72 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



indej)endent Indian populations estimated by Coudreau at not more than 12,700 

 souls altogether. 



The district really contested comprises a superficial area approximately estimated 

 at that of 15 French departments, or, say, about 3-5,000 square miles. But even 

 here the civilised inhabitants number no more than some 3,000, or 12 to the 

 square mile. 



Disputed Frontiers. 



So early as the seventeenth century, these regions were already claimed both 

 by France and Portugal ; but there never could have been any doubt as to the 

 southern frontier, which was too plainly indicated by the broad stream of the 

 Amazons. Fort Macapa, on the very bank of the estuary near the equator, had 

 been erected by the Portuguese in 1688, occupied by the French in 1797, and the 

 same year recovered by the Portuguese, The Treaty of TJtrecht, concluded in 

 1713, was intended to settle the question once for all, but instead of doing so, it 

 further complicated matters, hy fixing, as limit of the respective domains, a river 

 which nobody knew anything about, and the very estuary of which had never been 

 explored by any navigator. 



It is still asked. What is this river Yapok or Vincent Pinzon which the Utrecht 

 diplomatists, ignorant of the relations in America, had in mind when they drew 

 up their rudimentary map ? On the one hand, the Portuguese identified it, amid 

 so many Yapolis, or " Great Rivers," on this coast, with that which falls into the 

 sea between the Montagne d'Argent and Cape Orange. On the other, the French 

 might assert that the true " Great River," Vincent Pinzon's " fresh-water sea," was 

 certainly the Amazons itself, and, if not this, then the Araguari, as being the 

 largest watercourse in the region north of the Amazons. 



Whole libraries might be filled with the memoirs and diplomatic documents 

 that have been published on this unsolvable question. Various commissions have 

 been engaged interpreting the meaning of the Treaty of Utrecht, or in settling the 

 problem by a definite decision, but all their suggestions have been rejected, and 

 Brazil, heir of Portugal, still advances the original claim to the Oyapok as the 

 common frontier. Nevertheless, she is willing to settle the matter by accepting 

 the Carsevenne as her northern boundarj' in this direction. 



But history is not formulated, it "makes itself," despite treaties and conven- 

 tions. In 1836 the French established a. station on Lake Mapa, in the heart of the 

 disputed territory, and four years afterwards the Brazilians founded the military 

 colony of dom Tejh'o ^pcjnndo on the left bank of the Araguari. A convention 

 decided that the rival Powers should evacuate the district in litigation, and France 

 accordingly abandoned the station of Mapa. But Brazil declined to withdraw 

 from the occupied territor}', and in 1800 even exercised pilitical functions north 

 of the Araguari as far as the Tartarugal. 



The country, till recently a solitude, is being gradually settled ; a few villages 

 have been founded, and the inhabitants, mostly Brazilian deserters and fugitives, 

 who might well be satisfied with unmolested independence, are now seeking to 



