November, 1910.] 



393 



Saps and Exudation^. 



inch of space above the water reminds 

 one of a Hudson river boat on a holiday ; 

 there is not room even for one more. 



Americans in Amazon Land. 

 During the night it came on very dark 

 with thunder showers but we did not 

 stop, the pilot calmly steering by the 

 flashes of lightning. Very early in the 

 morning we passed the Tapajos river 

 and the town of Santarem. Here is a 

 settlement of some 2,500 people. San- 

 tarem is noted, as far as Americans are 

 concerned, as a place where a body of 

 Confederates from Texas established 

 themselves after the civil war. They 

 believed in slavery and moved to a 

 country where they could own slaves. 

 Somebody in Brazil must have heard 

 of it, for not long after their establish- 

 ment slavery there was abolished. It 

 is rumoured that rather than surrender 

 the right to own and rule others they 

 intend to move to New York city and 

 secure positions on the police force. 



More and more the character of the 

 river bank changed. Often it was a 

 palisade of clay, 10 to 12 feet high, its 

 face as smooth as if cut with a spade. 

 Near Obidos this was particularly mark- 

 ed. 1 This town, by the way, shows up 

 very well from the water front. Its 

 public buildings, church, dwelling houses 

 — many of them of the bungalow type — 

 are all in view, as the town is built on 

 sloping ground. Above the town the 

 river bank is very high, and the clay 

 strata, in lavender, yellow and red, is 

 very striking. 



For the first time in the journey our 

 pilot seemed in doubt, and kept the lead 

 going for many hours. Then it was 

 the Captain told us stories about 

 running ashore. It is not particularly 

 dangerous when the river is rising, as 

 one is sure to Ret off in a few days. He 

 told of one tramp boat that ran aground 

 five times on the journey from Para to 

 Manaos. His own boat was hung up 

 on a mud bank once for 13 days, and 

 right in a mosquito colony at that, 

 Then there was a Booth boat in the 

 upper river that was fast for six months 

 up on the bank where the floods s had 

 left it, and was about to be dismantled 

 when a huge section of the river bank 

 caved in, depositing the boat, right side 

 up, far out in the deep water. 



Did I mention that, we had some 

 hundreds of crickets aboard, and that 

 they gave nightly concerts? Like the 

 cockroach they ate soiled handker- 

 chiefs, starched collars, and book- 

 bindings, but they were not sordid 

 about it. They did ^stop to fiddle 

 50 



now and then. But the cockroach 

 thinks only of filling his little tin clad 

 belly, and racing across the floor to be 

 stepped on when one is barefooted. 



In the upper reaches of the river, at 

 least along the banks, there seem to be 

 very few rubber trees, This, in spite of 

 the statement of the ship's doctor that 

 all of the large ones on the bank were 

 rubber trees — some of the crew had told 

 him so. We did not see the Parintins 

 hills above Obidos, which mark the 

 boundary of the states of Para and 

 Amazonas, because the rain blotted out 

 most of the landscape. When it ceased 

 we were close in shore opposite a great 

 ranch where were cattle and horses by 

 the hundred. It was imported stock too. 

 One huge snow white Indian bull, stand- 

 ing like a statue in white marble, occu- 

 pied the foreground until we passed out 

 of sight. More and more we saw clayey 

 pallisades, riddled with holes like sand 

 martins' nests. Their tops taped with 

 blossoming vines, the body of the bluff 

 often made up of such brilliant colours 

 that it looked like a petrified rainbow. 



In the little lagoons and eddies were 

 natives fishing, and often times a turtle 

 hunter, bow and arrow in hand, watch- 

 ing the water for shot. It was growing 

 warmer all the time, for the breeze was 

 with us, and the smoke of the steamer 

 showed it by drifting upstream a little 

 faster than we could go. 



The Approach to Manoas. 



We got to Serpa, or Itacoatiara, which 

 is situated at the junction of the Made- 

 ira, just at night-fall. Here the engineers 

 of the Madeira-Mamore railroad have 

 their headquarters, and the town is 

 healthy, lively, and interesting. Here 

 also is the home of an American named 

 Stone. He has thousands of acres under 

 cultivation and is prosperous, capable, 

 and as much an American as he was 

 when he settled here 40 years ago. 



In due time we reached the junction 

 of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, or 

 the Solimoes, as it was now called. The 

 Solimoes, yellow, muddy, swift, comes 

 resistlessly in from the south, and, meet- 

 ing the slow, densely black flood of the 

 Rio Negro, holds it back, shoulders by 

 it, crowds what does escape downstream 

 to the northern bank, where for a time 

 it shows a narrow ribbon of black water 

 and then disappears. 



Manoas is situated up the Rio Negro, 

 and we therefore turned into that 

 stream. Crossing the water line it was 

 startling to see how plain the demarc- 

 ation was. On one side a boiling coffee 

 colored flood, on the other a dead black 



