I fear that I behaved a little churlishly about the mails. There are post offices established in the villages on the Amazon, but no public conveyances are provided to carry the mails. The owner or captain of every vessel is required to report to the postmaster before sailing, in order to receive the mails; and he is required to give a receipt for them. I did not like to be treated as an ordinary voyager upon the river, and, therefore, objected to receipt for the mails, though I offered to carry all letters that should be intrusted to my care. My principal reason, however, for declining was, that my movements were uncertain, and I did not wish to be trammelled. The postmaster would not give me the mail without a receipt, but I believe I brought away all the letters. I am now sorry, as I came direct, that I did not give the required receipt in return for the kindness that had been shown me.
Mr. Potter, the daguerreotypist and watchmaker, sailed in company with me. We found the current of the "Negro" so slight that, with our heavy boat and few men, we could make no way against a smart breeze blowing up the river: we, therefore, a mile or two below Barra, pulled into the shore and made fast till the wind should fall, which it did about 3 p. m., when we got under way and entered the Amazon.
Entering this river from the Negro, it appears but a tributary of the latter, and it is generally so designated in Barra. If a fisherman just in is asked where he is from, he will say "from the mouth of the Solimoens." It has this appearance from the Negro's flowing in a straight course; while the Solimoens makes a great bend at the junction of the two rivers.
It is very curious to see the black water of the Negro appearing in large circular patches, amid the muddy waters of the Amazon, and entirely distinct. I did not observe that the water of the Amazon was at all clearer after the junction of the Negro; indeed, I thought it appeared more filthy. We found one hundred and ninety-eight feet of depth in the bay or large open space formed by the junction of the two rivers.
About sixty miles below the mouth of the Rio Negro we stopped at the establishment of a Scotchman, named McCulloch, situated on the left bank of the river. There is a very large island opposite, which reduces the river in front to about one hundred yards in width; so that the establishment seems to be situated on a creek.
McCulloch, in partnership with Antonii, at Barra, is establishing here a sugar plantation, and a mill to grind the cane. He dams, at great cost of time and labor, a creek that connects a small lake with the river. He will only be able to grind about six months in the year, when the river is falling and the water runs from the lake into the river; but he proposes to grind with oxen when the river is rising. The difference between high and low-water mark in the Amazon at this point is, by actual measurement of McCulloch, forty-two feet. He works with five or six hands, whom he pays a cruzado, or a quarter of a dollar each, per day. There is a much greater scarcity of tapuios now than formerly. Antonii, who used always to have fifty in his employ, cannot now get more than ten.
McCulloch has already planted more than thirty acres of sugar-cane on a hill eighty or one hundred feet above the present level of the river. It seems of tolerable quality, but much overrun with weeds, on account of want of hands. I gave him a leaf from my experience, and advised him to set fire to his field after every cutting. The soil is black and rich-looking, though light; and McCulloch supposes that in such soil his cane will not require replanting for twenty years. The cane is planted in December, and is ready to cut in ten months.
This is the man who, in partnership with the Brazilian, built the saw-mill at Barra, which was afterwards burned down. He sawed one hundred and thirty thousand feet the first year, but not more than half that quantity the second; in the third, by making a contract with Antonii, who was to furnish the wood and receive half the profits, he sawed eighty thousand. This plank is sold in Pará at forty dollars the thousand; but the expenses of getting it there, and other charges, reduce it to about twenty-eight dollars. The only wood sawed is the cedro; not that it is so valuable as other kinds, but because it is the only wood of any value that floats; and thus can be brought to the mills. There are no roads or means of hauling timber through the forests. McCulloch told me that a young American, in Pará, offered to join him in the erection of a saw-mill, and to advance ten thousand dollars towards the enterprise. He said that he now thought he was unwise to refuse it, for with that sum he could have purchased a small steamer (besides building and fitting the mill) with which to cruise on the river, picking up the cedros and taking them to the mill.
These are not our cedars, but a tall, branching tree, with leaves more like our oak. There are two kinds—red and white; the former of which is most appreciated. Some of them grow to be of great size; between Serpa and Villa Nova we made our boat fast to one that was floating on the river, which measured in length from the swell of the root to that of the first branches (that is a clear, nearly cylindrical trunk) ninety-three feet, and was nineteen feet in circumference just above the swell of the roots, which would probably have been eight feet from the ground when the tree was standing.
McCulloch gave me some castanhas in the shell, and some roots of a cane-like plant that grows in bunches, with very long, narrow leaves, and bears a delicate and fragrant white flower, that is called, from its resemblance in shape to a butterfly, borboleta.