MAUES. 



295 



had been pack-thread. I bought another lead at the village ; this also 

 hung at the first cast, and the line again parted close to my hand, so 

 that I lost nearly all. My line must have been made of old fibres of 

 the piassaba which had been in store some time. The bottom of the 

 river near Villa Nova is very uneven and rocky. 



About a league below Villa Nova we passed the mouth of the river 

 Ramos on the right. It is two hundred yards wide, and is a paranimiri, 

 which leaves the Amazon nearly opposite Silves. It has many small 

 streams emptying into it in the interior, and sends off canals, joining it 

 with other rivers, one of which is the Madeira. It is the general route 

 to Maues — a considerable village in the interior, four days from the 

 mouth of the Ramos. 



The country about Maues is described as a great grazing plain, inter- 

 sected and cut up with streams and canals, all navigable for the largest 

 class of vessels that now navigate the Amazon. The soil is very rich, 

 and adapted to the cultivation of cotton, coffee, and cocoa. The rivers 

 give abundance of fish ; any number of cattle may be pastured upon 

 the plains; and the neighboring woods yield cloves, cocoa, castanhas, 

 India-rubber, guarana, sarsaparilla, and copaiba. If this country be not 

 sickly (and the sub-delegado at Villa Nova, who gave me a little sketch 

 of it, told me that it was not) it is probably the most desirable place of 

 residence on the Amazon. 



Baena, in his chorographic essay on the province of Para, says of 

 Maues, that it is situated upon a slight eminence on a bay of the river 

 Maueuassu, which empties into the Furo, or canal of Ururaia, by means 

 of which, and the river Tupinambaranas, one may enter the river Madeira 

 thirteen leagues above its mouth. He gives the number of inhabitants 

 in 1832 at one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven. The official 

 report for 1850 states it at three thousand seven hundred and nine 

 whites, and eighty-two slaves. This official report makes an ugly state- 

 ment as regards its health ; it gives the number of births in a year at 

 seventy-four, and deaths at one hundred and thirty-one. I have no 

 confidence in this statement, and it looks like a misprint. This report 

 stated the number of inhabited houses at Barra as one hundred and 

 seventy. This I knew was an error, and I took the liberty of making it 

 four hundred and seventy. 



Just below the mouth of the Ramos, quite a neatly-rigged boat, carry- 

 ing the Brazilian flag, put off from a house on shore, and seemed 

 desirous to communicate with us ; but she was so badly managed that, 

 although there was a fine breeze, (directly ahead, however,) she could not 

 catch us, though we were but drifting with the current. Had I known 



