INTRODUCTORY. 



31 



proper time and man to take it up ; and that he had no doubt but that 

 I might organize a surveying party and employ this money for that 

 purpose. It was a tempting proposition, but I feared the proverbially 

 dilatory action of the Peruvian government; and what I had seen in the 

 journals of Smyth and Castelnau regarding the efficiency of the co- 

 operation of Peruvian officials, revived school-boy recollections, and 

 brought to my mind Virgil's 



" Non tali auxilio ; nec defensoribus istis." 



This route had, moreover, the same objections as that by the Bolivian 

 tributaries ; that is, that it would bring me into the Amazon too low 

 down. It is, however, a route of great importance, and well worth 

 investigation. Senor Centeno placed in my hands a pamphlet ^ L El 

 b"illante porvenir de Cuzco") written by the confessor of his family, an 

 Italian Franciscan, Father Julian Bobo de Revello, in which the ad- 

 vantages of this route are strongly and ably argued ; and which argu- 

 ment induced the above-mentioned appropriation by the Peruvian 

 government. The Father declares that he himself, in visiting the val- 

 leys of Paucartambo, in company with Don Jose Miguel Medina, pre- 

 fect of the province, saw from the heights of Acobamba an interminable 

 horizon of woods towards the 1ST. E.; and in the midst of this immense 

 plain, the winding course of the great navigable river " Madre de Dios" 

 He labors to prove that this Madre de Dios is the same river which, 

 under the name of Purus, enters the Amazon a few days' journey above 

 the Barra do Rio Negro. 



There is no doubt that there is a great unknown river in these parts. 

 Every expedition made into this country brought back accounts of it, 

 and represented it under various names — such as Amarumayu; Tono; 

 Mano; Inambiri; Guariguari; and Madre de Dios, according to the 

 nomenclature of the various tribes that live upon its banks — as great, 

 and containing much water — (Grande y Caudaloso.) It is impossible 

 to say whether this river turns to the N". W. and joins the Ucayali, 

 flows straight N. E., and, as either the Yavari, the Jutay, the Jurua, 

 the Terre, the Coari, or the Purus, empties into the Amazon ; or, flow- 

 ing east, is tributary to the Beni. It is, of course, likewise impossible to 

 say whether or not it is free from obstructions to navigation ; but it is 

 reasonable to suppose, from the fact that the country through which 

 it flows (supposing it to take the general direction of the rivers there 

 and run N. E.) is very far from the Andes on one side, and the Cor- 

 dillera Oeral of Brazil, which form the obstructions to the Madeira, on 

 the other, that it is free from impediments for an immense distance up. 

 This route, however, takes its importance, in a commercial point of 

 view, from the following facts : 



