28 



PARA 



until the 6th of November, 185 1, when I started on my 

 long voyage to the Tapajos and the Upper Amazons, 

 which occupied me seven years and a half. I became 

 during this time tolerably familiar with the capital of 

 the Amazons region, and its inhabitants. Compared 

 with other Brazilian seaport towns, I was always told, 

 Para shone to great advantage. It was cleaner, the 

 suburbs were fresher, more rural and much pleasanter 

 on account of their verdure, shade, and magnificent 

 vegetation. The people were simpler, more peaceable 

 and friendly in their manners and dispositions, and as- 

 sassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a 

 reputation, were almost unknown. At the same time 

 the Para people were much inferior to Southern Brazilians 

 in energy and industry. Provisions and house rents being 

 cheap and the wants of the people few — for they were 

 content with food and lodging of a quality which would 

 be spurned by paupers in England^ — they spent the 

 greater part of their time in sensual indulgences and in 

 amusements which the government and wealthier citizens 

 provided for them gratis. The trade, wholesale and 

 retail, was in the hands of the Portuguese, of whom 

 there were about 2500 in the place. Many handicrafts 

 were exercised by coloured people, mulattos, mamelucos, 

 free negroes and Indians. The better sort of Brazilians 

 dislike the petty details of shopkeeping, and if they 

 cannot be wholesale merchants prefer the life of planters 

 in the country however small may be the estate and the 

 gains. The negroes constituted the class of field-labourers 

 and porters ; Indians were universally the watermen, 

 and formed the crews of the numberless canoes of all 

 sizes and shapes which traded between Para and the in- 

 terior. The educated Brazilians, not many of whom 

 are of pure Caucasian descent — for the immigration of 

 Portuguese, for many years, has been almost exclusively 

 of the male sex — are courteous, lively, and intelligent 

 people. They were gradually weaning themselves of the 

 ignorant, bigoted notions which they inherited from their 

 Portuguese ancestors, especially those entertained with 



on the Bahia of Marajo. June 8 to July 21, 1849, I visited 

 Cameta and the lower part of the Tocantins. Lastly, from 

 Sept. 22, 1849, to April 19, 1851, I made a preliminary voyage 

 to Obydos, the Rio Negro, and Ega. 



