October 12.—Passed a settlement of Conibos on the right bank, numbering twenty-five or thirty. They said that the inhabitants of a village called Huamuco, which Smyth places near this place, had gone to the Pachitea.
October 13.—At breakfast we found a smaller kind of turtle called charapilla, better and more tender than the large turtle which is called charapa. Stopped at a little settlement of Shipebos on the right bank—twenty-five all told. Met three negroes, with a crew of Conibos, who had been up the river for sarsaparilla. They gathered the principal part of what they had (about sixty arrobas) in the Aguaytia, but had been five days up the Pachitea, and six up the Ucayali, above the Pachitea. They say that the Cashibos of that river would come to the beach in hostile attitude; but when they found that the strangers were not Indians of the Ucayali, but wore trousers and had guns, they fled.
Passed two houses of Conibos, about fifteen in number. One of them, taking us for padres, insisted that Ijurra should baptize his child; which was accordingly done. He gave it the name of the officiating priest, writing it on a bit of paper and giving it to the mother, who put it away carefully. I believe my companion was upbraided by the priest at Sarayacu for doing so. The head of the infant had been bound in boards, front and rear, and was flattened and increased in height. I do not observe that the heads of the adults bear any trace of this custom.
October 15.—Arrived at the village of Tierra Blanca, belonging to the Mission, having passed yesterday several settlements of the Indians, and seen for the first time the hills in the neighborhood of Sarayacu. It is a clean little town, of two hundred inhabitants, situated on an eminence on the left bank about twenty-five feet above the present level of the river. In the full the water approaches within a few feet of the lower houses.
A priest from Sarayacu, "Father Juan de Dios Lorente," has charge of the spiritual and pretty much of the temporal concerns of the village. He is here at this time celebrating some feast, and is the only white man present. The Indians, as usual at a feast time, were nearly all drunk, and made my men drunk also. When I wished to start, I sent Ijurra to a large house where they were drinking to bring our people to the boat; he soon came back, foaming with rage, and demanded a gun, that he might bring them to obedience; I soothed him, however, and went up to the house, where, by taking a drink with them, and practising the arts that I have often practised before in getting off to the ship refractory sailors who were drinking on shore, I succeeded in getting off a sufficient number of them to work the boat, and shoved off with as drunken a boat's crew as one could desire, leaving the small boat for the others to follow; this they are sure to do when they find that their clothes and bedding have been taken away. The padre said that if Ijurra had shot one, they would have murdered us all; but I doubt that, for we were well armed, and the Indians are afraid of guns.
Padre Lorente, when he joined the Mission, came down the Pachitea in nine days from Mayro to Sarayacu in the month of August; if so, there must have been an enormous current in the Pachitea and Ucayali above, for it takes thirty days to reach the mouth of the Pachitea from Sarayacu, which distance Padre Lorente descended in six; and Padre Plaza (who is said, however, to be a slow traveller) took eighteen to ascend the Pachitea from its mouth to Mayro, which Padre Lorente accomplished downwards in three. I judged from the short course of this river, and the great descent, that it had a powerful current. The padre said that, a day's journey above the mouth of the Pachitea, his men had to get overboard and drag the canoe over the bottom for five hundred yards. He also said that the attempt to ascend at this season must result in failure; that it can only be done after Easter, when the current is not so rapid. The Aguaytia and Pishqui are also small streams, where the Indians have to wade and drag the canoes.
October 16.—Started at 6 a. m.; stopped at half-past five opposite the mouth of the river Catalina. It seemed thirty yards wide, and had a small island in front.
The ascent of the river is very tedious; we barely creep along against the force of the current, and day after day "wearies by" in the most monotonous routine. I frequently land, and with gun on shoulder, and clad only in shirt and drawers, walk for miles along the beaches. My greatest pleasure is to watch the boat struggling up against the tide. This is always accompanied with emotions of pride, mingled with a curious and scarcely definable feeling of surprise. It was almost startling to see, at her mast-head, the beautiful and well-beloved flag of my country dancing merrily in the breeze on the waters of the strange river, and waiving above the heads of the swarthy and grim figures below. I felt a proud affection for it; I had carried it where it had never been before; there was a bond between us; we were alone in a strange land; and it and I were brothers in the wilderness.
October 17.—Met ten canoes of Conibos—twenty-eight men, women, and children—who had been on an excursion, with no particular object, as far as the first stones in the Ucayali. This is about thirty-eight days above Sarayacu, at a place called in Quichua "Rumi Callarina," or commencement of the rocks; river rising for the last two or three days; passed a village of Shipebos, called Cushmuruna; hills in sight, bearing south.
October 18.—At 11 a. m. we entered the Caño of Sarayacu; at this season this is not more than fifteen or eighteen feet wide, and nearly covered with a tall grass something like broom-corn, or a small species of cane. (This is the food for the vaca marina.) The caño has as much as six feet depth in the middle for two miles, but it soon contracts so as scarcely to allow room for my boat to pass, and becomes shallow and obstructed with the branches of small trees which bend over it. It also, about two miles from its mouth, changes its character of caño, or arm of the main river, and becomes the little river of Sarayacu, which retires and advances in accordance with the movements of its great neighbor.