Down the Amazon.--Serpa.--Villa Nova.--Obidos.--Santarem.--A Colony
of Southerners.--Monte Alégre.--Porto do Moz.--Leaving the
Amazon.--Breves.--Pará River.--The City of Pará.--Legislation and
Currency.--Religion and Education.--Nonpareil Climate.
At 10 P.M. we left Manáos in the "Tapajos," an iron steamer of seven
hundred tons. We missed the snow-white cleanliness and rigid regularity
of the "Icamiaba," and Captain José Antunes Rodrigues de Oliveira
Catramby was quite a contrast to Lieutenant Nuno. There were only five
first-class passengers besides ourselves (and four of these were
"dead-heads"), though there were accommodations for sixty-four. Between
Manáos and Pará, a distance of one thousand miles, there were fourteen
additions. Passing the mouth of the Madeira, the largest tributary to
the Amazon, we anchored thirty miles below at Serpa, after nine hours'
sailing. Serpa is a village of ninety houses, built on a high bank of
variegated clay, whence its Indian name, _Ita-coatiara_, or painted
rock. It was the most animated place we had seen on the river. The town
is irregularly laid out and overrun with weeds, but there is a busy tile
factory, and the port was full of canoes, montarias, and cubertas. The
African element in the population began to show itself prominently here,
and increased in importance as we neared Pará. The Negroes are very
ebony, and are employed as stevedores. The Indians are well-featured,
and wear a long gown of bark-cloth reaching to the knees.
Taking on board rubber and salt fish, the "Tapajos" steamed down stream,
passing the perpendicular pink-clay cliffs of Cararaucú, arriving in
ten hours at Villa Nova,[142] one hundred and fifty miles below Serpa.
Villa Nova is a straggling village of mud huts standing on a
conglomerate bank. The trade is chiefly in rubber, copaiba, and fish.
The location is healthy, and in many respects is one of the most
desirable places on the river. Here the Amazon begins to narrow, being
scarcely three miles wide; but the channel, which has a rocky bed, is
very deep. One hundred miles from Villa Nova is Obidos, airily situated
on a bluff of pink and yellow clay one hundred feet above the river. The
clay rests on a white calcareous earth, and this on red sandstone. It is
a picturesque, substantially-built town, with a population, mostly
white, engaged in raising cacao and cattle. Cacao is the most valuable
product on the Amazon below Villa Nova. The soil is fertile, and the
surrounding forest is alive with monkeys, birds, and insects, and
abounds with precious woods and fruits. Obidos is blessed with a church,
a school, and a weekly newspaper, and is defended by thirty-two guns.
This is the Thermopylæ of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a
strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with tremendous
velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the current 2.4 feet per
second. As Bates remarks, however, the river valley is not contracted to
this breadth, the southern shore not being continental land, but a low
alluvial tract subject to inundation. Back of Obidos is an eminence
which has been named _Mount Agassiz_ in honor of the Naturalist. There
is no mountain between it and Cotopaxi save the spurs from the Eastern
Cordillera. Five miles above the town is the mouth of the Trombetas,
where Orellana had his celebrated fight with the fabulous Amazons.
[Footnote 142: Otherwise called, on Brazilian maps, Villa Bella da
Imperatriz.]
[Illustration: Santarem.]
Adding to her cargo wood, hides, horses, and Paraguayan prisoners
(short, athletic men), the "Tapajos" sailed for Santarem. The river
scenery below Obidos loses its wild and solitary character, and is
relieved with scattered habitations, factories, and cacao plantations.
We arrived at Santarem in seven hours from Obidos, a distance of fifty
miles. This city, the largest on the Amazon save Pará, stands on a
pretty slope at the mouth of the Rio Tapajos, and five hundred miles
from the sea.[143] It mainly consists of three long-rows of whitewashed,
tiled houses, girt with green gardens. The citizens, made up of
Brazilians, Portuguese, mulattoes, and blacks, number about two thousand
five hundred. The surrounding country, which is an undulating campo,
with patches of wood, is sparsely inhabited by Tapajocos. Cattle estates
and cacao plantations are the great investments, but the soil is poor.
Considerable sarsaparilla of superior quality, rubber, copaiba, Brazil
nuts, and farina come down the Tapajos. The climate is delightful, the
trade-winds tempering the heat and driving away all insect pests.
Leprosy is somewhat common among the poorer class. At Santarem is one of
the largest colonies which migrated from the disaffected Gulf States for
Brazil. One hundred and sixty Southerners pitched their tents here. Many
of them, however, were soon disgusted with the country, and, if we are
to believe reports, the country was disgusted with them. On the 1st of
January, 1868, only seventy-five remained. The colony does not fairly
represent the United States, being made up in great part of the "roughs"
of Mobile. A few are contented and are doing well. Amazonia will be
indebted to them for some valuable ideas. Bates says: "Butter-making is
unknown in this country; the milk, I was told, was too poor." But these
Anglo-Saxon immigrants have no difficulty in making butter. Santarem
sends to Pará for sugar; but the cavaliers of Alabama are proving that
the sugar-cane grows better than in Louisiana, attaining the height of
twenty feet, and that it will yield for ten or twelve years without
transplanting or cultivation. It is not, however, so sweet or juicy as
the Southern cane. Some of the colonists are making tapioca and cashaça
or Brazilian rum; others have gone into the pork business; while one,
Dr. Jones, expects to realize a fortune burning lime. Here we met the
rebel ex-General Dobbins, who had been prospecting on the Tapajos River,
but had not yet located himself.
[Footnote 143: Herndon makes Santarem 460 miles from the Negro, and 650
from the sea. Bates calls it 400 miles from the Atlantic, and nearly 50
from Obidos.]
Below Santarem the Amazon vastly increases in width; at one point the
southern shore was invisible from the steamer. The waves often run very
high. At 10 A.M., eight hours from Santarem, we entered the romantic
port of Monte Alégre. The road from the river to the village, just
visible inland, runs through a pretty dell. Back of the village, beyond
a low, swampy flat, rise the table-topped blue hills of Almeyrim. It was
an exhilarating sight and a great relief to gaze upon a mountain range
from three hundred to one thousand feet high, the greatest elevations
along the Amazon east of the Andes. Agassiz considers these singular
mountains the remnants of a plain which once filled the whole valley of
the Amazon; but Bates believes them to be the southern terminus of the
high land of Guiana. Their geological constitution--a pebbly
sandstone--favors the Professor's theory. The range extends ninety miles
along the north bank of the river, the western limit at Monte Alégre
bearing the local name of Serra Ereré. Mount Agassiz, at Obidos, is a
spur of the same table-land. The Amazon is here about five miles wide,
the southern shore being low, uninhabited, and covered with coarse
grass. Five schooners were anchored in the harbor of Monte Alégre, a
sign of considerable trade for the Amazon. The place exports cattle,
cacao, rubber, and fish.
In four hours we reached Prayinha, a dilapidated village of forty
houses, situated on a low, sandy beach. The chief occupation is the
manufacture of turtle-oil. In ten hours more we were taking in wood at
Porto do Moz, situated just within the mouth of the Xingú, the last
great tributary to the Amazon. Dismal was our farewell sail on the great
river. With the highlands came foul weather. We were treated to frequent
and furious showers, accompanied by a violent wind, and the atmosphere
was filled with smoke caused by numerous fires in the forest. Where the
Xingú comes in, the Amazon is ten miles wide, but it is soon divided by
a series of islands, the first of which is Grand Island. Twenty miles
below Porto do Moz is Gurupá, where we took in rubber. The village,
nearly as inanimate as Pompeii, consists of one street, half deserted,
built on an isolated site. Forty miles below Gurupá we left the Amazon
proper, turning to the right down a narrow channel leading into the
river Pará. The forest became more luxuriant, the palms especially
increasing in number and beauty. At one place there was a forest of
palms, a singularity, for trees of the same order are seldom associated.
