;:APIIICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1807. 



The .: of three steamers, 







and tin- Paohitea for about --" more, r'or'y 

 or fifty mi. : he mouth of t' 



-e ln- 



litted tlii' murder, aiu], landing, 

 a dillicult in.-irrii through tin- eh .-iparral, 

 reach Moment. (Hid had :i stiai 



tioii \vit!i them, in which they killed a coiisid- 

 iii-l took many pri-oners. They 

 foun.l here tin- teeth of l!ic two officer.-. Ilav- 

 'lished their j)iir|>oso, they returned 

 to th. . hara-.ed to some extent by the 



10 wounded some of them with their 

 arrows, and threatened them with vengeance 

 if they returned. They then continued their 

 the Pachitea as far ns Mayro, the 

 f navigation on that river, about 220 

 miles above its mouth. Tho country was very 

 ifnl, and abounded in valuable trees and 

 . Mayro is 325 miles from Lima, and 

 from the mouth of tho Amazonns. 

 A joint commission was appointed in 1806 by 

 the Peruvian and Brazilian Governments t.> 

 explore and map correctly the course of the 

 Yavary, the boundary stream between the two 

 countries. The region through which this 

 river Hows lias hitherto been almo-t. 

 Avholly unknown, and its upper waters arc in- 

 habited by savage tribes of Indians. The two 

 commissioners, I >r. Manuel Renaud Pax Soldan 

 on the part of Porn, and Captain Soarcz Pinto, 

 of the Brazilian Navy, on the part of Brazil, 

 with their respective staffs, left Tabatinga (tho 

 mouth of tho Yavary) early in 1867, and as- 

 ! tin- Yavary in a steamer about 1,000 

 mile-. Here they encountered a largo body of 

 Indians, who attacked them with great fury, 

 and a sharp action ensued, in which Captain 

 Pinto was killed, and five of the ten members 

 of tho commission wounded, among the rest 

 Dr. Paz Soldan, who received a wound from a 

 poisoned arrow in the lower part of the thigh, 

 which ultimately rendered amputation neces- 

 sary. The expedition returned to Tabatinga, 

 and Dr. Paz Soldan, whose scientific enthu- 

 siasm does not seem to be abated by his mi>for- 

 tune, writes that the course of the river has 

 hitherto been very incorrectly laid down ; that 

 its direction is more southward than westward, 

 b$ Ing, as he expresses it, W. 30 by 40 S. Its 

 sources rise in the vicinity of Sarayacu, and its 

 principal effluents on the right are the Tecua- 

 chy, the Curnza, and the Paysandu, and on the 

 left tin- Savary-nimim and the Uio Galvcz. 



M. Leouce d'Angraiul, a French archaeolo- 

 gist, long resident in Bolivia, has devoted many 

 years to the study of the ancient civilization 

 of Pern, and has arrived at these conclusions : 

 that tho ruins of Tiguanaco, situated on a pla- 

 teau 13,000 feet above the sea level, as well as 

 some other ruins of Pern, and the Colombian 

 . belong to a period anterior to that of 

 tbe Incus, and to a race having little in com- 

 mon with them ; that this race were the Toltecs, 

 tho predecessors of the Aztecs in Mexico and 

 VOL. vn. 23 



Central America; that in 



ematicid and agronomical -< : 

 all in their religion, they wen 

 f (> t! from 



the North, from 



and probably to these conntri*--; from tin- 

 North; that their religions tin-on, an 



>L'ny. as well a> their calendar, and their 

 laiiL; 1 - ~'i'-!i .-'riking analogies to those 



of th.- | to render it almo>t :.b-olut'ly 



certain that they had migrated, nio-f probably 

 by way of Kamfchatka and Alia.-ka, from the 

 vicinity of Per-ia. tin 1 original seat of the Par- 

 SCO faith. They believed in one nctiv. 

 ator, invisible, himself uncreated, but symbol- 

 ized in the Sun, and one pa^ive divinit; . 

 bolized by the Earth, from who-e united in- 

 fluence all things sprang into being ; they 

 recognized the beneficence of the creative 

 power, and paid it their homage and worship; 

 they recognized also a powerful but not om- 

 nipotent spirit of evil, whose machinations they 

 dreaded and whose wrath they feared. Their 

 whole civilization was influenced by their be- 

 liefs. 



It is understood that the recent discoveries 

 of our countryman, Mr. E. G. Squier, tend, as 

 far as they go, to confirm the views and deduc- 

 tions of M. Leonce d'Angrand. 



Brazil. To this, more than any other South 

 American state, has the attention of geogra- 

 phers been turned during the past two years. 

 The public have been favored during the past 

 year with a popular account, principally from 

 the pen of Mrs. Agassiz, of the expedition of 

 the learned professor and his scientific corps to 

 the Amazonas ; but as we have given in tbe 

 previous volume the principal discoveries of 

 the expedition, and as it was more ichthyologi- 

 cal than geographical, we shall not devote any 

 further space to it. Some of his assistants, 

 Professor Harte among the number, vi-ited 

 portions of the Brazilian coast and some of its 

 river- systems, but mainly in the interests of 

 zoology. Mr. Chandless. an English geographer, 

 long resident in Brazil, who had previously, in 

 1864r-'6o, as detailed in the ANNUAL CYCLOPAE- 

 DIA for 1866^ explored a considerable portion 

 of the course of the Purus, one of the larger 

 tributaries of the Amazonas. which had been 

 supposed to receive its higher waters from the 

 eastern slope of the Andes in the provinces of 

 Cuzco and Caravaya in Peru, and to unite at 

 same point with the Madre de Dios. read before 

 the Royal Geographical Society of London, an- 

 other paper in February, 1867, giving an ac- 

 count of his second expedition in 1865- Yfi. up 

 the Purus, and its largest affluent the Aquiry, 

 to ascertain \\hat was tbe actual source of 

 both. He ascended the Purus for 1,800 miles, 

 and the Aqniry for nearly COO, penetrating into 

 regions into which no white man had ever 

 before entered, and finding tribes of Indians 

 whose civilization was of the verylowe>t grade. 

 Ho found that both the Purus and the Aquiry 

 received no portion of their waters from the 



