The distance by the river from the mouth of the Itenez to Fort Beira, is about fifty-five miles in an east-southeast direction; opposite the junction of these rivers, there are three small hills on the Brazil side. The Mamoré turns its course from a north direction a little to the westward. The stream here comes in contact with the solid formation of coarse granite in the Brazils. The commandante of the fort told me his father made a fortune by collecting diamonds on the head waters of the Paraguay in Brazil, and that he had found traces of the same stones in the bed of the Itenez. The sharp angular edges of the diamond, put in motion by rippling water, cuts itself a little hole in the hardest rocks. As the waters rush over it in the wet season, the diamond works deeper and deeper, so that common stones may enter the hole. The water whirls round in this hole, the common stones wear away the sides, and increase the size of the cavity, while the diamonds are busily at work at the bottom. In such holes the diamond hunter seeks his wealth. We find no traces of silver or gold on this side of the Madeira Plate, We passed through a rapid, between rocks on the banks, getting a cast of the lead and no bottom.
September 17.—At 9 a. m., thermometer, 78°; water, 79°; wind southeast. The banks are thirty feet high, and well wooded. The river is five hundred yards wide, with a depth of from thirty to sixty feet. The country on both sides of us appears well adapted for cultivation, many parts of it being above the rising of the floods. Pedro tells me we have the "Sinabos" savages on the Brazil side of us, and the equally uncivilized tribe of "Jibo" on the Bolivia side. Our men work well; with a one-mile current, we keep on day and night. Large green and black flies annoy us very much, in addition to which we have sand-flies and musquitoes at night. At 3 p. m., thermometer, 87°; water, 80°; wind southeast. As the moon went down, heavy clouds rose up in the east, and lightning flashed there. The men slept while we drifted along among snags. Here and there a sawyer bobbed up his head. The only way to keep clear of them is by listening to the music of the waters playing against the logs as we pass in the darkness of the night. One man keeps watch with his paddle in the bow. He watches and talks to us at the same time. He tells me the Emperor of Brazil pays him sixteen mil reis a month, and finds him in board and lodging. Mil reis vary in value; at present worth fifty-five cents. He is not a slave, but was born a free negro, which is the case with most of those who enter the army. Every man born free has either to serve the Emperor or pay tax money. As he had no money, he was obliged to enlist. He did not know how long he was enlisted for, or when he would be permitted to go home to Cuyaba, where his mother lived. He had asked a number of times to be paid off and discharged; but he was answered the Emperor required his services, so he is uncertain when he will be able to get off; though, when he returns from this trip faithfully, and reports himself to the commandante, he may be permitted to go to Matto Grosso with the mail, and then he thinks of detaching himself by not returning. Slaves are not employed as soldiers, he tells me; only the free blacks. From his tone, he considers the man who cultivates the sugar-cane and cotton-plant is degraded, compared with his own occupation. According to his account, there are a great number of free-born black people in the province of Matto Grosso. He considers the town of Matto Grosso a miserable place compared with Cuyaba. The people in the former place are all very poor—mostly colored folks—and the country round about is very little cultivated; but in the latter town there are rich white people, he says, who own slaves and cultivate corn and beans. He always has plenty of tobacco to smoke in Cuyaba, but at Fort Beira the men have very little; they are often without it, as well as pine-apples and plantains. The negroes at Cuyaba have balls and parties, music and dancing, every night. They don't drink chicha, nor do they understand how to make it; but they drink great quantities of aguadiente, which the Emperor don't give them as a part of their rations. They never get any at the fort except by the mail-boat. When letters come from the Emperor, then the soldiers get a jug or two of aguadiente by the mail-carriers, and it is used up at once.
