"A plantain-grove will give in full vigor for fifty or sixty years, without more attention than to clean it occasionally of weeds; cotton gives a crop in six months; rice in five; indigo is indigenous; cattle of all kinds augment with much rapidity.
"All transportation of cargoes by land is made upon the backs of Indians, for want of roads. The customary weight of a cargo is seventy-five pounds; the cost of its transportation to Moyobamba, (seventy miles,) is six varas of tocuyo; to Huanuco, (three hundred and ninety miles,) thirty-two varas, by water and by land; that is to say, eight Indians will receive in Tarapoto eight packages, of whatsoever goods, and carry them on their shoulders to the port of Juan Guerra, where they embark and carry them in a canoe to the port of Tingo Maria; there they shoulder them again, and carry them to Huanuco, (eighty miles.) It is to be understood that the owner of the cargo is to support the peons.
"The ascent of the Huallaga from Juan Guerra to Tingo Maria takes thirty days; the descent, eight. It has dangerous passes. It is easy to obtain, in the term of six or eight days, fifty or sixty peons for the transportation of cargoes, getting the order of the governor and paying the above prices.
"This town is, without dispute, the most important in Mainas, on account of its neighborhood to navigable rivers, united with an extension of land free from inundations. Its inhabitants are numerous, civilized, and docile."
The people have no idea of comfort in their domestic relations; the houses are of mud, thatched with palm, and have uneven dirt floors. The furniture consists of a grass hammock, a standing bed-place, a coarse table, and a stool or two. The governor of this populous district wore no shoes, and appeared to live pretty much like the rest of them.
August 20 we spent at Tarapoto, waiting for the peons. The governor preferred that I should pay them in money, which I much doubt if the peons ever saw. He will probably keep the money and give them tocuyo and wax. I paid one dollar and fifty cents for the canoe to carry me as far as Chasuta, a distance of about six hours down, with probably twenty-four to return, (that is, twenty-four working hours;) fifty cents to each peon; and a dollar to pay the people to haul the canoe up the bank and place it under the shed at Shapaja on its return.
The men who carried us from Tocache to Sion preferred half their pay in money; in all other cases I have paid in cotton cloth, valued at twenty-five cents the yard; (its cost in Lima was twelve and a half cents). The amount of pay, generally fixed by the governor, is a yard per man per day, and about the same for the canoe.
An American circus company passed through Tarapoto a few months ago; they had come from the Pacific coast, and were bound down the Amazon. This beats the Moyobambinos for determined energy in making dollars. I imagine that the adventure did not pay, for I encountered traces of them, in broken down horses, at several of the villages on the river. They floated their horses down on rafts.
I spoke with an active and intelligent young Spanish trader, named Morey, about the feasibility of a steamboat enterprise upon these rivers, bringing American goods and taking return-cargoes of coffee, tobacco, straw-hats, hammocks, and sarsaparilla to the ports of Brazil on the river. He thought that it could not fail to enrich any one who would attempt it; but that the difficulty lay in the fact that my proposed steamer would never get as far as this, for that my goods would be bought up and paid for in return-cargoes long before she reached Peru. He thought, too, that the Brazilians along the river had money which they would be glad to exchange for comforts and luxuries.
Were I to engage in any scheme of colonization for the purpose of evolving the resources of the Valley of the Amazon, I think I should direct the attention of settlers to this district of Tarapoto. It combines more advantages than any other I know; it is healthy, fertile, and free from the torment of musquitoes and sand-flies. Wheat may be had from the high lands above it; cattle thrive well; and its coffee, tobacco, sugar-cane, rice, and maize are of fine quality. It is true that vessels cannot come up to Shapaja, the port of the town of Tarapoto; but a good road may be made from this town eighteen miles to Chasuta, to which vessels of five feet draught may come at the lowest stage of the river, and any draught at high water. Tarapoto is situated on an elevated plain twenty miles in diameter; is seventy miles from Moyobamba, the capital of the province, a city of seven thousand inhabitants; and has close around it the villages of Lamas, Tabalosas, Juan Guerra, and Shapaja.