Cuap. VI. EARLY VOYAGERS. I1l 
Another remarkable voyage was accomplished, in a similar manner, 
by a Spaniard named Lopez d’Aguirre, from Cusco, in Peru, down the 
Ucayali, a branch of the Amazons flowing from the south, and therefore 
from an opposite direction to that of the Napo. An account of this 
journey was sent by D’Aguirre, in a letter to the King of Spain, 
from which Humboldt has given an extract in his narrative. As it 
is a good specimen of the quaintness of style and looseness of state- 
ment exhibited by these early narrators of adventures in South 
America, I will give a translation of it. ‘“ We constructed rafts, 
and, leaving behind our horses and baggage, sailed down the river 
(the Ucayali) with great risk, until we found ourselves in a gulf of 
fresh water. In this river Maraion we continued more than ten 
months and a half, down to its mouth, where it falls into the sea. 
We made one hundred days’ journey, and travelled 1500 leagues. It is 
a great and fearful stream, has 80 leagues of fresh water at its mouth, 
vast shoals, and 800 leagues of wilderness without any kind of inhabit- 
ants,* as your Majesty will see from the true and correct narrative of 
the journey which we have made. It has more than 6000 islands. 
God knows how we came out of this fearful sea.” Many expeditions 
were undertaken in the course of the eighteenth century ; in fact, the 
crossing of the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, by way of the 
Amazons, seems to have become by this time a common occurrence. 
The only voyage, however, which yielded much scientific information to 
the European public was that of the French astronomer, La Condamine, 
in 1743-4. The most complete account yet published of the river is 
that given by Von Martius in the third volume of Spix and Martius’ 
Travels. These most accomplished travellers were eleven months in 
the country—namely, from July 1819 to June 1820, and ascended the 
river to the frontiers of the Brazilian territory. ‘Their accounts of 
the geography, ethnology, botany, history, and statistics of the Amazons 
region are the most complete that have ever been given to the world. 
Their narrative was not published until 1831, and was unfortunately 
inaccessible to me during the time I travelled in the same country. 
Whilst preparing for my voyage it happened, fortunately, that the 
half-brother of Dr. Angelo Custodio, a young mestizo, named Joao da 
Cunha Correia, was about starting for the Amazons on a trading 
expedition in his own vessel, a schooner of about forty tons’ burthen. 
A passage for me was soon arranged with him through the interven- 
tion of Dr. Angelo, and we started on the 5th of September, 1849. I 
intended to stop at some village on the northern shore of the Lower 
Amazons, where it would be interesting to make collections, in order to 
show the relations of the fauna to those of Para and the coast region of 
Guiana. As I should have to hire a house or hut wherever I stayed, 
I took all the materials for housekeeping—cooking utensils, crockery, 
and so forth. ‘To these were added a stock of such provisions as were 
difficult to obtain in the interior ; also ammunition, chests, store-boxes, 
* This account disagrees with that of Acunna, the historiographer of Texeira’s 
expedition, who accompanied him, in 1639, on his return voyage from Quito. 
Acunna speaks of a very numerous population on the banks of the Amazons, 
