Egas has a population of about eight hundred inhabitants, and is the largest and most thriving place above Barra. It occupies an important position with regard to the trade of the river, being nearly midway between Barra and Loreto, (the Peruvian frontier,) and near the mouths of the great rivers Juruá, Japurá, and Teffé.
There are now eight or ten commercial houses at Egas that drive a tolerably brisk trade between Peru and Pará, besides employing agents to go into the neighboring rivers and collect from the Indians the productions of the land and the water.
Trade is carried on in schooners of between thirty and forty tons burden, which commonly average five months in the round trip between Egas and Pará, a distance of fourteen hundred and fifty miles, with an expense (consisting of pay and support of crew, with some small provincial and church taxes) of about one hundred and fifty dollars. M. Castelnau estimates these provincial and church taxes at about thirteen per cent. on the whole trade. Here is the bill of lading of such a vessel bound down: 150 arrobas of sarsaparilla: cost at Egas, $4 the arroba; valued in Pará at from $7 to $7 50. 300 pots manteiga: cost at Egas, $1 40 the pot; value in Pará, $2 50 to $3 50. 200 arrobas of salt fish: cost at Egas, 50 cents the arroba; value in Pará, $1 to $1 25.
Thus it appears that the cargo, which cost at Egas about thirteen hundred dollars, is sold in Pará, in two months, for twenty-six hundred dollars. The vessel then takes in a cargo of coarse foreign goods worth there twenty-five hundred dollars, which she sells, in three months, in Egas, at twenty per cent, advance on Pará prices; making a profit of six hundred and twenty-five dollars. This added to the thirteen hundred of profit on the down trip, and deducting the one hundred and fifty of expenses, will give a gain of seventeen hundred and seventy-five dollars in five months, which is about two hundred and seventy-five dollars more than the schooner costs.
There are five such vessels engaged in this trade, each making two trips a year; so that the value of the trade between Pará and Egas may be estimated at thirty-eight thousand dollars annually. Between Egas and Peru, it is about twenty thousand dollars. I myself know of about ten thousand dollars on its way, or about to be on its way up. A schooner came in to-day ninety-two days from Pará, which is bound up with a greater part of its cargo. I met one belonging to Guerrero at Fonteboa. Marcus Williams, a young American living at Barra, has one now off the mouth of the river, which has sent a boat in for provisions and stores; and Batalha himself is about to send two.
Major Batalha (for my friend commands a battalion of the Guarda Policial of the province divided between San Paulo, San Antonio, Egas, and Coari) complains, as all do, of the want of energy of the people. He says that as long as a man can get a bit of turtle or salt fish to eat, a glass of caçacha, and a cotton shirt and trousers, he will not work. The men who fish and make manteiga, although they are employed but a small portion of the year in this occupation, will do nothing else. There is wanting an industrious and active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country.
Although the merchants sell their foreign goods at an advance of twenty-five per cent. on the cost at Pará, yet this is on credit; and they say they could do much better if they could sell at fifteen per cent. for cash. Moreover, in this matter of credit they have no security. When a trader has made sufficient money to enable him to leave off work with his own hands, the custom is for him to supply some young dependant with a boat-load of goods and a crew, and send him away to trade with the Indians, depending upon his success and honesty for the payment of the twenty-five per cent. The young trader has no temptation to desert or abandon his patron, (habilitador;) but much is lost from the dangers incident to the navigation, and the want of judgment and discretion in the intercourse of the employer with the Indians, and in the hostile disposition of the Indians themselves.
There is much in this life of the "habilitado," or person employed by the traders, to attract the attention of the active, energetic young men of our country. It is true that he will encounter much hardship and some danger. These, however, are but stimulants to youth. It is also true that he will meet with a feeling of jealousy in the native towards the foreigner; but this feeling is principally directed towards the Portuguese, who are hard-working, keen, and clever; and who, as a general rule, go to that country to make money, and return home with it. This is their leading idea, and it makes them frugal, even penurious, in their habits, and indisposes them to make common cause with the natives of the country. Not so with the Italians, the French, the English, and the Americans, whom I have met with in this country. I do not know more popular people than my friends Enrique Antonii, the Italian, and his associate, Marcus Williams, the Yankee, who are established at Barra. Everywhere on the river I heard sounded the praises of my countryman. At Sarayacu, at Nauta, at Pebas, and at Egas, men said they wished to see him again and to trade with him. He himself told me that, though the trade on the river was attended with hardships, exposure, and privation, there was a certain charm attending the wild life, and its freedom from restraint, that would always prevent any desire on his part to return to his native country. I heard that he carried this feeling so far as to complain bitterly, when he visited Norris, the consul at Pará, of the restraints of society that compelled him to wear trousers at dinner.
Any number of peons, or as they are called in Brazil, Tapuios, may be had for an almost nominal rate of pay for this traffic with the Indians.
All the christianized Indians of the province of Pará (which, until within the last two or three years, comprehended all the Brazilian territory drained by the Amazon and the lower part of its tributaries on each side, but from which has been lately cut off and erected into a new province the Comarca of Alto Amazonas, comprising the Brazilian territory between Barra and Tabatinga) are registered and compelled to serve the State, either as soldiers of the Guarda Policial, or as a member of "Bodies of Laborers," (Corpos de Trabalhadores,) distributed among the different territorial divisions (comarcas) of the province. There are nine of these bodies, numbering in the aggregate seven thousand four hundred and forty-four, with one hundred and eighty-two officers. A better description of the origin and character of these bodies of laborers cannot be given than is given in the message to the Provincial Assembly of the President of the Province, Jeronimo Francisco Coelho, for the year 1849. This distinguished official, whose patriotism, talents, and energy are still spoken of with enthusiasm throughout the province, says: