374 



THE UPPER AMAZONS 



festival of fruits was the only occasion in which the Indians 

 of the neighbourhood assembled together or exhibited any 

 traces of joint action. It declined in importance every 

 year, and will no doubt soon be discontinued altogether. 



The trade of Ega, like that of all places on the Upper 

 Amazons, consists in the collecting of the produce of the 

 forests and waters, and exchanging it for European and 

 North American goods. About a dozen large vessels, 

 schooners and cubertas, owned by the merchants of the 

 place, are employed in the traffic. Only one voyage a 

 year is made to Para, which occupies from four to five 

 months, and is arranged so that the vessels shall return 

 before the height of the dry season, when they are sent 

 with assortments of goods ; cloth, hardware, salt, and a 

 few luxuries, such as biscuits, wine, &c., to the fishing 

 stations, to buy up produce for the next trip to the capital. 

 Although large profits are apparently made both ways, 

 the retail prices of European wares being from 40 to 80 

 per cent, higher, and the net prices of produce to the same 

 degree lower, than those of Para, the traders do not get 

 rich very rapidly. An old Portuguese who had traded 

 with success at Ega for thirty years was reputed rich 

 when he died : his savings then amounting to nine contos 

 of reis, or about a thousand pounds sterling. The value 

 of produce fluctuates much, and losses are often sus- 

 tained in consequence. Excessively long credit is given : 

 the system being to trust the collectors of produce with 

 goods a twelvemonth in advance ; and if anything happens 

 in the meantime to a customer, the debt is lost altogether. 



The articles of export from the upper river are cacao, 

 salsaparilla, Brazil nuts, bast for caulking vessels (the 

 inner bark of various species of Lecythideae or Brazil-nut 

 trees), copaiiba balsam. India-rubber, salt-fish (pirarucu). 

 turtle-oil, mishira (potted vacca marina), and grass ham- 

 mocks. The total value of the produce annually exported 

 from Ega, I calculated at from seven to eight thousand 

 pounds sterling. Most of the articles are collected in the 

 forest by the Ega people, who take their families and live 

 in the woods for months at a time, during the proper 

 seasons. Some of the productions, such as salsaparilla 

 and balsam of copaiiba, have been long ago exhausted 

 in the neighbourhood of towns, at least near the banks 

 of the rivers, the only parts that have yet been explored, 

 and are now got only by more adventurous traders during 