The forest, densely packed and gloomy, stands on very low, flat banks of
hard river mud. Scarcely a sign of animal life was visible; but, as we
progressed, dusky faces peered out of the woods; little shanties
belonging to the _seringeros_, or rubber-makers, here and there broke
the solitude, and occasionally a large group of half-clad natives
greeted us from the shore. A labyrinth of channels connects the Amazon
with the Pará; the steamers usually take the Tajapurú. This natural
canal is of great depth, and from fifty to one hundred yards in width;
so that, hemmed in by two green walls, eighty feet-high, we seemed to
be sailing through a deep gorge; in some places it was so narrow it was
nearly overarched by the foliage. One hundred and twenty-five miles from
Gurupá is Breves, a busy little town on the southwest corner of the
great island of Marajó. The inhabitants, mostly Portuguese, are engaged
in the rubber trade; the Indians in the vicinity manufacture fancy
earthen-ware and painted cuyas or calabashes.
Soon after leaving Breves we entered the Pará River, which suddenly
begins with the enormous width of eight miles. It is, however, shallow,
and contains numerous shoals and islands. It is properly an estuary,
immense volumes of fresh water flowing into it from the south. The tides
are felt through its entire length of one hundred and sixty miles, but
the water is only slightly brackish. It has a dingy orange-brown color.
A narrow blue line on our left, miles away, was all that was visible, at
times, of the island of Marajó; and as we passed the broad mouth of the
Tocantíns, we were struck with the magnificent sea-like expanse, for
there was scarcely a point of mainland to be seen.
[Illustration: Pará.]
At 4 P.M., eighteen hours from Breves, we entered the peaceful bay of
Goajara, and anchored in front of the city of Pará. Beautiful was the
view of the city from the harbor in the rays of the declining sun. The
towering spires and cupolas, the palatial government buildings, the long
row of tall warehouses facing a fleet of schooners, ships, and steamers,
and pretty white villas in the suburbs, nestling in luxuriant gardens,
were to us, who had just come down the Andes from mediæval Quito, the
_ultima thule_ of civilization. We seemed to have stepped at once from
the Amazon to New York or London. We might, indeed, say _ne plus ultra_
in one respect--we had crossed the continent, and Pará was the terminus
of our wanderings, the end of romantic adventures, of privations and
perils. We were kindly met on the pier by Mr. James Henderson, an
elderly Scotchman, whom a long residence in Pará, a bottomless fund of
information, and a readiness to serve an Anglo-Saxon, have made an
invaluable cicerone. We shot through the devious, narrow streets to the
Hotel Diana, where we made our toilet, for our habiliments, too, had
reached their _ultima thule_. As La Condamine said on his arrival at
Quito: "_Je me trouvai hors d'état de paroitre en public avec décence_."
The same year which saw Shakspeare carried to his grave beside the Avon
witnessed the founding of Pará, or, speaking more respectfully, of Santa
Maria de Belém do Gram Pará. The city stands on a low elbow of land
formed by the junction of the rivers Guamá and Pará, seventy-five miles
from the ocean. The great forest comes close up to the suburbs; and, in
fact, vegetation is so rapid the city fathers have a hard struggle to
keep the jungle out of the streets. The river in front is twenty miles
wide, but the vast expanse is broken by numerous islets. Ships of any
size will float within, one hundred and fifty yards of the shore. All
passengers and goods are landed by boats at the custom-house wharf. The
city is regularly laid out, there are several public squares, and many
of the streets, especially in the commercial part, are well paved.
Magnificent avenues, lined with silk-cotton trees, cocoa-palms, and
almonds, lead out to beautiful _rocinhas_, or country residences, of one
story, but having spacious verandas. The President's house, built in the
Italian style, whose marble staircase is a wonder to Brazil; the six
large churches, including the cathedral, after patterns from Lisbon; the
post-office, custom-house, and convent-looking warehouses on the
mole--these are the most prominent buildings. The architecture is
superior to that of Quito. The houses, generally two-storied, are
tiled, plastered, and whitewashed or painted; the popular colors are
red, yellow, and blue. A few have porcelain facing. The majority have
elegant balconies and glass windows, but not all the old projecting
lattice casements have disappeared. Some of the buildings bear the marks
of the cannonading in the Revolution of 1835. Instead of bedrooms and
beds, the largest apartments and verandahs have hooks in the wall for
hammocks. A carpeted, cushioned room is seldom seen, and is out of place
in the tropics. Coaches and gas are supplanting ox-carts and candles.
