I saw a very peculiar monkey at Egas. It is called Acaris, and has a face of a very pretty rose color. The one I saw here was nearly as large as a common baboon. He had long hair, of a dirty-white color, and was evidently very old. Two that I saw at a factoria, on a beach of the Amazon, had hair of a reddish-yellow color; the tail is very short. Castelnau says that the vermilion color of the face disappears after death; and during life it varies in intensity, according to the state of the passions of the animal. The owners would not sell me those at the factoria, and I would not buy the one at Egas, because his face was blotched with some cutaneous affection, and he was evidently so old that he would soon die.
During our stay at Egas we had our meals cooked by an old negro woman who has charge of M. Fort's house, furnishing her with money to buy what she could. It is very difficult to get anything but turtle even here. I counted thirty-nine cattle grazing on the green slope before our door; yet neither for love nor money could we get any beef, and with difficulty a little milk for our coffee. We sent to Nogueyra for fowls and eggs, but without success. These are festival times, and people want their little luxuries themselves, or are too busily engaged in frolicking to care about selling.
Major Batalha treated us with great kindness, sending us delicacies from, his own table—the greatest of which was some well-made bread. We had not tasted any since leaving Huanuco—now five months; and of course it was very welcome. On Christmas day he sent us a pair of fine, large, sponge-cakes. A piece of these, with a glass of tolerable ale, was a princely luncheon to us wayfarers, who had lived so long on salt fish and farinha. It fairly made Ijurra grin with delight. We could always get a cup of very good chocolate by walking round to the Major's house; and the only thing I had to find fault with was, that I was always received in the shop. The Brazilians, as a general rule, do not like to introduce foreigners to their families, and their wives lead a monotonous and somewhat secluded life.
An intelligent and spirited lady friend told me that the customs of her country confined and restrained her more than was agreeable, and said, with a smile, that she would not like to say how much she had been influenced in the choice of a husband by the hope that she would remove to another country, where she might see something, learn something, and be somebody.
December 28.—We left Egas at half-past 2 p. m., in the rain. We seemed to have travelled just ahead of the rainy season; and whenever we have stopped at any place for some days, the rains have caught up with us.
I now parted with my Sarayacu boatmen, and very sorry I was to lose them. They were lazy enough, but were active and diligent compared with the stupid and listless Ticunas. They were always (though somewhat careless) faithful and obedient. I believe that the regret at parting was mutual. Their earnest tone of voice and affectionate manner proclaimed their feeling; and a courtier, addressing his sovereign, would have envied the style in which old Andres bent his knee and kissed my hand, and the tremulous tones, indicating deep feeling, with which he uttered the words "A dios, mi patron." They are all going back to Sarayacu but one, who has engaged himself to Senhor Batalha. It is a curious thing that so many Peruvian Indians should be working in Brazil; but it shows that they are removed above the condition of savages, for, though worse treated in Brazil, and deprived of the entire freedom of action they have in Peru, yet they are paid something; they acquire property, though it be nothing more than a painted wooden box with hinges and a lock to it, (the thing they most covet,) with a colored shirt and trousers to lock up in it and guard for feast-days. With such a box and contents, a hatchet, a short sabre, and red woollen cap, the Peruvian Indian returns home a rich and envied man, and others are induced to go below in hopes of similar fortune. They are frequently gone from their homes for years. Father Calvo complained that they abandoned their families; but in my judgment this was a benefit to them, rather than an injury, for the man at home is, in a great measure, supported by the woman.
I could not make an estimate of the number of Peruvian Indians in Brazil; but I noticed that most of the tapuios were Cocamas and Cocamillas, from the upper Amazon.
We entered the Amazon at 4 p. m. The mouth of the Teffé is three hundred yards wide, and has thirty feet of depth and one mile per hour of current. This is an inconsiderable stream, and may be ascended by canoes to near its sources in twenty days. In ten or twelve days' ascent, a branch called the Rio Gancho is reached, which communicates by a portage with the Juruá. Indians of the Purus, also, sometimes descend the Teffé to Egas.
I was surprised to find the temperature of boiling water at Egas to be but 208°.2, the same within .2 of a degree that it was at a point one day's journey below Tingo Maria, which village is several hundred miles above the last rapids of the Huallaga river; at Sta. Cruz, two days above the mouth of the Huallaga, it was 211°.2; at Nauta, three hundred and five miles below this, it was 211°.3; at Pebas, one hundred and seventy miles below Nauta, 211°.1. I was so much surprised at these results that I had put the apparatus away, thinking that its indications were valueless; but I was still more surprised, upon making the experiment at Egas, to find that the temperature of the boiling water had fallen three degrees below what it was at Sta. Cruz, thus giving to Egas an altitude of fifteen hundred feet above that village, which is situated more than a thousand miles up stream of it. I continued my observations from Egas downwards, and found a regular increase in the temperature of the boiling water until our arrival at Pará, where it was 211°.5.
M. Castelnau gives the height of Nauta at four hundred and five feet above the level of the sea; the temperature of boiling water gives it at three hundred and fifty-six. Both these, I think, are in error; for, taking off forty feet for the height of the hill on which Nauta is situated, we have three hundred and sixty-five for the height of the river at that point above the level of the sea. Now, that point I estimate at two thousand three hundred and twenty-five miles from the sea, which would give the river only a fall of about sixteen-hundredths of a foot per mile—a descent which would scarcely give the river its average velocity of two and a half miles per hour.