354 



GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1867. 



Andes slope, but had their sources in the forests 

 of the great Amazonian plain, hundreds of 

 miles distant from the foot of the Andes. The 

 course of the two rivers was through this great 

 plain, the current was slow, and the rivers 

 navigable to a higher point than almost any 

 other of the southern tributaries of the Ama- 

 zonas. The forest, almost impenetrable from 

 its network of lianas or parasitic creepers, lined 

 the river-banks almost everywhere, and the 

 region was but sparsely inhabited. The white 

 settlements on the Purus are very few, and the 

 highest is only two hundred and tifty miles 

 from its mouth. The Indian tribes are scat- 

 tered along its banks, their villages being 

 frequently fifty' or one hundred miles apart. 

 The Muras occupy the lower portion of the 

 river for perhaps two hundred and fifty miles; 

 next come the Puru-purus or Pammarys, a 

 gentle and unwarlike tribe, and the Juberys, a 

 small band of Indians. Above these were the 

 Cip6s, Catarixas, Pamanas, and Jamamadys, 

 four very weak tribes. Still farther on were 

 the Hypurinas, a large body of Indians, ex- 

 tending also along the banks of the lower 

 Aquiry, more warlike, but not hostile to the 

 whites. These occupied a territory of nearly 

 three hundred miles along the banks of these 

 two rivers ; there was then a break of one hun- 

 dred miles or more which seemed uninhabited, 

 or nearly so, and next came the country of the 

 Maneuenterys, a very highly civilized tribe, who 

 raise, spin, and weave cotton, and are well 

 supplied with iron implements, obtained indi- 

 rectly, Mr. Chandless thinks, from Sarayacu, 

 on the Ucayali. They were industrious and 

 well clad, both the men and women, and very 

 intelligent and friendly. The Canamarys, who 

 were next above them, though inferior in intel- 

 ligence to their neighbors, were honest and 

 kindly disposed. Above these was another 

 long gap, and toward the sources of the Purus 

 Mr. Chandless found a tribe of Indians who 

 had never heard of white men, and who were 

 entirely ignorant of the use of iron, using stone 

 implements, of which he obtained specimens. 

 The Upper Aquiry was peopled by the Cape- 

 chenes, a tribe who have no canoes, and no 

 idea of building them, but make some rafts of 

 arrow-grass. The animals along the route 

 were principally the capivaras, or water-hog, 

 which was found in large numbers, the tapir, 

 and a few monkeys. The curassow bird was 

 also seen in flocks >in some places, ' and the 

 green ibis and peacock hen occasionally. For 

 long distances, however, on the Purus, there 

 were no animals visible. The India-rubber 

 tree abounds in the forests. Don Antonio 

 Raimondy, a Peruvian geographer, has supple- 

 mented Mr. Chandless's discoveries by an ex- 

 pedition undertaken in 1864-'6o, to explore the 

 courses of the rivers San Gavan and Ayapata, 

 aifluents of the Ynambari, whicb, like the 

 Madre de Dios, is a tributary of the Beni, and 

 this of the Madeira, the largest of the southern 

 affluents of the Amazonas. The result of this 



expedition, one of immense labor and hard- 

 ship, was the settling the question that the 

 waters of the western slope of the Andes, in 

 the provinces of Cuzco and Caravaya, fall into 

 the Beni and Madeira, and not into the Purus. 

 This is of more importance than it would seem 

 at first sight ; for if, as was supposed, here- 

 tofore, they passed into the Purus, that river 

 being navigable for almost its entire extent, 

 Cuzco, the former capital of the Incas, might 

 have regained a part of its former prestige, 

 being connected by direct water communica- 

 tion with the Amazonas ; but the route by way 

 of the Beni and Madeira is obstructed by cata- 

 racts which entirely prevent continuous navi- 

 gation. 



Senhor Joas Martins de Silva Coutiuho, a Bra- 

 zilian geographer, who has spent about eight 

 years in the exploration of the Amazonas, es- 

 pecially its lower portion, in a recent paper read 

 before the French Societe de Geographic, states 

 some interesting facts relative to the great river. 

 It seems that the Amazonas, unlike any other 

 great river, has no delta. The vast mass of 

 sediment or debris brought down by its broad 

 and somewhat rapid current is not deposited 

 at its mouth, forms no islands or marshes, but 

 is in some way carried out into the ocean and 

 deposited on some distant coast. So far from 

 any accretion of soil or land taking place from 

 its deposits, the sea is constantly making in- 

 roads upon the land, and the great islands of 

 Maranhao Caviaua and Mexiana are portions 

 of the continent which the remorseless sea had 

 surrounded, and which it is step by step de- 

 stroying. Within twenty years the sea has torn 

 away the c^ast on the province of Para to the 

 breadth of nearly a mile. Senhor Coutinho 

 believes that the debris of the Amazonas and 

 this soil thus carried away are borne by an 

 under-current to the Caribbean Sea and dis- 

 tributed upon the shores of the islands of the 

 "West Indies and the adjacent coasts, and he 

 presents strong arguments in favor of this 

 view. Other geographers regard this engulf- 

 ment of the sediment from the Amazonas as due 

 to the remarkable depth of the ocean at its 

 mouth, which all this deposit is not sufficient 

 to fill. 



The German geographer, Woldemar Schultz, 

 has published the latitude and longitude. of 

 fifty-four points which he has ascertained in 

 the province of Sao Pedro Rio Grande do Sul, 

 the extreme southern province of the empire 

 of Brazil. Of these the most important are : 

 the capital, Porto Alegrc, which is in $0 2' 24" 

 south latitude, and 51 12' west longitude from 

 Greenwich ; the town of Pilotas, 31 46' 53" 

 south latitude, and 52 19' west longitude ; 

 Villa de Sao Birja, in the extreme west on 

 the Uruguay River, 28 39' 51" south latitude, 

 and 55 35' 5" west longitude ; the bar of the 

 Rio Grande, 32 9' south latitude, and 52 3' 

 west longitude. There were, in 1867, six rail- 

 roads in Brazil, having an aggregate length of 

 373.4 miles. They were, the railway from 



