RIVER JURUA. 



249 



was high and rich. He was sixty-two working clays from Obydos, and 

 expected to be thirty to Loreto. 



Sailed at 3 p. ra.; found but five feet of water where the river of Fon- 

 teboa joins the carlo. The distance by the cano to its outlet into the 

 main river is two miles. The banks below Fonteboa are quite high, 

 and of red and white clay. Stopped for the night at half-past 6 p. m. 



December 14. — Started at half-past 4 a. m. Misty morning. At 

 ten entered the mouth of the Jurua, thirty-six miles from Fonteboa. 

 Its left bank is very low, and covered with grass and shrub willows; 

 the right bank high and wooded. It has half a mile of width at the 

 mouth ; but, a mile up, it seemed divided into two narrow channels by 

 a large island. The Amazon is a mile and a quarter wide where the 

 Jurua enters; but there is a large island in front, and the river is 

 probably equally as wide on the other side. We pulled half a mile up 

 the stream. The water was clearer, though more yellow, than that of 

 the Amazon. In running out the half-mile that I had pulled up, which 

 we did in mid-stream, the soundings deepened, as fast as I could heave 

 the lead, from thirty-six to seventy-eight feet. Just at the mouth they 

 lessened again to sixty-six. The current was a mile and three-quarters 

 the hour. The bottom was of white and black sand; temperature of 

 the water 82°; the same with the temperature of the air and with 

 that of the water of the Amazon. 



The Indians of the Jurua, I was afterwards told by Senhor Batalha, 

 are Arauas and Catanxis, who are met with at eight days' journey up. 

 Some of these are baptized Indians; but the Arauas are described as a 

 treacherous people, who frequently rob and murder the traders on the, 

 river. Two months further up are the Culinos and Nawas Infidels. 

 Between these two was a nation called the Canamaris, but they have 

 been nearly entirely destroyed by the Arauas. It is almost impossible 

 to get an accurate idea of the number of the Indians; but I judge, 

 from what I have seen, and from the diversity of names of the tribes, 

 that this is not great. The productions of the Jurua are sarza, man- 

 teiga, copaiba, seringa, (India rubber,) cocoa, and farinha. At the 

 mouth of a creek (Igarape) called Menerua, there are Brazil nuts. 

 This year all the expeditions to the Jurua were failures, on account of 

 the hostility of the Arauas. 



M. Castelnau, in summing up the accounts of this river, which he 

 had from traders on it, supposes that it may be ascended about seven 

 hundred and eighty miles, or to near the twelfth degree of south lati- 

 tude. A man showed him a small medal that he had taken from an 

 Indian on the Taruaca, a tributary of the Jurua, which he recognised 



