The lieutenant found the leading people here, as well as at Tarma, enthusiastic on the subject of opening the Amazon to foreign commerce. It will be a great day for them, they say, when the Americans get near them with a steamer.
On the 14th of July, they arrived at a spot of marshy ground, from which trickled in tiny streams the waters, which, uniting with others, swell till they form the broad River Huallaga, one of the head tributaries of the Amazon. Their descent was now rapid; and the next day they found themselves on a sudden among fruit-trees, with a patch of sugar-cane, on the banks of the stream. The sudden transition from rugged mountain-peaks, where there was no cultivation, to a tropical vegetation, was marvellous. Two miles farther on, they came in sight of a pretty village, almost hidden in the luxuriant vegetation. The whole valley here becomes very beautiful. The land, which is a rich river-bottom, is laid off into alternate fields of sugar-cane and alfalfa. The blended green and yellow of this growth, divided by willows, interspersed with fruit-trees, and broken into wavy lines by the serpentine course of the river, presented a scene which filled them with pleasurable emotions, and indicated that they had exchanged a semi-barbarous for a civilized society.
The party had had no occasion to complain of want of hospitality in any part of their route; but here they seemed to have entered upon a country where that virtue flourished most vigorously, having at its command the means of gratifying it. The owner of the hacienda of Quicacan, an English gentleman named Dyer, received the lieutenant and his large party exactly as if it were a matter of course, and as if they had quite as much right to occupy his house as they had to enter an inn. The next day they had an opportunity to compare with the Englishman a fine specimen of the Peruvian country gentleman. Col. Lucar is thus described: "He is probably the richest and most influential man in the province. He seems to have been the father of husbandry in these parts, and is the very type of the old landed proprietor of Virginia, who has always lived upon his estates, and attended personally to their cultivation. Seated at the head of his table, with his hat on to keep the draught from his head, and which he would insist upon removing unless I would wear mine; his chair surrounded by two or three little negro children, whom he fed with bits from his plate; and attending with patience and kindness to the clamorous wants of a pair of splendid peacocks, a couple of small parrots of brilliant and variegated plumage, and a beautiful and delicate monkey,—I thought I had never seen a more perfect pattern of the patriarch. His kindly and affectionate manner to his domestics, and to his little grand-children, a pair of sprightly boys, who came in the evening from the college, was also very pleasing." The mention of a college in a region in some respects so barbarous may surprise our readers; but such there is. It has a hundred pupils, an income of seventy-five thousand dollars yearly, chemical and philosophical apparatus, and one thousand specimens of European minerals.
Ijurra, our lieutenant's Peruvian companion, had written to the governor of the village of Tingo Maria, the head of canoe navigation on the Huallaga, to send Indians to meet the travellers here, and take their luggage on to the place of embarkation.
July 30.—The Indians came shouting into the farm-yard, thirteen in number. They were young, slight, but muscular-looking fellows, and wanted to shoulder the trunks, and be off at once. The lieutenant, however, gave them some breakfast; and then the party set forward, and, after a walk of six miles, reached the river, and embarked in the canoe. Two Indian laborers, called peons, paddled the canoe, and managed it very well. The peons cooked their dinner of cheese and rice, and made them a good cup of coffee. They are lively, good-tempered fellows, and, properly treated, make good and serviceable travelling companions. The canoe was available only in parts of the river where the stream was free from rapids. Where these occur, the cargo must be landed, and carried round. Lieut. Herndon and his party were compelled to walk a good part of the distance to Tingo Maria, which was thirty-six miles from where they first took the canoe.
"I saw here," says our traveller, "the lucernago, or fire-fly of this country. It is a species of beetle, carrying two white lights in its eyes, or rather in the places where the eyes of insects generally are, and a red light between the scales of the belly; so that it reminded me somewhat of the ocean steamers. They are sometimes carried to Lima (enclosed in an apartment cut into a sugar-cane), where the ladies at balls or theatres put them in their hair for ornament."
At Tingo Maria, their arrival was celebrated with much festivity. The governor got up a ball for them, where there was more hilarity than ceremony. The next morning, the governor and his wife accompanied our friends to the port. The governor made a short address to the canoe-men, telling them that their passengers were "no common persons; that they were to have a special care of them; to be very obedient," &c. They then embarked, and stood off; the boatmen blowing their horns, and the party on shore waving their hats, and shouting their adieus.
The party had two canoes, about forty feet long by two and a half broad, each hollowed out of a single log. The rowers stand up to paddle, having one foot in the bottom of the boat, and the other on the gunwale. There is a man at the bow of the boat to look out for rocks or sunken trees ahead; and a steersman, who stands on a little platform at the stern of the boat, and guides her motions. When the river was smooth, and free from obstruction, they drifted with the current, the men sitting on the trunks and boxes, chatting and laughing with each other; but, when they approached a "bad place," their serious looks, and the firm position in which each one planted himself at his post, showed that work was to be done. When the bark had fairly entered the pass, the rapid gestures of the bow-man, indicating the channel; the graceful position of the steersman, holding his long paddle; and the desperate exertions of the rowers, the railroad rush of the canoes, and the wild screaming laugh of the Indians as the boat shot past the danger,—made a scene so exciting as to banish the sense of danger.
After this specimen of their travel, let us take a glimpse of their lodging. "At half-past five, we camped on the beach. The first business of the boatmen, when the canoe is secured, is to go off to the woods, and cut stakes and palm-branches to make a house for the 'commander.' By sticking long poles in the sand, chopping them half-way in two about five feet above the ground, and bending the upper parts together, they make in a few minutes the frame of a little shanty, which, thickly thatched with palm-leaves, will keep off the dew or an ordinary rain. Some bring the drift-wood that is lying about the beach, and make a fire. The provisions are cooked and eaten, the bedding laid down upon the leaves that cover the floor of the shanty, the mosquito nettings spread; and after a cup of coffee, a glass of grog, and a cigar (if they are to be had), everybody retires for the night by eight o'clock. The Indians sleep round the hut, each under his narrow mosquito curtain, which glisten in the moonlight like so many tombstones."
The Indians have very keen senses, and see and hear things that would escape more civilized travellers. One morning, they commenced paddling with great vigor; for they said they heard monkeys ahead. It was not till after paddling a mile that they reached the place. "When we came up to them," says the lieutenant, "we found a gang of large red monkeys in some tall trees by the river-side, making a noise like the grunting of a herd of hogs. We landed; and, in a few moments, I found myself beating my way through the thick undergrowth, and hunting monkeys with as much excitement as I had ever felt in hunting squirrels when a boy." They found the game hard to kill, and only got three,—the lieutenant, with his rifle, one; and the Indians, with their blow-guns, two. The Indians roasted and ate theirs, and Lieut. Herndon tried to eat a piece; but it was so tough, that his teeth would make no impression upon it.