There are two hotels, but scant accommodations for travelers. Beef is
almost the only meat used; the fish are poor and dear; the oysters are
horrible. Bananas, oranges, and coffee are the best native productions
on the table.
[Illustration: Fruit Peddlers.]
The population of Pará is thirty-five thousand, or double what it was
when Wallace and Bates entered it twenty years ago. It is the largest
city on the largest river in the world, and the capital of a province
ten times the size of New York State. The enterprising, wealthy class
consists of Portuguese and pure Brazilians, with a few English, Germans,
French, and North Americans. The multitude is an amalgamation of
Portuguese, Indian, and Negro. The diversity of races, and the mingled
dialects of the Amazon and Europe, make an attractive street scene. Side
by side we see the corpulent Brazilian planter, the swarthy Portuguese
trader, the merry Negro porter, and the apathetic Indian boatman. Some
of the more recent offspring are dressed _à la Adam_ before the fall;
numbers wear only a shirt or skirt; the negro girls who go about the
streets with trays of sweetmeats on their heads are loosely yet prettily
dressed in pure white, with massive gilded chains and earrings; but the
middle and upper classes generally follow Paris fashions. The mechanic
arts are in the hands of free Negroes and Indians, mulattoes and
mamelucos.[144] Commerce is carried on almost exclusively by Portuguese
and other foreigners. Dry-goods come chiefly from England and France;
groceries from Portugal; flour and hardware from the United States. The
principal exports are rubber, cacao, coffee,[145] sugar, cotton, Brazil
nuts, sarsaparilla, vanilla, farina, copaiba, tobacco, rum, hides, fish,
parrots, and monkeys.[146] Pará exceeds in the number of its indigenous
commodities any other port in the world, but the trade at present is
insignificant when we consider the vast extent and resources of the
country. The city can never have a rival at the mouth of the Amazon, and
is destined to become a great emporium. But Brazilian legislation stands
in the way. Heavy import duties are charged--from 35 to 45 per cent.;
and on the 1st of January, 1868, it was ordered that 15 per cent. must
be paid in English gold. The consequence has been that gold has risen
from 28 to 30 above par, creating an additional tax. Exportation is
equally discouraging. There is a duty of nine per cent. to be paid at
the custom-house, and seven per cent. more at the consulado. But this
is not the sum total. Those who live outside of the province of Pará,
say above Obidos, must first pay an import of thirteen per cent. to get
their produce into Pará. For example: up the river crude rubber can be
bought for twenty-five cents a pound; the trader pays twenty-five cents
an arroba (thirty-two pounds) for transportation to Pará from Santarem,
exclusive of canoe hire and shipping; thirteen per cent. duty in
entering Pará, ten per cent. to the commission merchant, and sixteen per
cent. more as export tax; making a total loss on labor of about fifty
per cent. Brazil abounds with the most valuable woods in the world, but
is prevented from competing with other nations by this system of
self-strangulation. In 1867 the import duty on timber was twelve per
cent. Though situated on the edge of a boundless forest, Pará consumes
large quantities of North American pine. There is not a grist-mill on
the Amazon, and only two or three saw-mills. A dozen boards of red cedar
(a very common timber) costs 60$000 per thousand (about thirty dollars)
at Santarem. There is no duty on goods going to Peru. The current money,
besides foreign gold, consists of copper coins and imperial treasury
notes. The basis of calculation is the imaginary _rey_, equivalent to
half a mill. The coins in use are the vintem (twenty reys), answering to
our cent, the half vintem, and double vintem. The currency has so
fluctuated in value that many of the pieces have been restamped. Fifty
vintems make a _milrey_, expressed thus: 1$000. This is the smallest
paper issue. Unfortunately, the notes may suddenly fall below par. As a
great many counterfeits made in Portugal are in circulation, the
government recalls the issue which has been counterfeited, notifying
holders, by the provincial papers, that all such bills must be exchanged
for a new issue within six months. Those not brought in at the end of
that period lose ten per cent. of their value, and ten per cent. for
each following month, until the value of the note is _nil_. The result
has been that many persons trading up the river have lost heavily, and
now demand hard money. Change is very scarce in Pará.
