THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



717 



vapor bath. I must not, however, give here 

 a Ibdgthy description of the region, while we 

 are yet on its threshold. I resided and 

 traveled on the Soliinoens altogether for four 

 years Aid a half. The country on its bor- 

 ders is a magnificent wilderness where civil- 

 ized man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a 

 footing, the cultivated ground from the Rio 

 Negro to the Andes amounting only to a few 

 score acres. Man, indeed, in any condition, 

 from his small numbers, makes but an insig- 

 nificant figure in these vast solitudes. It may 

 be mentioned that the Solimoens is 2130 

 miles in length, if we reckon from the source 

 of what is usually considered the main stream 

 (Lake Lauricocha, near Lima) ; but 2500 

 miles by the route of the Ucayali, the most 

 considerable and practicable fork of the up- 

 per part of the river. It is navigable at all 

 *"asons by large steamers, for upward of 1400 

 miles from the mouth of the Rio Negro. 



On the 28th we passed the mouth of 

 Arianii, a narrow inlet which communicates 

 with the Rio Negro, emerging in front of 

 Barra. Our vessel was nearly drawn into 

 this by the violent current which set from the 

 Solimoens. The towing-cable was lashed to 

 a strong tree about thirty yards ahead, and it 

 took the whole strength of crew and passen- 

 gers to pull across. We passed the Guariba, 

 a second channel connecting the two rivers, 

 on the 30th, and on the 31st sailed past a 

 strangling settlement called Manacapuru, 

 situated on a high rocky bank. Many citi- 

 zens of Barra have sitios, or country-houses, 

 in this place, although it is eighty miles dis- 

 tant from the town by the nearest road. Be- 

 yond Manacapuru all traces of high laud 

 cease ; both shores of the river, hencefor- 

 ward for many hundred miles, are flat, ex- 

 cept in places where the Tabatinga formation 

 appears, in clayey elevations of from twenty 

 to forty feet above the line of highest water. 

 The country is so completely destitute of 

 rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is 

 seen during many weeks' journey. Our 

 voyage was now very monotonous. After 

 leaving the last house at Manacapuru we 

 travelled nineteen days without seeing a 

 human habitation, the few settlers being lo- 

 cated on the banks of inlets or lakes some 

 distance from the shores of the main river. 

 We met only one vessel during. the whole of 

 the time, and this did not come within hail, 

 as it was drifting down in the middle of the 

 current in a broad pait of the river, two miles 

 from the bank along which we were labori- 

 ously warping our course upward. 



After the first two or three days we fell 

 into a regular way of life aboard. Our crew 

 was composed of ten Indians of the Cucama 

 fiation, whose native country is a portion of 

 the borders of the upper river, in the neigh- 

 . borhoud of Nauta, in Peru. The Cucamas 

 speak the Tupi language, using, however, a 

 harsher accent than is common among the 

 semi civilized Indians from Ega downward. 

 They are. a shrewd, hard-working people, 



and are the only Indians who willingly and 

 in a body engage themselves to navigate the 

 canoes of traders. The pilot, a steady and 

 faithful fellow named Vicente, told me that 

 he and his companions had now been fifteen 

 months absent from their wives and families, 

 and that on arriving at Ega they intended to 

 take the first chance of a passage to Nauta. 

 There was nothing in the appearance of these 

 men to distinguish them from canoe-men in 

 general. Some were tall and well built, 

 others had squat figures with broad shoulders 

 and excessively thick arms and legs. No 

 two of them were at all similar in the shape 

 of the head : Vicente had an oval visage, 

 with fine regular features, while a litlle 

 dumpy fellow, the wag of the party, waa 

 quite a Mongolian in breadth and prominence 

 of cheek, spread of nostrils, and obliquity of 

 eyes ; but these two formed the extremes as 

 to face and figure, ^oue of them were tat- 

 tooed or disfigured in any way ; and they 

 were all quite destitute of beard. The Cuca- 

 inas are notorious on the river for their prov- 

 ident habits. The desire of acquiring prop- 

 erty is so rare a trait in Indians that the 

 habits of these people are remarked on with 

 surprise by the Brazilians. The first posses- 

 sion which they strive to acquire, on de- 

 scending the river into Brazil, which all the 

 Peruvian Indians look upon as a richer conn- 

 try than their own, is a woodep tr-iuk with 

 lock and key ; in this ihty blow away care- 

 fully all their earnings converted into cloth- 

 ing, hatchets, knives, harpoon heads, needles 

 and thread, and so forth. Their wages are 

 only fourpence or sixpence a day. which is 

 often paid in goods charged a hundred per 

 cent above Paia prices, so that it takes them 

 a long time to fill their chest. 



It would be difficult to find a better-be- 

 haved set of men on a voyage than these 

 poor Indians. During our thirty-five days' 

 journey they lived and worked together in 

 the most perfect good fellowship. I never 

 heard an angry word pass among them. 

 Senhor Estulano let them navigate the vessel 

 in their own way, exerting his authority only 

 now and then when they were inclined to be 

 lazy. Vicente regulated the working hours. 

 These depended on the darkness of the 

 nights. In the first and second quarters of 

 the moon they kept it up with espia, or oars, 

 until toward midnight ; in the third and 

 fourth quarters they were allowed to go to 

 sleep soon after sunset, and aroused at thiee 

 or four o'clock in the morning to resume 

 their work. On cool, rainy days we all bore 

 a hand at the esjria, trotting with bare feet 

 on the sloppy deck in Indian file, to the tune 

 of some wild boatman's chorus. We had a 

 favorable wind for two days only out of the 

 thirty-five, by which we made about forty 

 miles ; the rest of our long journey was ac- 

 complished literally by pulling our way from 

 tree to tree. When we encountered a re- 

 manso near the shoie, we got along very 

 pleasantly for a few miles by rowing : but 

 this was a rare occurrence. During leisure 



