“ ‘The Cucamas have such a way of speaking that they seem to us to belong to Bolivia, for they make use of several Spanish words, and call, for instance, an axe hacha, a cutlass machéte, a knife cuchillo, etc.
“ ‘It was quite impossible to ascend higher than the seventh maloca, for the river was so narrow, and so much obstructed, that it did not admit the passage of even the smallest canoes.
“ ‘For this cause we set out to return on the 10th, and, going along without stopping, we reached this capital on the 30th of November, about eight o’clock at night.
“ ‘Finally, in all this long and painful voyage, we had not to deplore any fatal accident.
“ ‘Barra do Rio Negro, 20th of December, 1852.
“ ‘Serafim da Silva Salgado.’
“With the ‘Report’ before us, let us endeavour to ascertain the extreme point of Serafim’s navigation on the Purús. As he says not a word about bearings and distances, the only guide we have to the latter is the time occupied in the ascent, and I find that, deducting the days when he was stationary, he travelled from the Barra to the head of navigation on the Purús in 141 days. Now, if we take a known distance on the Amazon, viz. from the Barra to Manacapurú, which is 82 nautical miles (following the course of the river), we find that Serafim spent just 8 days over it, being at the rate of 10¼ miles per day. In the month of May, when he started, the Amazon would already have risen considerably and the current would be difficult to stem; hence this slow rate of progress.[477] The Purús in its lower part has a much gentler current than the Amazon, and there he would no doubt get on better; but it would attain its highest level during the period of Serafim’s voyage up it, and would then run much more than usual; and he mentions expressly that in its upper part the current became from day to day more rapid as he proceeded; so that I think we may safely assume 10¼ miles a day as the average rate of progress throughout the voyage, and travellers who have had to creep up South American rivers in canoes will agree with me that it is rather over than under the mark. This would give us for
| Distance from Barra to head of navigation of Purús | 1445 miles | |
| Deduct distance from Barra to mouth of Purús | 150 miles | |
| —— | ||
| And we get | 1295 miles, | for |
the whole length of Serafim’s navigation of the Purús, including all the bends of the river, from which at least one-third (but probably more) would have to be deducted to reduce it to a straight line. Taking off the third part, leaves 863 miles for the shortest distance between the extreme points of the navigation of the Purús, or say in round numbers 800 miles, which is possibly still in excess of the actual distance. Supposing that on the map of Spix and Martius (which is even yet the best we possess for a great part of South America) the general direction assigned to the Purús is correct (N.E., or rather N. 46° E.), and measuring on that rhumb for 800 miles, we reach a point which is in lat. 12° 30´ S., long. (from Greenwich) about 70° W. To ascertain where this takes us to we must go to the Andes of the S. E. of Peru, and inquire what streams flow northward from thence, between the headwaters of the Ucayali on the west, and those of the Madeira on the east. The fullest and probably the only trustworthy account we have of those streams is contained in two memoirs, by Mr. Clements Markham, published in the journals of the Royal Geographical Society, giving an account of an expedition made to the north-east of Cuzco in 1853, and of another in the adjacent province of Carabaya in 1860. He found the streams there divided into three groups, the most westerly uniting to form the river called the Madre de Dios, or Amaru-mayu, while the streams of the middle group formed the Inambarí, and the most easterly were tributaries of the Tambo-pata. He descended the Tono (as the upper part of the Madre de Dios is called) to a point in about lat. 12° 45´ S., long. 70° 30´ W.; the Sandia to where it unites with the Huari-huari to form the Inambarí, in lat. about 13° 10´ S., long. 69° 15´ W.; and the Tambo-pata to lat. 12° 18´ S., long. 68° 38´ W. Now if the Purús be prolonged but forty miles beyond the point to which Serafim is supposed to have ascended in 1852, it brings us exactly to where Mr. Markham descended on the Madre Dios in the following year (1853). In so savage a region it is quite possible that two explorers, the one starting from the mouth and the other from the head of a river, might reach nearly the same point on it, at the very same time, and yet not only be unaware of each other’s proximity, but afterwards, in comparing their itineraries, not find therein a single name common to both. There is, however, one name on Mr. Markham’s map, that of the river Inambarí, which I feel pretty confident is the same as the Oainamarí mentioned by Serafim as the name of an Indian nation who harassed the pacific and agricultural Cucamas at the head of the Purús. The Indian name of a river is generally that of a nation inhabiting its banks, as in the case of the Purús itself. Besides, the Indian of the Amazon, following the genius of their language (the Tupí), are very apt to prefix to names, especially such as begin with a vowel, a sound like that of the English w, which the Portuguese and Spaniards have variously represented by the letters u, o, oa, hu, gu, and even b; thus, to the northward of the Amazon, we have the river Guaupés, Uaupés, or Aupés; the Guasié, Sié, or Xié (pron. Shié); precisely analogous instances to Oainamarî, Uinamarí, or Inam(b)arî; for (it should be added) the letter b is generally a modern interpolation in names of the plain, not heard from the month of a native Indian.[478]
“Serafim does not tell us, and probably did not ascertain, whether his Oainamarí Indians lived on a river which fell into the Purús. Mr. Markham’s impression, after visiting the Madre de Dios, the Inambarí, and the Tambo-pata, and noting their direction at the lowest point he attained on them, was that all three united to form one river, which he supposed to be the Purús; and his opinion is entitled to great weight, as that of the only person capable of giving an account of what he saw, who has visited all the three rivers. Here, however, is the difficulty, which only a new and thorough exploration can clear up; for all speculation on such a point is uncertain and valueless. Comparing the maps of Martius and Markham, and bearing in mind the statement of Baena, one would be tempted to say that the Tambo-pata was the head of the Purús, the Inambarí of the Yutahý, and the Madre de Dios of the Yauarý; or the Madre de Dios may really be the origin of the Purús, and the other two streams may flow into the Beni. There are other possible modes of combination, and there is even another tributary of the Amazon, intermediate between the Yutahý and the Purús, I mean the Yuruá, which, though a smaller river, has so long a course, that we see (in Serafim’s story) Cucamas of the Purús having intercourse with people at the head of the Yuruá.