun outside. At the side of this pool I saw a very large parasitic plant in flower. Since we have been on the Amazons most of these parasites have been out of bloom, and, though we have seen beautiful collections in private gardens, we have not met them in the woods. This one was growing in the lofty notch of a great tree, overhanging the water; a tuft of dark green leaves with large violet and straw-colored blossoms among them. It was quite out of reach, and the little garden looked so pretty in its airy perch, that I was almost glad we had no power to disturb it. After breakfast some of the guests, and Mr. Agassiz among them, were obliged to return to town on business. They rejoined us in time for a late dinner, arriving in a canoe instead of coming on foot, an experiment which we had been prevented from trying in the morning, because we had been told that, as the igarapé was low and the bottom very rocky, it would be impossible to ascend the whole distance in a boat. They came, however, in perfect safety, and were delighted with the picturesque beauty of the row. After a very cheerful dinner, closing with a cup of coffee in the open air, we started at twilight for town, by different roads. Desirous to see the lower course of the igarapé, which Mr. Agassiz reported as so beautiful, and being assured that there was no real danger, I returned in the little canoe with Mr. Honorio. It was thought best not to overload it, so the others took the forest road by which we had come in the morning. I must say that as I went down the rough steps to the landing, in the very pool where we had bathed, it struck me that the undertaking was somewhat perilous; if this overshadowed nook was dark at noonday, it was black at nightfall, and the turbulent little stream, rushing along over rocks and logs, looked mischievous. The rest of the party went with us to the embarkation, and, as we disappeared in the darkness under the overhanging branches, one of them called after us, laughingly,