[Footnote 144: We are inclined to doubt the assertion of Mansfield that
Paraguay is the only country in eastern South America with an
industrious peasantry.]
[Footnote 145: Brazil yields more than one half the quantity of coffee
consumed by the world. That of Ceará is the best.]
[Footnote 146: In January, 1868, the current prices were as follows:
Refined Sugar, per arroba $3 00
Rice 1 40
Cacao 3 20
Coffee 3 50
Farina 75
Tapioca 3 00
Pure rubber 11 50
Plassaba cord 6 50
Tobacco 1 50
Sarsparilla 11 50
The Brazilian arroba is seven pounds heavier than the Spanish.]
The province of Pará is governed by a president chosen at Rio, and every
four years sends representatives to the Imperial Parliament. The
Constitution of Brazil is very liberal; every householder, without
distinction of race or color, has a vote, and may work his way up to
high position. There are two drawbacks--the want of intelligence and
virtue in the people, and the immense staff of officials employed to
administer the government. There are also many formalities which are not
only useless, but a hinderance to prosperity. Thus, the internal trade
of a province carried on by Brazilian subjects is not exempt from the
passport system. A foreigner finds as much trouble in getting his
passport _en règle_ in Pará as in Vienna. The religion of Pará is
Romish, and not so tolerant as in Rio. We arrived during _festa_. (When
did a traveler enter a Portuguese town on any other than a feast day?)
That night was made hideous with rockets, fire-crackers, cannon, and
bells. "Music, noise, and fireworks," says Wallace, "are the three
essentials to please a Brazilian populace." The most celebrated shrine
in Northern Brazil is Our Lady of Nazareth. The little chapel stands
about a mile out of the city, and is now rebuilding for the third time.
The image is a doll about the size of a girl ten years old, wearing a
silver crown and a dress of blue silk glittering with golden stars.
Hosts of miracles are attributed to Our Lady, and we were shown votive
offerings and models of legs, arms, heads, etc., etc., the grateful _in
memoriam_ of wonderful cures, besides a boat whose crew were saved by
invoking the protection of Mary. The facilities for education are
improving. There are several seminaries in Pará, of which the chief is
the _Lyceo da Capital_. Too many youths, however, as in Quito, are
satisfied with a little rhetoric and law. The city supports four
newspapers.
Paráenses may well be proud of their delightful climate. Wallace says
the thermometer ranges from 74° to 87°; our observation made the mean
annual temperature 80.2°. The mean daily temperature does not vary more
than two or three degrees. The climate is more equable than that of any
other observed part of the New World.[147] The greatest heat is reached
at two o'clock, but it is never so oppressive as in New York. The
greater the heat, the stronger the sea-breeze; and in three hundred out
of three hundred and sixty-five days, the air is farther cooled by an
afternoon shower. The rainiest month is April; the dryest, October or
November. Lying in the delta of a great river, in the middle of the
tropics, and half surrounded by swamps, its salubrity is remarkable. We
readily excuse the proverb, "_Quem vai para Pará para_" ("He who goes to
Pará stops there"); and we might have made it good, had we not been
tempted by the magnificent steamer "South America," which came up from
Rio on the way to New York. On the moonlit night of the 7th of January,
when the ice-king had thrown his white robes over the North, we turned
our backs upon the glimmering lights of Pará, and noiselessly as a canoe
glided down the great river. As the sun rose for the last time to us
upon the land of perpetual verdure, our gallant ship was plowing the
mottled waters on the edge of the ocean--mingled yellow patches of the
Amazon and dark streaks from the Pará floating on the Atlantic green.
Far behind us we could see the breakers dashing against the Braganza
Banks; a moment after Cape Magoary dropped beneath the horizon, and with
it South America vanished from our view.
[Footnote 147: "The traveler, in going from the equator toward the
tropics, is less struck by the decrease of the mean annual temperature
than by the unequal distribution of heat in different parts of the
year."--_Humboldt_. The great German fixes the mean temperature of the
equator at 81.5°; Brewster, at 82.8°; Kirwan, 83.9°; Atkinson, 84.5°.]