This factoria is a small one, and will give but two or three hundred pots. One requires a good stomach to be able to eat his breakfast at one of these places. The stench is almost intolerable; the beach is covered with greedy and disgusting-looking buzzards, and the surface of the water dotted with the humps of the deadly alligator.
By visiting the factoria, I missed the mouth of the Jutay, which is on the other side. I was misled by Smyth's map. He places the island of Mapaná some distance above the mouth of the Jutay, and represents the Amazon as clear of islands where that river enters. A large island commences just abreast the factoria, which the people then told me was called Invira, though they did not seem certain of this. They told me that in rounding the lower end of that island I would find myself at the mouth of the Jutay. This was not so, for, when I doubled the point, I was two or three miles below it. I saw where it emptied into the Amazon; but both myself and people were too tired to turn back and examine it.
The Indians of the Jutay are Maraguas, (christianized Indians,) who inhabit the banks at a distance of two days up. (Their houses are built of wood and plastered, and they show a taste and fondness for mechanics.) Maragua-Catuquinas, of whom a few are baptized, two days further up; and Catuquinas Infidels, four days still further.
The products of the river are one hundred and fifty arrobas of sarsaparilla yearly, one hundred pots of manteiga, and a great quantity of farinha. In the last four years, five men of Egas have been killed by the Indians of the Jutay. My informant is Senhor Batalha, a merchant at Egas. M. Castelnau estimates, from the report of traders, that this river is navigable upward for about five hundred and forty miles, and that its sources are not far from those of the Yavari. From Tunantins to the mouth of the Jutay is seventy-five miles.
I was surprised to find in this part of the river between Tunantins and Fonteboa but a mile and a quarter current per hour. I attributed it to bad measurement—from having only a two-pound weight as a lead; yet as the line was not larger than ordinary twine, and was suffered to run freely over the gunwale of the boat, without friction or impediment of any kind, I can scarcely suppose that the lead dragged. The frequent remark of both Ijurra and myself was "The river does not run." (No corre el rio.) Below Fonteboa, where I bought a four-pound lead, I found the current at its usual velocity of two and a half miles. I think that I have used up nearly all the four-pound weights on the river, having lost at least half a dozen. My lines, generally made of chambira, rot with the rain and sun, and break with little strain. We anchored at 8 p. m. off a sandy beach, where there was another factoria, thirty miles distant from the upper one.
The Ticunas whom I brought with me from Tabatinga are even more lazy and careless than the Sarayaquinos. I fancied that it was because they were forced into the service, and did not think that they would be paid; so I gave each one, as a gratuity, a knife, a pair of scissors, and a small mirror; but they were no better afterwards than before. Poor fellows! they have been abused and maltreated so long that they are now insensible even to kindness. The negro soldier who was sent along, either as a pilot or to govern the Ticunas, or as a watch upon me, is drunken and worthless. He knows nothing of the river, and I believe steals my liquor.
December 12.—There are evidently many newly-formed islands in the river. We ran, all the morning, through narrow island passages; the channels, in some places, not over forty yards wide, but of twenty and thirty feet of depth. We passed another factoria on a point of an island near the main river, with a schooner moored off; and stopped at a quarter past six on the sandy point of a small island, where there were mandioca and water-melons. I am surprised at the quality of the soil in which this mandioca grows. To a casual observation it appears pure sand.
December 13.—At 8 a. m. we entered a narrow arm of the river, sixty miles from the mouth of the Jutay, that leads by Fonteboa. This canal separates the island of "Cacao" (on which much cocoa grows wild) from the main land. The caño is not more than twenty yards broad. The least water I found was nine feet. Fonteboa is about eight miles from the entrance of the canal. It is situated on a hill a quarter of a mile within the mouth of the river of the same name that empties into the canal. Smyth says that the town gets its name from the clearness of the water of the river; but it is not so at this season. There is no current in the river at the village, and the water was very nearly quite as muddy as that of the Amazon.
The population of Fonteboa is two hundred and fifty. There are eighty whites. We met several traders at this place bound up and down the river. One, named Guerrero, an intelligent-looking person, from Obydos, was going up with a cargo that I heard valued at twenty contos of reis, (about ten thousand five hundred dollars.) This was manifestly an exaggeration. His schooner, of some thirty-five tons burden, I think, could not carry the value of that sum in the heavy and bulky articles usually sent up the river. He had, however, a variety of articles. I bought some red wine and rum for stores; and Ijurra bought very good shoes and cotton stockings. This gentleman invited us to breakfast with him. His plates and cups were of pewter, and he seemed well equipped for travelling. He said that nearly all the cultivable land about Obydos, Santarem, and Villa Nova was already occupied; that most of it was so low and swampy that it was valueless; and that people would soon have to come up here where the ground was high and rich. He was sixty-two working days from Obydos, and expected to be thirty to Loreto.
Sailed at 3 p. m.; found but five feet of water where the river of Fonteboa joins the caño. The distance by the caño to its outlet into the main river is two miles. The banks below Fonteboa are quite high, and of red and white clay. Stopped for the night at half past 6 p. m.