Napo as a Field fok Commekce. 197 



days to paddle down to the Maranon, and three months 

 to pole up. The JS^apo is navigable for a flat-bottomed 

 steamer as far as Santa Rosa,'* and it is a wonder that An- 

 glo-Saxon enterprise has not put one upon these waters. 

 The profits would be great, as soon as commercial relations 

 with the various tribes were established. f Four yards of 

 coarse cotton cloth, for example, will exchange for one 

 hundred pounds of sarsaparilla. Urari is sold at Napo for 

 its weight in silver. By a decree of the Ecuadorian Con- 

 gress, there will be no duty on foreign goods entering the 

 Napo for twenty years. The Napo region, under proper 

 cultivation, would yield the most valuable productions of 

 either hemisphere in profusion. But agriculture is un- 

 known; there is no word for plow. The natives spend 

 most of their time in idleness, or feasting and hunting. 

 Their weapons are blow-guns and wooden spears ; our guns 

 they call by a word which signifies "thunder and light- 

 ning." Laying up for the future or for commerce is for- 

 eign to their ideas. The houses are all built of bamboo 

 tied together with lianas, and shingled with leaves of the 

 sunipanga palm. The Indians are peaceful, good-natured, 

 and idle. They seldom steal any thing but food. Their 

 only stimulants are chicha, guayusa, and tobacco. This 

 last they roll up in plantain leaves and smoke, or snuff an 

 infusion of it through the nose from the upper bill of a 

 toucan. " The Peruvians (says Prescott, quoting Garcilasso) 

 differ from every other Indian nation to whom tobacco Avas 

 known by using it only for medicinal purposes in the form 

 of snuff." There is no bread on the Napo ; the nearest ap- 



* " The Napo (Herndon was told) is very full of sand-banks, and twenty 

 days from its mouth (or near the confluence of the Curaray) the men have to 

 get overboard and drag the canoes!" — Report, p. 229. 



t The chief difficulty throughout the Upper Amazon is in getting the In- 

 dians to concentrate along the bank. But honorable dealmg would accom- 

 plish this in time. 



