Within a quarter of a mile from the shore I found one hundred and twenty feet of depth, and three miles the hour of current. The current of the Amazon has increased considerably since the junction of the Madeira.
The inspector told me I was within four hours of Villa Nova; but I kept in shore, for fear of squalls; and thus, in the darkness of night, pulled around the shore of a deep bay, where there was little current, and did not arrive for eight hours, passing the mouth of the small river Limaõ, about a mile and a half above Villa Nova, where we arrived at 2 a. m.
Villa Nova de Rainha is a long straggling village of single story mud-huts, situated in a little bend on the right bank of the Amazon. The temperature of boiling water gives its elevation above the level of the sea at nine hundred and fifty-nine feet. It contains about two hundred inhabitants, and the district to which it belongs—embracing several small villages in the interior, with cocoa plantations on the banks of the river—numbers four or five thousand. The productions of the district are cocoa, coffee, and a few cattle, but principally salt fish. The whole country back of the village is very much cut up by lakes, (with water communications between them,) where the greater part of the fish is taken. The sub-delegado gave me a sketch of it from his own personal knowledge and observation.
This being the frontier town of the province of Amazonas, there is a custom-house established here. I heard that it had collected one thousand dollars since the steamer passed up in December. This gives an indication of the trade of the country; foreign articles, which are the cargoes of vessels bound up, paying one and a half per cent. on their value; and articles of domestic produce, which the vessels bound down carry, paying a half per cent. The collection of one thousand dollars was made in two months.
The people valued their fowls at fifty cents apiece. We thought them extortionate, and would not buy; but we happened to arrive on fresh-beef day, and got a soup-piece. These fresh-meat days are a week apart, though this is a cattle producing country. It is an indication of the listless indifference of the people.
Just before reaching Villa Nova, my sounding-lead had hung in the rocks at the bottom, and a new piassaba line, which I had made in Barra, of about the size of a common log or cod-line, parted as if it had been pack-thread. I bought another lead at the village; this also hung at the first cast, and the line again parted close to my hand, so that I lost nearly all. My line must have been made of old fibres of the piassaba which had been in store some time. The bottom of the river near Villa Nova is very uneven and rocky.
About a league below Villa Nova we passed the mouth of the river Ramos on the right. It is two hundred yards wide, and is a paranimiri, which leaves the Amazon nearly opposite Silves. It has many small streams emptying into it in the interior, and sends off canals, joining it with other rivers, one of which is the Madeira. It is the general route to Maués—a considerable village in the interior, four days from the mouth of the Ramos.
The country about Maués is described as a great grazing plain, intersected and cut up with streams and canals, all navigable for the largest class of vessels that now navigate the Amazon. The soil is very rich, and adapted to the cultivation of cotton, coffee, and cocoa. The rivers give abundance of fish; any number of cattle may be pastured upon the plains; and the neighboring woods yield cloves, cocoa, castanhas, India-rubber, guaraná, sarsaparilla, and copaiba. If this country be not sickly (and the sub-delegado at Villa Nova, who gave me a little sketch of it, told me that it was not) it is probably the most desirable place of residence on the Amazon.
Baéna, in his chorographic essay on the province of Pará, says of Maués, that it is situated upon a slight eminence on a bay of the river Mauéuassu, which empties into the Furo, or canal of Ururaia, by means of which, and the river Tupinambaranas, one may enter the river Madeira thirteen leagues above its mouth. He gives the number of inhabitants in 1832 at one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven. The official report for 1850 states it at three thousand seven hundred and nine whites, and eighty-two slaves. This official report makes an ugly statement as regards its health; it gives the number of births in a year at seventy-four, and deaths at one hundred and thirty-one. I have no confidence in this statement, and it looks like a misprint. This report stated the number of inhabited houses at Barra as one hundred and seventy. This I knew was an error, and I took the liberty of making it four hundred and seventy.
Just below the mouth of the Ramos, quite a neatly rigged boat, carrying the Brazilian flag, put off from a house on shore, and seemed desirous to communicate with us; but she was so badly managed that, although there was a fine breeze, (directly ahead, however,) she could not catch us, though we were but drifting with the current. Had I known her character I would have paddled up against the stream to allow her to join company; but my companion, Mr. Potter, said that she was a boat belonging to the church, and begging for Jerusalem.