TABATINGA. 



241 



commanded from the fort by the longest range of cannon-shot. The 

 fort is at present in ruins, and the artillery consists of two long brass 

 twelve-pounder field-guns. 



I did not hoist my flag again, and the commandant seemed pleased. 

 He said that it might give offence down the river, and told me that 

 Count Castelnau, who had passed here some years before, borrowed a 

 Brazihan flag from him and wore that. He also earnestly insisted that 

 I should take his boat in lieu of my own, which he said was not large 

 enough for the navigation of the lower part of the Amazon. I declined 

 for a long time; but finding that he was very earnest about it, and 

 embarrassed between his desire to comply with the request of the Bra- 

 zilian minister at Washington, contained in my passport — "that Brazilian 

 authorities should facilitate me in my voyage, and put no obstacle in 

 my way" — and the requirements of the law of the empire forbidding 

 foreign vessels to navigate its interior waters, I accepted his proposition, 

 and exchanged boats; thus enabling him to say, in a frontier passport 

 which he issued to me, that I was descending the river in Brazilian 

 vessels. 



He desired me to leave his boat at Barra, telling me he had no doubt 

 but that the government authorities there would furnish me with a 

 better one. I told him very plainly that I had doubts of that, and that 

 I might have to take his boat on to Para; which I finally did, and 

 placed it in the hands of his correspondent at that place. I was cor- 

 rect in my doubts; for, so far from the government authorities at Barra 

 having a boat to place at my disposal, they borrowed mine and sent it 

 up the river for a load of wood for building purposes. The command- 

 ant at Tabatinga, I was told, compelled the circus company that pre- 

 ceded me to abandon their Peruvian-built raft and construct another 

 of the wood of the Brazilian forests. 



There is nothing cultivated at Tabatinga except a little sugar-cane to 

 make molasses and rum, for home consumption. I was told that 

 Castelnau found here a fly that answered perfectly all the purposes of can- 

 tharides, blistering the skin even more rapidly. I heard that he also 

 found the same fly at Egas, lower down. Senhor Lima instituted a 

 search for some for me, but there were none to be had at this season. 

 He showed me an oblong, nut-shaped fruit, growing in clusters at the 

 base of a lily-like plant, called pacova catinga, the seed of which was 

 covered with a thick pulp, which, when scraped off and pressed, gave 

 a very beautiful dark-purple dye. This, touched with lime juice, 

 changed to a rich carmine. He tells me that the trade of the river is 

 increasing very fast; that in 1849 scarce one thousand dollars' worth of 

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