According to his account, the white man furnishes the Mura with a boat, pays him, beforehand, a jacket, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a hat; furnishes him with fish and farinha to eat, and tobacco to smoke, and sends him out to take Pirarucu; but when the Indian gets off, it is "Good-bye Mura;" or, if he does come back, he has spent so much time in his fishing that the fish are not worth the outlay and the time lost.
It was true, he said, there were cattle on the Rio Branco; but they could only be sent for and traded in when the river was full; and he concluded by making a great cross in the air, and lifting up his eyes, to give vent to the expression, "Heaven deliver me from Barra!"
I conversed with the old gentleman on some projects of reform as regarded the Indian population. He thought that a military force should be employed to reduce them to a more perfect system of subjection, and that they should, by all means, be compelled to work. I told him that a Portuguese had said that the best reform that could be made would be to hang all the Indians. My friend seemed a little shocked at this, and said that there was no necessity for such root-and-branch work. He said he would grant that the old ones might be killed to advantage; but he thought they might be shot and not hung. This, I believe, was said "bona fide." I was amused at the old gentleman's philanthropy, and thought that, as a judge, he might have preferred the hanging process.
I find that most of the gentlemen of the lower province are disposed to sneer at the action of the government in erecting the Comarca of the Rio Negro into a province; but I think the step was a wise one. It may cost the government, and particularly the province of Pará, (from which funds are drawn for the support of the new province,) some money to support it for a while; but if the country is to be improved at all, it is to be done in this way. By sending there government officials—people who know what living is, and have wants—and by building government houses, (thus employing and paying the Indians,) stimulants are given to labor, and the resources of the country are drawn out; for these people who have gone from Pará and Rio Janeiro will not be content to live on turtle, salt fish, and farinha.
The tide is very apparent at Gurupá. The river fell several feet during the morning whilst we were there. This point is about five hundred miles from the sea.
After we had sailed, the Commandante-militar, to whom I had applied for more men, and who had told me there were none to be had, sent a man in a canoe after us. I suspected so much courtesy, and found, accordingly, that the man (a negro) was a cripple, and utterly worthless. He had evidently been palmed off upon us to get rid of him. I made him feed the birds and cook for the men. These men made the best and hardest-working crew I had during my voyage.
About thirty-five miles below Gurupá commences the great estuary of the Amazon. The river suddenly flares out into an immense bay, which is probably one hundred and fifty miles across in its widest part. This might appropriately be called the "Bay of the Thousand Islands," for it is cut up into innumerable channels. The great island of Marajo, which contains about ten thousand square miles, occupies nearly the centre of it, and divides the river into two great channels: one, the main channel of the Amazon, which runs out by Cayenne; and the other, and smaller one, the river of Pará. I imagine that no chart we have gives anything like a correct idea of this bay. The French brig-of-war Boulonnaise, some years ago, passed up the main channel from Cayenne to Obidos, and down the Pará channel, making a survey. But she had only time to make a survey of the channels through which she passed, leaving innumerable others unexplored. This she was permitted to do through the liberality of Senhor Coelbo, the patriotic President of the province; but when she applied for permission to make further surveys, she was sternly refused by the government of Rio Janeiro.
I think it would cost a steamer a year of uninterrupted labor to make a tolerably correct chart of this estuary.
At this point we turned into a small creek that penetrated the right bank, and ran for days through channels varying from fifty to five hundred yards in width, between innumerable islands. This is the India-rubber country. The shores of the islands were all low; and, indeed, we seldom saw the land at all, the trees on the banks generally standing in the water.
We stopped (April 3) at one of the establishments on the river for making, or rather for buying, India-rubber. The house was built of light poles, and on piles to keep it out of the water, which, at this time, flowed under and around it. The owner had a shop containing all the necessaries of life, and such articles of luxury as were likely to attract the fancy of the Indian gatherers of the rubber. It was strange, and very agreeable, to see flour-barrels marked Richmond, and plain and striped cottons from Lowell and Saco, with English prints, pewter ear and finger rings, combs, small guitars, cheese, gin, and aguadiente, in this wild and secluded-looking spot.