"The climate, so far as we have yet experienced, was delightful. The thermometer did not rise above 87 in the afternoon, nor sink below 74° during the night. The mornings and evenings were most agreeably cool; and we had generally a shower and a fine breeze in the afternoon, which was very refreshing, and purified the air. On moonlight evenings, till 8 o'clock, ladies walk about the streets and suburbs without any head-dress, and in ball-room attire; and the Brazilians in their roçinhas sit outside their houses, bare-headed, and in their shirt sleeves, till 9 or 10 o'clock, quite unmindful of the night airs and heavy dews of the tropics, which we have been accustomed to consider so deadly."
He is speaking of the climate at Pará. Again he says, (p. 429:) "Had I only judged of the climate of Pará from my first residence of a year, I might be thought to have been impressed by the novelty of the tropical climate; but on my return from a three years sojourn on the upper Amazon and Rio Negro, I was equally struck with the wonderful freshness and brilliancy of the atmosphere, and the balmy mildness of the evenings, which are certainly not equalled in any other part I have visited."
At Santarem, (p. 157) he says: "The constant exercise, pure air, and good living, notwithstanding the intense heat, kept us in the most perfect health, and I have never, altogether, enjoyed myself so much."
Page 80. "In the districts we passed through, sugar, cotton, coffee, and rice might be grown in any quantity, and of the finest quality. The navigation is always safe and uninterrupted, and the whole county is so intersected by Igarapés and rivers, that every estate has water carriage for its productions. But the indolent disposition of the people, and the scarcity of labor, will prevent the capabilities of this fine country from being developed till European or North American colonies are formed. There is no country in the world where people can produce for themselves so many of the necessaries and luxuries of life; Indian corn, rice, mandioca, sugar, coffee, cotton, beef, poultry, and pork, with oranges, bananas, and abundance of other fruits and vegetables, thrive with little care. With these articles in abundance, a house of wood, calabashes, cups and pottery of the country, they may live in plenty, without a single exotic production. And then what advantages there are in a country where there is no stoppage of agricultural productions during winter, but where crops may be had, and poultry may be reared, all the year round; where the least possible amount of clothing is the most comfortable, and where a hundred little necessaries of a cold region are altogether superfluous. With regard to the climate, I have said enough already; and I repeat, that a man can work as well here as in the hot summer months in England, and that if he will only work three hours in the morning and three in the evening, he will produce more of the necessaries and comforts of life, than by 12 hours daily labor at home."
(P. 334.) "It is a vulgar error, copied and reported from one book to another, that, in the tropics, the luxuriance of the vegetation overpowers the efforts of man. Just the reverse is the case; nature and the climate are nowhere so favorable to the laborer, and I fearlessly assert, that here the 'primeval' forest can be converted into rich pasture and meadow lands, into cultivated fields, gardens, and orchards, containing every variety of produce, with half the labor, and what is of more importance, in less than half the time that would be required at home, even though there we had clear instead of forest ground to commence upon."
This is the testimony of a man who suffered great hardships in the pursuit of science, amid the rapids and falls of the rivers Negro and Uapes—who was beset with the chills and fever, incident to the great labor and exposure necessary in passing those rapids in an open boat—who lost his brother of yellow fever at Pará, and who finally had the ship in which he had taken passage to England, with all his collections, burned under him on the broad Atlantic.
He cannot be supposed to have seen things "couleur de rose," or to be a witness with a favorable bias; and I quote him in order to support my own opinion that the climate is good, the country generally healthy, and that few who undertake to settle there will be willing to come away.
With the fact before us that many persons have gone even by the tedious, difficult, and dangerous passes of the Cordillera, to settle in the Amazonian basin, and that, to my personal knowledge, many more are desirous to go, the action of the Brazilian government in closing the lower waters of that river, and forbidding access, at least for any purposes of trade or exploration, to the countries drained by the tributaries of the Amazon belonging to the Spanish American republics, becomes a matter of grave importance to the world at large, and induces a disposition to scrutinize with severity her right to do so.
I have too little acquaintance with the "jus gentium" to attempt to argue the question; nor is it my province to do so; but I believe it to be clearly my duty to place all the facts and circumstances of the case before this government and people, that they may take the matter into consideration, and judge for themselves.
My own opinion is, that Brazil herself doubted this right, or else why should she have sent ambassadors to the Spanish American republics for the purpose of making exclusive treaties of navigation with them? She did not need these treaties, for I know that her vessels passed freely, enjoying, without let or hindrance, all the privileges that treaty could give, and traded upon any tributaries of the Amazon where they pleased, and that Peru and Bolivia were glad to have them do this, though she denied the same privileges to them on the Brazilian Amazon. Indeed, a writer in the government paper at Rio de Janeiro, and one apparently who "spoke by the card," declared that the principal object in these treaties was the keeping of the "pirate Yankees" out of the Amazon. Let us see how they succeeded. The Chevalier Da Ponte Ribeiro was sent by the Emperor to Lima for the purpose of making the treaty with Peru. He was an able and astute negotiator, but, unfortunately for his object, he had the hawk-eye of the best-trained, most experienced, and probably in an official sense, ablest diplomat of the United States upon him. Clay threw no obstacles in his way; he permitted him to make his treaty, (by which Peru gave to Brazil the right to navigate her interior waters,) and then immediately demanded of the Peruvian government the fulfilment of the obligations of a treaty which that government had just concluded with him, by which it was bound to give to the citizens of the United States all the rights and privileges which it should hereafter grant to those of the most favored nation, and by which also it guaranteed to American citizens the right to "frequent with vessels all the coasts, ports, and places, at which foreign commerce is or may be permitted."