Oregon and Eldorado; or, Romance of the Rivers

by Thomas Bulfinch

The commissioners who had made the northern measurements reported the length of the degree at 66° north latitude to be 57.422 toises; Messrs. Bouguer and La Condamine, the equatorial degree, 56.753 toises; showing a difference of 669 toises, or 4,389¾ feet. The difference, as corrected by later measurements, is stated by recent authorities at 3,662 English feet; by which amount the polar degree exceeds the equatorial. Thus Newton's theory was confirmed.

His scientific labors having been finished, La Condamine conceived the idea of returning home by way of the Amazon River; though difficulties attended the project, which we who live in a land of mighty rivers, traversed by steamboats, can hardly imagine. The only means of navigating the upper waters of the river was by rafts or canoes; the latter capable of containing but one or two persons, besides a crew of seven or eight boatmen. The only persons who were in the habit of passing up and down the river were the Jesuit missionaries, who made their periodical visits to their stations along its banks. A young Spanish gentleman, Don Pedro Maldonado, who at first eagerly caught at the idea of accompanying the French philosopher on his homeward route by way of the river, was almost discouraged by the dissuasives urged by his family and friends, and seemed inclined to withdraw from the enterprise; so dangerous was the untried route esteemed. It was, however, at length resolved that they should hazard the adventure; and a place of rendezvous was appointed at a village on the river. On the 4th of July, 1743, La Condamine commenced his descent of one of the streams which flow into the great river of the Amazons. The stream was too precipitous in its descent to be navigated by boats of any kind, and the only method used was by rafts. These are made of a light kind of wood, or rather cane, similar to the bamboo, the single pieces of which are fastened together by rushes, in such a manner, that they yield to every shock of moderate violence, and consequently are not subject to be separated even by the strongest. On such a conveyance, the French philosopher glided down the stream of the Chuchunga, occasionally stopping on its banks for a day or two at a time to allow the waters to abate, and admit of passing a dangerous rapid more safely; and sometimes getting fast on the shallows, and requiring to be drawn off by ropes by the Indian boatmen. It was not till the 19th of July that he entered the main river at Laguna, where he found his friend Maldonado, who had been waiting for him some weeks.

On the 23d of July, 1743, they embarked in two canoes of forty-two and forty-four feet long, each formed out of one single trunk of a tree, and each provided with a crew of eight rowers. They continued their course night and day, in hopes to reach, before their departure, the brigantines of the missionaries, in which they used to send once a year, to Pará, the cacao which they collected in their missions, and for which they got, in return, supplies of European articles of necessity.

On the 25th of July, La Condamine and his companion passed the village of a tribe of Indians lately brought under subjection, and in all the wildness of savage life: on the 27th, they reached another more advanced in civilization, yet not so far as to have abandoned their savage practices of artificially flattening their heads, and elongating their ears. The 1st of August, they landed at a missionary station, where they found numerous Indians assembled, and some tribes so entirely barbarous as to be destitute of clothing for either sex. "There are in the interior," the narration goes on to say, "some tribes which devour the prisoners taken in war; but there are none such on the banks of the river."

After leaving this station, they sailed day and night, equal to seven or eight days' journey, without seeing any habitation. On the 5th of August, they arrived at the first of the Portuguese missionary stations, where they procured larger and more commodious boats than those in which they had advanced hitherto. Here they began to see the first signs of the benefits of access to European sources of supply, by means of the vessel which went every year from Pará to Lisbon. They tarried six days at the last of the missionary stations, and again made a change of boats and of Indian crews. On the 28th August, being yet six hundred miles from the sea, they perceived the ebb and flow of the tide.

On the 19th September, they arrived at Pará, which La Condamine describes as a great and beautiful city, built of stone, and enjoying a commerce with Lisbon, which made it flourishing and increasing. He observes, "It is, perhaps, the only European settlement where silver does not pass for money; the whole currency being cocoa." He adds in a note, "Specie currency has been since introduced."

The Portuguese authorities received the philosophers with all the civilities and hospitalities due to persons honored with the special protection and countenance of two great nations,—France and Spain. The cannon were fired; and the soldiers of the garrison, with the governor of the province at their head, turned out to receive them. The governor had received orders from the home government to pay all their expenses, and to furnish them every thing requisite for their comfort and assistance in their researches. La Condamine remained three months at Pará; and then, declining the urgent request of the governor to embark in a Portuguese vessel for home by way of Lisbon, he embarked in a boat rowed by twenty-two Indians, under the command of a Portuguese officer, to coast along the shores of the continent to the French colony of Cayenne.

The city of Pará from whence he embarked is not situated upon the Amazon River, but upon what is called the River of Pará, which branches off from the Amazon near its mouth, and discharges itself into the sea at a distance of more than a hundred miles east of the Amazon. The intervening land is an island called Marajo, along the coast of which La Condamine and his party steered till they came to the place where the Amazon River discharges into the sea that vast bulk of waters which has been swelled by the contributions of numerous tributaries throughout a course of more than three thousand miles in length. It here meets the current which runs along the north-eastern coast of Brazil, and gives rise to that phenomenon which is called by the Indians Pororoca. The river and the current, having both great rapidity, and meeting nearly at right angles, come into contact with great violence, and raise a mountain of water to the height of one hundred and eighty feet. The shock is so dreadful, that it makes all the neighboring islands tremble; and fishermen and navigators fly from it in the utmost terror. The river and the ocean appear to contend for the empire of the waves: but they seem to come to a compromise; for the sea-current continues its way along the coast of Guiana to the Island of Trinidad, while the current of the river is still observable in the ocean at a distance of five hundred miles from the shore.

La Condamine passed this place of meeting in safety by waiting for a favorable course of tides, crossing the Amazon at its mouth, steering north; and after many delays, caused by the timidity and bad seamanship of his Indian crew, arrived at last safe at Cayenne on the 26th February, 1744, having been eight months on his voyage, two of which were spent in his passage from Pará, a passage which he avers a French officer and crew, two years after him, accomplished in six days. La Condamine was received with all possible distinction at Cayenne, and in due time found passage home to France, where he arrived 25th February, 1745.