There is nothing cultivated at Tabatinga except a little sugar cane to make molasses and rum, for home consumption. I was told that Castelnau found here a fly that answered perfectly all the purposes of cantharides, blistering the skin even more rapidly. I heard that he also found the same fly at Egas, lower down. Senhor Lima instituted a search for some for me, but there were none to be had at this season. He showed me an oblong, nut-shaped fruit, growing in clusters at the base of a lily-like plant, called pacova catinga, the seed of which was covered with a thick pulp, which, when scraped off and pressed, gave a very beautiful dark-purple dye. This, touched with lime juice, changed to a rich carmine. He tells me that the trade of the river is increasing very fast; that in 1849 scarce one thousand dollars' worth of goods passed up; in 1850, two thousand five hundred dollars; and this year, six thousand dollars.
December 5.—We were employed in fitting up the new boat, to which the commandant gave his personal attention. I asked him to give me some more peons. He said, "Certainly;" sent out a guard of soldiers; pressed five Tucunas, and put them in the guard house till I was ready to start; when they were marched down to the boat, and a negro soldier sent along to take charge of them. He gave me all the beasts and birds he had, a demijohn of red wine, salt fish, and farinha for my men, and in short loaded me with kindness and civility. I had already parted with all the personal "traps" that I thought would be valuable and acceptable to my friends on the route, and could only make a show of acknowledgment by giving him, in return, a dozen masses of tobacco—an article which happened at this time to be scarce and valuable.
December 6.—We embarked at half-past 1 p. m., accompanied by the commandant, the cadet, and the Frenchman, Jeronymo Fort, who had been kind enough to place his house at Egas at my disposal. Ijurra had privately got all the guns and pistols ready, and we received the commandant with a salute of, I should think, at least one hundred guns; for Ijurra did not leave off shooting for half an hour. They dropped down the river with us till 5 p. m., when, taking a parting cup (literally tea-cup) of the commandant's present to the health of his Majesty the Emperor, we embraced and parted. I have always remembered with pleasure my intercourse with the Commandante Lima.
We passed the end of the island of Aramasa, which fronts the mouth of the river Yavari, at 6, and camped on the right bank of the river at half-past 7.
From a chart in the possession of M. Castelnau, and in the correctness of which he places confidence, it appears that the Yavari river has a distance from its mouth upwards of two hundred and seventy miles, and a course nearly east and west. At this point it bifurcates. The most western branch, which runs E. N. E., is called the Yavarisinho, and is a small and unimportant river. The eastern branch, called Jacarana, runs N. E. The authors of the chart (whom M. Castelnau thinks to be Portuguese commissioners, charged with the establishment of the boundaries) ascended the Yavari and Jacarana two hundred and ten miles in a straight line. But M. Castelnau says that this river is more than ordinarily tortuous, and estimates their ascent, by its sinuosities, at five hundred and twenty five miles.
A small river, called Tucuby, empties into the Yavari at forty-five miles from its mouth, and on the eastern side. A hundred and fifty miles further up enters a considerable river, called the Curuzá, also from the east. M. Castelnau thinks, however, from report, that the Curuzá is not navigable upwards more than ninety miles. Sugar-cane is sometimes seen floating on the water of the Jacarana, which indicates that its upper parts are inhabited by people who have communication, more or less direct, with white men. (Castelnau, vol. 5, page 52.)
December 7.—The river now has lost its name of Marañon, and, since the junction of the Yavari, is called Solimoens. It is here a mile and a half wide, sixty-six feet deep in the middle, and has a current of two miles and three quarters per hour. The small boat in which we carry our animals did not stop with us last night, but passed on without being noticed. She had all our fowls and turtles; so that our breakfast this morning consisted of boiled rice. We drifted with the tide all night, stopping for an hour in consequence of a severe squall of wind and rain from the eastward.
December 8.—Rainy morning. We arrived at San Paulo at 10 a. m. This village is on a hill two or three hundred feet above the present level of the river—the highest situation I have yet seen. The ascent to the town is very difficult and tedious, particularly after a rain, the soil being of white clay. On the top of this hill is a moist, grassy plain, which does not extend far back. The site is said not to be healthy, on account of swamps back of it. The population is three hundred and fifty, made up of thirty whites, and the rest Tucunas and Juries Indians. The commandant is the Lieutenant Don "José Patricio de Santa Ana." He gave us a good breakfast and some statistics. The yearly exports of San Paulo are eight thousand pounds of sarsaparilla, worth one thousand dollars; four hundred and fifty pots of manteca, or oil made from turtle eggs, worth five hundred and fifty dollars; and three thousand two hundred pounds of cocoa, worth sixty-four dollars. These are all sent to Egas. Common English prints sell for thirty cents the covado, (about three-fourths of a yard,) and coarse, strong cotton cloth, (generally American,) for thirty-seven and a half cents the vara, (three inches less than a yard.) We left San Paulo at half-past 3 p. m., and drifted with the current all night. Distance from Tabatinga to San Paulo, ninety-five miles.
December 9.—At half-past 8 a. m. we arrived at Maturá, a settlement of four or five huts, (with only one occupied,) on a muddy bank. Its distance from San Paulo is fifty miles. The shores of the river are generally low, though there are reaches where its banks are forty or fifty feet high, commonly of white or red clay. There is much colored earth on the banks of the river—red, yellow, and white—which those people who have taste make use of to plaster the inside of their houses. The banks are continually falling into the stream, sometimes in very large masses, carrying trees along with them, and forming one of the dangers and impediments to upward navigation where the boats have to keep close in shore to avoid the current.
We passed through a strait, between two islands, where the river was not more than eighty yards wide. It presented a singular contrast to the main river, to which we had become so much accustomed that this looked like a rivulet. It had forty eight feet depth, and two and a quarter miles current.