As we landed, a young negro lieutenant in the emperor's army came to meet me, and offered, in the most polite manner, to escort me to a house in town. There was a shed in sight on the bank, which was the guard-house. As we passed, there was so much pulling at white trousers and blue jackets, it was evident the negro soldiers had been hurriedly dressed; the officers had their hair curled extra. While they respectfully saluted Uncle Sam's uniform, we noticed, for the first time, how very awkwardly the negro handles the musket. As we rose upon the forty-feet bank there stood the fort, pierced for fifty-six heavy guns, pointing in all directions towards a perfect wilderness. The view down the river as well as up is very impressive. The soldiers wear leather slippers, and a hat manufactured wedge-shape, probably that the rays of the vertical sun may be split as they fall upon the negro head.
Some paces north of the fort were a few wretched little negro huts, in which the wives of the soldiers lived, and where a part of the force was permitted to sleep, by turns, during the night. One of these huts was offered to us; it contained one table and two chairs; was built of cane, plastered with adobe, tile roof, with rat-holes in the corners of the floor. The chairs were set out at the door, and Señor Commandante Don Pedro Luis Pais de Carvalho came to pay us a visit. He was a thin, middle-sized, dark-complexioned Brazilian, above fifty years of age, exceedingly mild and gentlemanly in manners; at once apologized for the general order throughout the empire, prohibiting the commanders of all fortifications from inviting a foreigner inside the walls; he said that the president of the province of Matto Grosso, under whose jurisdiction the Forte do Principe da Beira was, had instructed him to be careful the smallpox was not introduced among the soldiers from the department of the Beni, which was the cause of our being requested not to land. I told him we were anxious to go from the fort down the Madeira river, and asked his opinion of the practicability of making the journey. He said the president of the province at Cuyaba, the capital, who was a French naval officer, with the rank of captain of frigate, had ordered him to do everything in his power to assist me; the only boat fit for the service in the port was a small one belonging to a citizen, whom he daily expected from Bolivia—my friend, Don Antonio—and it was possible we could get that, and he might supply a crew from his small force of forty negro soldiers.
The commandante assured me there were no boats at the town of Matto Grosso, such as are used for descending the Madeira river, and the chance of getting men there was very uncertain. The voyage up the Itenez, from the fort to that town, would occupy over a month. I found our only hope was now vested in the kindness of this Brazilian officer, and of Don Antonio, who had not yet overtaken us; but as he had already promised me the boat, the commandante politely offered to have her at once put in order for me. As we could swing our hamacs under the guard-shed, near the river, and better attend to our preparations there, the Cuyavabos moved our baggage up, and we took our quarters with the negro-guard, instead of among the twenty huts inhabited by black families of the station.
The walls of the fort are built of stone, in the shape of a hollow square, with diamond corners, thirty-five feet high. There are two entrances on the northwest front; one a large door-way, at which is a constant sentinel, and a subterraneous passage from the inside, leading to the bank, just above the annual rise of the river in the rainy season, or thirty feet above its present level. The third entrance is through the southwest wall, fastened by large iron-bound and double wooden doors. The trenches round the walls are twenty feet deep. In walking round the ramparts, I only saw two heavy iron guns mounted, which pointed down the river towards the territory of Bolivia. The date over the main entrance of the fort was nearly erased by the weather. We could with difficulty make out "Joseph I, June 20, 1776." The commandante was unable to give us much of its past history. The Portuguese engineers who built it came up the Madeira river from the Amazon, bringing with them a small colony, who settled here by order of the King of Portugal, and, after building the fort, moved away, leaving none but the garrison within its immense walls, which enclose over an acre of land. The stone of which it is built was quarried near by. The magazine on the southeast side, half a mile distant, also built of stone, has gone to ruin and is not used. A subterraneous passage leads from the fort to it.
By Lieut. L. Gibbon U. S. N.
Lith. of P.S. Duval & Co. Phil.
VIEW DOWN THE RIVER ITENEZ FROM FORTE DO PRINCEPE DA BEIRA, Brazil.
The country around is low and overflowed in the wet season, with the exception of three small hills in sight, to the northeast. These are situated to the southwest of that ridge of mountains marked on the common atlas—"Geral mountains." The situation of this fort is usually called "Lamego," and the river "Guaporé." There are a few wild Indians roaming about the country on both sides of the river, of which very little is known. They never make their appearance at the fort, and the commandante never troubles himself about them. He sits in his castle for months without seeing a stranger, grumbling at the cold southeast winds. His rheumatic pains are better when the warm northwest winds clear away the clouds. The negro soldiers plant sugar cane, pine apples, and produce a few oranges. The government rations are farinha, sent from Matto Grosso, and beef when they can get it from the "Baure" Indians, in Bolivia, whence this portion of the inhabitants of Brazil receive their coffee, chocolate, and sugar, by the rivers Machupos and Magdelina.