268 



PROVINCE OF AMAZONAS. 



Essequibo and Rio Branco, to Barra, and foreign trade may likewise 

 grow up along the banks of the Orinoco, Cassiquiari, and Rio Negro. 



The province has six hundred square miles of territory, and but thirty 

 thousand inhabitants — whites and civilized Indians. (No estimate can 

 be made of the number of " Gentios" or savages, but I think this is 

 small.) It is nobly situated. By the Amazon, Ucayali, and Hual- 

 laga, it communicates with Peru ; by the Yavari, Jutay, Jurua, Purus, 

 and Madeira, with Peru and Bolivia; by the Santiago, Pastaza, and 

 Napo, with Ecuador ; by the lea and Japura, with New Grenada ; by 

 the Negro and Branco, with Venezuela and the Guayanas ; and by the 

 Madeira, Tapajos Tocantins, and Xingu, with the rich interior provinces 

 of Brazil. I presume that the Brazilian government would impose no 

 obstacles to the settlement of this country by any of the citizens of the 

 United States w T ho would choose to go there and carry their slaves ; 

 and I know that the thinking people on the Amazon would be glad 

 to see them. The President, who is laboring for the good of i^e 

 province, and sending for the chiefs of the Indian tribes for the purpose 

 of engaging them in settlement and systematic labor, said to me, at 

 parting, " How much I wish you could bring me a thousand of your 

 active, industrious, and intelligent population, to set an example of labor 

 to these people;" and others told me that they had no doubt that 

 Brazil would give titles to vacant lands to as many as came. 



Foreigners have some advantage over natives in being exempt from 

 military and civil services, wdiich are badly paid, and a nuisance. 

 There is still some jealousy on the part of the less educated among the 

 natives against the foreigners, who, by superior knowledge and industry, 

 monopolize trade, and thus prosper. This produced the terrible revolu- 

 tion of the Cabanos (serfs, people who live in cabins) in the years from 

 1836 to 1840, when many Portuguese were killed and expelled. These 

 are the most numerous and active foreigners in the province. I have 

 been told that property and life in the province are always in danger 

 from this cause ; and it was probably for this reason that the President, 

 in his speech to the provincial assembly, before quoted, reminded that 

 body, in such grave terms, that laws must be made for the control and 

 government of the sixty thousand tapuios, who so far outnumbered 

 the property-holders, and who are always open to the influence of the 

 designing, the ambitious, and the wicked. 



The military force of the province of Amazonas consists of two battal- 

 ions of a force called Guarda Policial, numbering about thirteen hundred, 

 and divided amongst the villages of the province. They are not paid ; 

 they furnish their own uniform, (a white jacket and trousers ;) and small 