September 18.—The negroes gathered a quantity of cream or Brazil nuts from under a large tree on the Bolivia side. The nuts are encased in a hard shell, which the men broke with our hatchet. The tree was one of the largest in the forest, and the only one of the kind we saw. Pedro pointed it out to them, otherwise we probably should have passed it without knowing such good things were near us. The nuts, with a turkey and goose, shot on the beach, served us for breakfast. The negroes are poor fishermen compared with the Indians. There appear fewer fishes below the juncture of the Itenez with the Mamoré; the water is still muddy. At 9 a. m., thermometer, 80°; and water of the same temperature, which is rather warm drinking; clear and calm. At 3 p. m., thermometer, 88°; water, 83°. The river is half a mile wide in some places, and the channel clear of drift-wood, with from twenty-four to forty-eight feet depth.
September 19.—A turn in the river brought us in sight of high land to the north. The negroes blew two cow's horns, and shouted at the sight of it. Laying down their horns, they paddled with a will to their own musical songs, by which they kept time. We met a north wind, which created a short wave as it met the current of the stream, increasing in speed. The land has become low on both sides, and is swampy, with signs of being all flooded in the rainy season.
At 9 a. m., thermometer, 82°; water, 81°. At 3 p. m., thermometer, 87°; water, 80°. We passed an island, rocky and wooded. Flowers bloom and decorate the richly green foliage on the banks. The current is quite rapid, and we dash along at a rate we have not been able to do before on the Mamoré, passing the mouth of a small river—Pacanoba—which flows from the Brazils and through several islands. We came alongside of one of them for the night. Within the death-like, mournful sound of the "Guajará-merim" falls our raw-hides were spread, hair side up, as table and chairs. While the men made a fire, I was listening to the roaring waters, and thinking what sensible fellows those Cuyavabos Indians were to run from it. The night was starlight; but the mist arising from the foaming waters below us was driven over the island by the north wind, which prevented my getting the latitude. Small hills stood a very short way back from the islands, in Brazil. The land appears to be above the floods on both sides. As we are free from musquitoes at night, and the savages do not inhabit our little island, we sleep soundly.
September 20.—By daylight we were up and off, pulling across to the Bolivian shore to the head of the falls. We were in doubts how our boat would behave in the rapids. After taking out part of the baggage, which was passed over a rocky shore below, the boat was pulled through without any difficulty. The channel was about fifty yards wide, with very little fall; the whole bed of the river was divided by wooded islands and black rocks, with large and small channels of water rushing through at a terrible rate. A steamboat could, however, pass up and down over this fall without much trouble. We embarked, and found our little boat, which had been named "Nannie," gliding beautifully over the short waves formed by the rapid motion of the water. The rocks are worn away in long strips, and cut up into confused bits by the action of the river constantly washing over them. On the islands, quantities of drift-wood and prairie-grasses are heaped on the upper side.
One of these islands occupied the middle of the bed for three-quarters of a mile in length. We followed the channel down on the Bolivia side to its lower end at a rapid rate; when we came to the foot of the first fall we looked back up-hill, to see the number of streams rushing down, each one contributing its mite to the roaring noise that was constantly kept up. We saw no fish, but last night met large flocks of cormorants, flying in a line stretching across the river, close to the surface of the water; this morning they came down again. These birds spend the night over the warm bed of the Itenez, and return here in the day to feed.
No sooner had we cleared these falls than we found ourselves at the head of another rapid, more steep, called "Guajará-assu." Pedro took us to the upper end of a path in the woods, on the Brazil shore, where Don Antonio had transported his cargo overland, three hundred and fifty paces, to the foot of the falls. His large boats were hauled through the water by means of strong ropes rove through large blocks.
Our cargo was landed, and while Richards, with one man, was engaged carrying the baggage down, I took the boat over on the Bolivian side, and we hauled her three hundred yards over the rocks and through the small channels, down an inclined shelf of about twelve feet fall. The main channel is in the middle of the river, with waves rolled up five feet high by the swiftness of the current, through which a steamboat could pass neither up nor down.
The river cuts its way through an immense mass of rock, stretching across the country east and west like a great bar of iron. The navigation of the river Mamoré is completely obstructed here; the river's gate is closed, and we see no way to transport the productions of Bolivia towards the Amazon, except by a road through the Brazilian territory. On the east side of the river, hills are in sight, and among them a road may be found where a cargo might pass free from inundations.