20 SANTAREM. Chap. I. 



backs and fled. Their numbers were estimated at 

 2000 men ; the remnant of the force escaped across the 

 campos to the village of Altar do Chao, twenty miles 

 distant, whence they scattered themselves along the 

 shores of the Tapajos, and gave great trouble to the 

 Brazilians for many years afterwards. Several expedi- 

 tions were sent from Santarem to reduce them, a task 

 in which the Government was aided by the friendly 

 Mundurucus of the Upper Tapajos, a large body of 

 whom, under the leadership of their Tushaua Joaquim, 

 made war on the hostile Indians on the lower parts 

 both of the Madeira and the Tapajos, until they were 

 nearly exterminated. 



The country around Santarem is not clothed with 

 dense and lofty forest, like the rest of the great humid 

 river plain of the Amazons. It is a campo region ; a 

 slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, wooded 

 only in patches, or with single scattered trees. A good 

 deal of the country on the borders of the Tapajos, which 

 flows from the great campo area of Interior Brazil, is of 

 this description. On this account I consider the eastern 

 side of the river, towards its mouth, to be a northern 

 prolongation of the continental land, and not a portion 

 of the alluvial flats of the Amazons. The soil is a 

 coarse gritty sand ; the substratum, which is visible in 

 some places, consisting of sandstone conglomerate pro- 

 bably of the same formation as that which underlies 

 the Tabatinga clay in other parts of the river valley. 

 The surface is carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit 

 for jmsture, growing to a uniform height of about a 



