HERNDON'S EXPEDITION CONTINUED.
The Huallaga is navigable, for vessels drawing five feet depth of water, 285 miles; and forty miles farther for canoes. Our travellers had now arrived at its junction with the Amazon; and their first sight of its waters is thus described: "The march of the great river in its silent grandeur was sublime; but in the untamed might of its turbid waters, as they cut away its banks, tore down the gigantic denizens of the forest, and built up islands, it was awful. I was reminded of our Mississippi at its topmost flood; but this stream lacked the charm which the plantation upon the bank, the city upon the bluff, and the steamboat upon the waters, lend to its fellow of the North. But its capacities for trade and commerce are inconceivably great; and to the touch of steam, settlement, and cultivation, this majestic stream and its magnificent water-shed would start up in a display of industrial results that would make the Valley of the Amazon one of the most enchanting regions on the face of the earth."
Lieut. Herndon speaks of the Valley of the Amazon in language almost as enthusiastic as that of Sir Walter Raleigh: "From its mountains you may dig silver, iron, coal, copper, zinc, quicksilver, and tin; from the sands of its tributaries you may wash gold, diamonds, and precious stones; from its forests you may gather drugs of virtues the most rare, spices of aroma the most exquisite, gums and resins of the most varied and useful properties, dyes of hue the most brilliant, with cabinet and building woods of the finest polish and the most enduring texture. Its climate is an everlasting summer, and its harvest perennial."
Sept. 8.—The party encamped at night on an island near the middle of the river. "The Indians, cooking their big monkeys over a large fire on the beach, presented a savage and most picturesque scene. They looked more like devils roasting human beings, than any thing mortal." We ask ourselves, on reading this, whether some such scene may not have given rise to the stories of cannibalism which Raleigh and others record.
They arrived at Nauta, a village of a thousand inhabitants, mostly Indians. The governor of the district received them hospitably. Each district has its governor, and each town its lieutenant-governor. These are of European descent. The other authorities of a town are curacas, captains, alcades, and constables. All these are Indians. The office of curaca is hereditary, and is not generally interfered with by the white governor. The Indians treat their curaca with great respect, and submit to corporal punishment at his mandate.
Sarsaparilla is one of the chief articles of produce collected here. It is a vine of sufficient size to shoot up fifteen or twenty feet from the root without support. It thus embraces the surrounding trees, and spreads to a great distance. The main root sends out many tendrils, generally about the thickness of a straw, and five feet long. These are gathered, and tied up in bundles of about an arroba, or thirty-two pounds' weight. It is found on the banks of almost every river of the region; but many of these are not worked, on account of the savages living on them, who attack the parties that come to gather it. The price in Nauta is two dollars the arroba, and in Europe from forty to sixty dollars.
From Nauta, Lieut. Herndon ascended the Ucayali, a branch of the Amazon, stretching to the north-west in a direction somewhat parallel to the Huallaga. There is the essential difference between the two rivers, as avenues for commerce, that the Ucayali is still in the occupation of savage tribes, unchristianized except where under the immediate influence of the mission stations planted among them; while the population of the Huallaga is tolerably advanced in civilization. The following sentences will give a picture of the Indians of the Ucayali: "These people cannot count, and I can never get from them any accurate idea of numbers. They are very little removed above 'the beasts that perish.' They are filthy, and covered with sores. The houses are very large, between thirty and forty feet in length, and ten or fifteen in breadth. They consist of immense roofs of small poles and canes, thatched with palm, and supported by short stakes, four feet high, planted in the ground three or four feet apart, and having the spaces, except between two in front, filled in with cane. They have no idea of a future state, and worship nothing. But they can make bows and canoes; and their women weave a coarse cloth from cotton, and dye it. Their dress is a long cotton gown. They paint the face, and wear ornaments suspended from the nose and lower lip."
Next let us take a view of the means in operation to elevate these people to civilization and Christianity. Sarayacu is a missionary station, governed by four Franciscan friars, who are thus described: "Father Calvo, meek and humble in personal concerns, yet full of zeal and spirit for his office, clad in his long serge gown, belted with a cord, with bare feet and accurate tonsure, habitual stoop, and generally bearing upon his shoulder a beautiful and saucy bird of the parrot kind, was my beau-ideal of a missionary monk. Bregati is a young and handsome Italian, whom Father Calvo sometimes calls St. John. Lorente is a tall, grave, and cold-looking Catalan. A lay-brother named Maguin, who did the cooking, and who was unwearied in his attentions to us, made up the establishment. I was sick here, and think that I shall ever remember with gratitude the affectionate kindness of these pious and devoted friars of St. Francis."
The government is paternal. The Indians recognize in the "padre" the power to appoint and remove curacas, captains, and other officers; to inflict stripes, and to confine in the stocks. They obey the priests' orders readily, and seem tractable and docile. The Indian men are drunken and lazy: the women do most of the work; and their reward is to be maltreated by their husbands, and, in their drunken frolics, to be cruelly beaten, and sometimes badly wounded.
Our party returned to the Amazon; and we find occurring in their narrative names which are familiar to us in the history of our previous adventurers. They touched at Omaguas, the port where Madame Godin found kind friends in the good missionary and the governor, and where she embarked on her way to the galiot at Loreto; and they passed the mouth of the Napo, which enters the Amazon from the north,—the river down which Orellana passed in the first adventure. The lieutenant says, "We spoke two canoes that had come from near Quito by the Napo. There are few Christianized towns on the Napo; and the rowers of the boats were a more savage-looking set than I had seen,"—so slow has been the progress of civilization in three hundred years.