November 7.—Iquitos is a fishing village of two hundred and twenty-seven inhabitants; a considerable part of them, to the number of ninety-eight, being whites and Mestizos of San Borja, and other settlements of the upper Mission, who were driven from their homes a few years ago by the Huambisas of the Pastaza and Santiago. This occurred in 1841. In 1843, these same Indians murdered all the inhabitants of a village called Sta. Teresa, situated on the upper Marañon, between the mouths of the rivers Santiago and Morona. My companion Ijurra was there soon after the occurrence. He gave the dead bodies burial, and published in his Travels in Mainas a detailed account of the affair.
In October, 1843, Ijurra, with seventeen other young men of Moyobamba, formed a company for the purpose of washing for gold the sands of the Santiago; they were furnished with arms by the prefecture, and recruited sixty-six Cocamillas of Laguna, armed with bows and arrows, as a light protecting force. They also engaged eighty-five of the Indians of Jeveros as laborers at the washings; and, after they started, were joined by four hundred and fifty of the people who had been expelled in 1841 from Santiago and Borja, desirous of recovering their homes and taking vengeance of the savages.
The party went by land from Moyobamba to Balza Puerto; thence north to Jeveros; and thence to the port of Barranca, at the mouth of the river Cahuapanas, when they embarked to ascend the Amazon to the mouth of the Santiago. At Barranca they received intelligence of the massacre at Sta. Teresa, with the details.
A Moyobambino, Canuto Acosta, fearing that the company would get all the gold, and that he should not be able to collect a little that was due him by the people about Sta. Teresa, hastened on before. He met at Sta. Teresa with a large party of Huambisas, who had come down the Santiago for the ostensible purpose of trade. Conversing with the curaca of the tribe, named Ambuscha, Acosta told him that a multitude of Christians were coming with arms in their hands to conquer and enslave his people. The curaca, turning the conversation, asked Acosta what he had in his packages. The reply was more foolish and wicked than the other speech; for, desirous to play upon the credulity of the Indian, or to overawe him, he said that he had in his packages a great many epidemic diseases, with which he could kill the whole tribe of the Huambisas. It was his death warrant. The curaca plunged his spear into his body, and giving a shrill whistle, his people, who were scattered about among the houses, commenced the massacre. They killed forty-seven men, and carried off sixty women; some few persons escaped into the woods. The Indians spared two boys—one of seven and one of nine years—and set them adrift upon the Amazon on a raft, with a message to the gold-hunting company that they knew of their approach, and were ready, with the assistance of their friends, the Paturos and Chinganos, to meet and dispute with them the possession of the country. The raft was seen floating past Barranca and brought in.
The gold-seekers found no gold upon the borders of the Marañon; quarrelled; became afraid of the savages; broke up and abandoned their purpose before they reached the mouth of the Santiago.
Ijurra and a few others then turned their attention to the collection of Peruvian bark. They spent two or three years in the woods, about the mouth of the Huallaga; gathered an enormous quantity, and floated it down to Pará on immense rafts, that Ijurra describes as floating-houses, with all the comforts and conveniences of the house on shore.
When they arrived at Pará the cargo was examined by chymists; said by them to be good; and a mercantile house offered eighty thousand dollars for it. They refused the offer; chartered a vessel, and took the cargo to Liverpool, where the chymist pronounced the fruit of years of labor to be utterly worthless.
The village of Iquitos is situated on an elevated plain, which is said to extend far back from the shores of the river. This is different from the situation of many towns upon the Amazon, most of which are built upon a hill, with a low, swampy country behind them. There are cotton and coffee-trees growing in the streets of the village, but no attention is paid to the cultivation of either. A small stream, said to be one of the mouths of the river Nanay, enters the Amazon just above the town. The main mouth of the Nanay is five miles below; it is said to communicate, back of the plain, with the Tigre Yacu, which empties into the Marañon above San Regis; and branches of it, which run to the northward and eastward, inosculate with the Napo.
We left Iquitos at half past 9 a. m. The shores of the river just below are bold, and of white clay; at a quarter to eleven we passed the mouth of the Nanay, about one hundred and fifty yards broad. The depth of the Amazon at the junction of the two rivers is fifty feet; the current a mile and two-thirds the hour. After passing several small islands, where the river appeared two miles wide, it seemed to contract within its own banks to half a mile, immediately in front of a settlement of two or three houses, called Tinicuro, where I found no bottom at one hundred and eighty feet; at half-past five we arrived at Pucallpa, where we passed the night.
November 8.—Pucallpa, or New Oran, is a small settlement, of twenty houses, and one hundred and eleven inhabitants, who formerly belonged to Oran, but who, finding their situation uncomfortable, removed and settled here. It is one of the most pleasantly-situated places I have seen—on a moderate eminence, with green banks shelving to the river. The water is bold (twenty-five to thirty feet deep) close to the shore. Two islands—one above and one below the town, with a narrow opening in front—gave the place the appearance of a snug little harbor.