Humboldt says, "I know nothing more fitted to seize the mind with admiration of the force of organic action in the equinoctial zone than the aspect of these great ligneous pericarps. In our climates the cucurbitaceæ only produce in the space of a few months fruits of an extraordinary size; but these fruits are pulpy and succulent. Between the tropics the bertholletia forms, in less than fifty or sixty days, a pericarp, the ligneous part of which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest instrument." He speaks of them as being often eight or ten inches in diameter; I saw none so large.
There is a variety of this tree, called sapucaia, that grows on low lands subject to overflow. Ten or fifteen of the nuts, which are long, corrugated, and very irregular in shape, are contained in a large outer shell; the shell, unlike that of the castanha, does not fall entire from the tree, but when the nuts are ripe the bottom falls out, leaving the larger part of the shell, like the cup of an acorn, hanging to the tree. The nuts are scattered upon the water that at this season surrounds the trees, and are picked up in boats or by wading. The bark of the nut is fragile; easily broken by the teeth; and its substance is far superior in delicacy of flavor to that of the Brazil nut. This nut as yet must be scarce, or it would have been known to commerce. The tree is a very large one; the flowers yellow and pretty, but destitute of smell. The wood is one of those employed in nautical construction.
Shell lime, which is made in Pará, sells in Barra for one dollar and twenty-five cents the alquier, of sixty-four pounds; stone lime is double in price.
Salt is worth one dollar and twenty-five cents the panero, of one hundred and eight pounds.
Rains at Barra commence in September; the force of the rain is in February and March, but there is scarcely ever a continuous rain of twenty-four hours—one day rainy and one day clear.
The Vigario Geral, an intelligent priest, named Joaquin Gonzales de Azevedo, told me that there was a sharp shock of an earthquake in this country in the year 1816. The ground opened at "Serpa," a village below Barra, to the depth of a covado, (three-fourths of a yard.)
CHAPTER XV.
Departure from Barra—River Madeira—Serpa—Villa Nova—Maués—River Trombetas—Cocoa Plantations—Obidos—Santarem.
Having had my boat thoroughly repaired, calked, and well fitted with palm coverings, called in Brazil toldos, with a sort of Wandering-Jew feeling that I was destined to leave every body behind and never to stop, I sailed from Barra on the eighteenth of February. The President had caused me to be furnished with six tapuios, but unwilling to dispossess himself at this time of a single working hand, he could not let them carry me below Santarem. The President is laboring in earnest for the good of the province; and if anything is to be done for its improvement he will do it. He paid me every attention and kindness during my stay at Barra.
But to my host (Antonii, the Italian) I am most indebted for attention and information. From his having been mentioned by Smyth as at the head of trade at Barra sixteen years ago, I had fancied that I should find him an elderly man; but he is a handsome, gay, active fellow, in the prime of life. His black hair is somewhat sprinkled with gray, but he tells me that this arises not from age, but from the worry and vexation he has had in business on account of the credit system. He is as agreeable as good sense, much information about the country, and open-hearted hospitality can make a man. I asked him to look out for Gibbon and make him comfortable; and was charmed with the frank and hearty manner in which he bade me to "have no care of that."