Aug. 19.—The party arrived at Tarapoto. It is a town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants, and the district of which it is the capital numbers six thousand. The principal productions are rice, cotton, and tobacco; and cotton-cloth, spun and woven by the women, with about as little aid from machinery as the women in Solomon's time, of whom we are told, "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." The little balls of cotton thread which the women spin in this way are used as currency (and this in a land of silver-mines), and pass for twenty-five cents apiece in exchange for other goods, or twelve and a half cents in money. Most of the trade is done by barter. A cow is sold for one hundred yards of cotton cloth; a fat hog, for sixty; a large sheep, twelve; twenty-five pounds of salt fish, for twelve; twenty-five pounds of coffee, six; a head of plantains, which will weigh from forty to fifty pounds, for three needles; and so forth. All transportation of merchandise by land is made upon the backs of Indians, for want of roads suitable for beasts of burden. The customary weight of a load is seventy-five pounds: the cost of transportation to Moyobamba, seventy miles, is six yards of cloth. It is easy to obtain, in the term of six or eight days, fifty or sixty peons, or Indian laborers, for the transportation of cargoes, getting the order of the governor, and paying the above price, and supporting the peons on the way. The town is the most important in the province of Mainas. The inhabitants are called civilized, but have no idea of what we call comfort in their domestic arrangements. The houses are of mud, thatched with palm, and have uneven earth floors. The furniture consists of a grass hammock, a standing bedplace, a coarse table, and a stool or two. The governor of this populous district wore no shoes, and appeared to live pretty much like the rest of them.
Vessels of five feet draught of water may ascend the river, at the lowest stage of the water, to within eighteen miles of Tarapoto.
Our travellers accompanied a large fishing-party. They had four or five canoes, and a large quantity of barbasco; a root which has the property of stupefying, or intoxicating, the fish. The manner of fishing is to close up the mouth of an inlet of the river with a network made of reeds; and then, mashing the barbasco-root to a pulp, throw it into the water. This turns the water white, and poisons it; so that the fish soon begin rising to the surface, dead, and are taken into the canoes with small tridents, or pronged sticks. Almost at the moment of throwing the barbasco into the water, the smaller fish rise to the surface, and die in one or two minutes; the larger fish survive longer.
The salt fish, which constitutes an important article of food and also of barter trade, is brought from down the river in large pieces of about eight pounds each, cut from the vaca marina, or sea-cow, also found in our Florida streams, and there called manatee. It is found in great numbers in the Amazon and its principal tributaries. It is not, strictly speaking, a fish, but an animal of the whale kind, which nourishes its young at the breast. It is not able to leave the water; but, in feeding, it gets near the shore, and raises its head out. It is most often taken when feeding.
Our travellers met a canoe of Indians, one man and two women, going up the river for salt. They bought, with beads, some turtle-eggs, and proposed to buy a monkey they had; but one of the women clasped the little beast in her arms, and set up a great outcry, lest the man should sell it. The man wore a long cotton gown, with a hole in the neck for the head to come through, and short, wide sleeves. He had on his arm a bracelet of monkeys' teeth, and the women had nose-rings of white beads. Their dress was a cotton petticoat, tied round the waist; and all were filthy.
Sept. 1.—They arrived at Laguna. Here they found two travelling merchants, a Portuguese and a Brazilian. They had four large boats, of about eight tons each, and two or three canoes. Their cargo consisted of iron and iron implements, crockery-ware, wine, brandy, copper kettles, coarse short swords (a very common implement of the Indians), guns, ammunition, salt, fish, &c., which they expected to exchange for straw hats, cotton cloth, sugar, coffee, and money. They were also buying up all the sarsaparilla they could find, and despatching it back in canoes. They invited our travellers to breakfast; and the lieutenant says, "I thought that I never tasted any thing better than the farinha, which I saw now for the first time."
Farinha is a general substitute for bread in all the course of the Amazon below the Brazilian frontier. It is used by all classes; and the boatmen seemed always contented with plenty of salt fish and farinha. The women make it in this way: They soak the root of the mandioc in water till it is softened a little, when they scrape off the skin, and grate the root upon a board, which is made into a rude grater by being smeared with some of the adhesive gums of the forest, and then sprinkled with pebbles. The white grated pulp is put into a conical-shaped bag made of the coarse fibres of the palm. The bag is hung up to a peg driven into a post of the hut; a lever is put through a loop at the bottom of the bag; the short end of the lever is placed under a chock nailed to the post below; and the woman hangs her weight on the long end. This elongates the bag, and brings a heavy pressure upon the mass within, causing the juice to ooze out through the wicker-work of the bag. When sufficiently pressed, the mass is put on the floor of a mud oven; heat is applied, and it is stirred with a stick till it granulates into very irregular grains, and is sufficiently toasted to drive off all the poisonous qualities which it has in a crude state. It is then packed in baskets (lined and covered with palm-leaves) of about sixty-four pounds' weight, which are generally sold all along the river at from seventy-five cents to one dollar. The sediment of the juice is tapioca, and is used to make custards, puddings, starch, &c. It will surprise some of our readers to be told that the juice extracted in the preparation of these wholesome and nutritive substances is a powerful poison, and used by the Indians for poisoning the points of their arrows.