"The city and its 'termo' (a territorial division of a Comarca, which is again a territorial division of a province) has a population of eight thousand and sixty-eight whites, and one thousand three hundred and eighty-two slaves. The major part are to be found in the town on holy-week, or any of the great festivals; but for the most time, they live dispersed among the adjacent islands, on their cocoa plantations and farms.
"They cultivate mandioc, cocoa, cotton, rice, tobacco, urucu, and sugar-cane. They make much oil from the andiroba nut, which they collect on the islands, and also lime from fossil shells.
"The women paint gourds and make ewers and basins of white clay, which they paint very beautifully. They also make figures of turtle doves and crocodiles from the same clay.
"The inhabitants enjoy a fine climate, charming views, the clear and good water of the river, abundance of fish, and every kind of game, which is found on the margin of the river and on the islands—such is the fertility which nature spontaneously offers; and much more would they enjoy had they a better system of cultivation on those lands, all admirably fitted for every kind of labor.
"There are those who say that the water of the Tocantins has a certain subtle, petrifying quality, which causes attacks of gravel to those who use it."
According to M. Castelnau, who descended this river from near the city of Goyaz, by one of its tributaries, called the Crixas, the Tocantins forks, at about three hundred and forty miles from its mouth, into two great branches, called the Tocantins proper and the Araguay, which latter branch he considers the principal stream. "For," he says, "when we consider that the Tocantins presents an almost continued succession of cascades and rapids, whilst the Araguay (as we have before said) is free for the greater part of its course, it will be seen how this latter offers greater advantages for navigation; particularly when it is recollected that one may embark upon it at all seasons at fifty leagues from the capital, (Goyaz,) and in the rainy seasons at only a very few leagues from it. The Tocantins, on the other hand, cannot be considered navigable farther up than Porto Imperial, which is nearly three hundred leagues below Goyaz, by the windings of the route."
Again, he says: "The rivers of which we have been treating, although they are secondary on a continent watered by the Amazon and Mississippi, would elsewhere be considered as of the first order; for the Tocantins has nearly four hundred and forty leagues of course, and the Araguay, properly so called, has not less than four hundred and twenty. But this last, after uniting itself to the Tocantins, runs in the bed of the latter a new distance of one hundred and thirteen leagues; considering, then, the Araguay, on account of its being the larger branch, and the most direct in its course, as the main river, it has a total length of nearly five hundred and thirty-three leagues," (1,599 miles.)
It is necessary, however, in ascending these rivers, to unload the boats at many places, and drag them over the rocks with cords. The voyage from Porto Imperial to Pará occupies from twenty-five to thirty days; but upwards it takes from four to five months.
M. Castelnau descended the Araguay from Salinas (fifty leagues by land from Goyaz) to its junction with the Tocantins in thirty-four days. Just below Salinas he found the Araguay upwards of five hundred yards wide. At the junction of the rivers, the Tocantins has a width of two thousand yards, with a current of three-fourths of a mile per hour. The height of this point above the level of the sea is one hundred and ninety-seven feet, and its distance from Pará, in a straight line, is about one hundred and sixty-one miles; thus giving the river in this distance a fall of about eight-tenths of a foot per mile.
We crossed the other arm of the bay (about five miles wide) with the ebb-tide, and anchored at the mouth of a small river called Anapui, which empties into the bay near its opening into the main river of Pará.