This is the country of rice, of sarsaparilla, of India-rubber, balsam copaiba, gum copal, animal and vegetable wax, cocoa, Brazilian nutmeg, Tonka beans, ginger, black pepper, arrow-root, tapioca, annatto, indigo, sapucaia, and Brazil nuts; dyes of the gayest colors, drugs of rare virtue, variegated cabinet woods of the finest grain, and susceptible of the highest polish. The forests are filled with game, and the rivers stocked with turtle and fish. Here dwell the anta or wild cow, the peixi-boi or fish-ox, the sloth, the ant-eater, the beautiful black tiger, the mysterious electric eel, the boa constrictor, the anaconda, the deadly coral snake, the voracious alligator, monkeys in endless variety, birds of the most brilliant plumage, and insects of the strangest forms and gayest colors.
The climate of this country is salubrious and the temperature agreeable. The direct rays of the sun are tempered by an almost constant east wind, laden with moisture from the ocean, so that one never suffers either from heat or cold. The man accustomed to this climate is ever unwilling to give it up for a more bracing one, and will generally refuse to exchange the abandon and freedom from restraint that characterises his life there, for the labor and struggle necessary even to maintain existence in a more rigorous climate or barren soil. The active, the industrious, and the enterprising, will be here, as elsewhere, in advance of his fellows; but this is the very paradise of the lazy and the careless. Here, and here only, such an one may maintain life almost without labor.
I met with no epidemics on my route; except at Pará, the country seemed a stranger to yellow fever, small-pox, or cholera. There seemed to be a narrow belt of country on each side of the Amazon where bilious fevers, called sezoens or maleitas, were particularly prevalent. These fevers are of malignant type, and often terminate in fatal jaundice. I was told that six or eight days' navigation on each tributary, from the mouth upwards, would bring me to this country, and three or four more would pass me through it; and that I ran little risk of taking the fever if I passed directly through. It appeared, also, to be confined to a particular region of country with regard to longitude. I heard nothing of it on the Huallaga, the Ucayali, or the Tapajos, while it was spoken of with dread on the Trombetas, the Madeira, the Negro, and the Purus. Filth and carelessness in this climate produce ugly cutaneous affections, with which the Indians are much afflicted, and I heard of cases of elephantiasis and leprosy.
I have been describing the country bordering on the Amazon. Up the tributaries, midway between their mouth and source, on each side are wide savannahs, where feed herds of cattle, furnishing a trade in hides; and at the sources of the southern tributaries are ranges of mountains, which yield immense treasures of diamonds and other precious stones.
It is again (as in the case of the country at the foot of the Andes) sad to think that, excluding the savage tribes, who for any present purposes of good may be ranked with the beasts that perish, this country has not more than one inhabitant for every ten square miles of land; that it is almost a wilderness; that being capable, as it is, of yielding support, comfort, and luxury to many millions of civilized people who have superfluous wants, it should be but the dwelling place of the savage and the wild beast.
Such is the country whose destiny and the development of whose resources is in the hands of Brazil. It seems a pity that she should undertake the work alone; she is not strong enough; she should do what we are not too proud to do, stretch out her hands to the world at large, and say, "Come and help us to subdue the wilderness; here are homes, and broad lands, and protection for all who choose to come." She should break up her steamboat monopoly, and say to the sea-faring and commercial people of the world, "We are not a maritime people; we have no skill or practice in steam navigation; come and do our carrying, while we work the lands; bring your steamers laden with your manufactures, and take from the banks of our rivers the rich productions of our vast regions." With such a policy, and taking means to preserve her nationality, for which she is now abundantly strong, I have no hesitation in saving, that I believe in fifty years Rio Janeiro, without losing a tittle of her wealth and greatness, will be but a village to Para, and Para will be what New Orleans would long ago have been but for the activity of New York and her own fatal climate, the greatest city of the New World; Santarem will be St. Louis, and Barra, Cincinnati.
The citizens of the United States are, of all foreign people, most interested in the free navigation of the Amazon. We, as in comparison with other foreigners, would reap the lion's share of the advantages to be derived from it. We would fear no competition. Our geographical position, the winds of Heaven, and the currents of the ocean, are our potential auxilaries. Thanks to Maury's investigations of the winds and currents, we know that a chip flung into the sea at the mouth of the Amazon will float close by Cape Hatteras. We know that ships sailing from the mouth of the Amazon, for whatever port of the world, are forced to our very doors by the SE. and NE. trade winds; that New York is the half way house between Pará and Europe.
We are now Brazil's best customer and most natural ally. President Aranha knew this. At a dinner-party given by him at Barra, his first toast was, "To the nation of America most closely allied with Brazil—the United States." And he frequently expressed to me his strong desire to have a thousand of my active countrymen to help him to subdue the wilderness, and show the natives how to work. I would that all Brazilians were influenced by similar sentiments. Then would the mighty river, now endeared to me by association, no longer roll its sullen waters through miles of unbroken solitude; no longer would the deep forests that line its banks afford but a shelter for the serpent, the tiger, and the Indian; but, furrowed by a thousand keels, and bearing upon its waters the mighty wealth that civilization and science would call from the depths of those dark forests, the Amazon would "rejoice as a strong man to run a race;" and in a few years we might, without great hyperbole, or doing much violence to fancy, apply to this river Byron's beautiful lines:
"The casteled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,