272 UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA. Cuap. X. 
A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the 
Solimoens ; and from 1855 one ran regularly every two months between 
the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and ac- 
complishing the distance in ascending, about 1,200 miles, in eighteen 
days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these 
changes. The people became more “civilised,” that is, they began to 
dress according to the latest Parisian fashions, instead of going about 
in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt sleeves ; acquired a taste 
for money-getting and office-holding ; became divided into parties, and 
lost part of their former simplicity of manners. But the place remained, 
when I left it in 1859, pretty nearly what it was when I first arrived in 
1850—a semi-Indian village, with much in the ways and notions of its 
people more like those of a small country town in Northern Europe 
than a South American settlement. The place is healthy, and almost 
free from insect pests; perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of 
marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths 
of channels teem with fish and turtle ; a fleet of steamers might anchor 
at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water 
communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for 
the sleepy little tropical village ! 
After speaking of Ega as a city, it will have a ludicrous effect to 
mention that the total number of its inhabitants is only about 1,200. It 
contains just 107 houses, about half of which are miserably-built mud- 
walled cottages, thatched with palm-leaves. A fourth of the population 
are almost always absent, trading or collecting produce on the rivers. 
The neighbourhood within a radius of thirty miles, and including two 
other small villages, contains probably 2,000 more people. The settle- 
ment is one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1688 
by Father Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian Jesuit, who induced several of the 
docile tribes of Indians, then scattered over the neighbouring region, to 
settle on the site. From 100 to 200 acres of sloping ground around the 
place were afterwards cleared of timber; but such is the encroaching 
vigour of vegetation 1n this country, that the site would quickly relapse 
into jungle if the inhabitants neglected to pull up the young shoots as 
they arose. There is a stringent municipal law which compels each 
resident to weed a given space around his dwelling. Every month, 
whilst I resided here, an inspector came round with his wand of 
authority, and fined every one who had not complied with the regulation. 
The Indians of the surrounding country have never been hostile to the 
European settlers. The rebels of Para and the Lower Amazons, in 
1835-6, did not succeed in rousing the natives of the Solimoens against 
the whites. A party of forty of them ascended the river for that pur- 
pose; but on arriving at Ega, instead of meeting with sympathisers, as 
in other places, they were surrounded by a small body of armed resi- 
dents, and shot down without mercy. The military commandant at the 
time, who was the prime mover in this orderly resistance to anarchy, 
was 2 courageous and loyal negro, name José Patricio, an officer known 
throughout the Upper Amazons for his unflinching honesty and love of 
order, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at St. Paulo in 
1858. Ega was the headquarters of the great scientific commission, 
