PROVINCE OF PARA. 



453 



productions, principally engage the attention of agriculturists, who, with the 

 population and industry, are at a very low ebb, compared to the advantages so 

 pre-eminently offered by a country of such unexampled fertility. 



Zoology.— All the species of domestic and wild quadrupeds peculiar to the 

 surrounding provinces are common here, as likewise the most remarkable birds, 

 such as the parrot, arrara, tucano, jacu, emu-ostrich, soco, araponga, mutun, 

 troquaze pigeon, partridge, jaburu, divers sorts of geese, macaricos, colherei- 

 ras, sabias, and colibris; the guam, only met with in the vicinity of salt water, 

 is very numerous. A^arious species of small birds, with a variety of beautiful 

 plumage, are observed here, totally unknown in the other provinces ; also, all 

 the kinds of bees common to the Brazil, affording a profusion of honey, in the 

 extensive woods, for the supply of the Indian. 



Ports and Rivers. — Between the bay of Turyuassu and Point Tigioca 

 there are upwards of twenty abundant rivers, each with its anchorage place for 

 vessels of small burden, more or less commodious, either within or near their 

 embouchures, the main part being within bays or spacious gulfs, commonly 

 surrounded with mangroves, abounding in the ^wara, macarico, and other birds 

 that exist upon shell-fish. 



As almost all the rivers in this province run into the Amazons, we will speak 

 of them in the order in which they enter that great recipient. 



The ri\er of the Amazons, also called Maranham by the Portuguese, and 

 Guienna by some Indians, was discovered, after Pinson had passed its spacious 

 outlet, in the interior of the continent, by his countryman Francisco Orellana, 

 who descended by it from the mouth of the Napo to the ocean, in the year 

 1539, and, like the wondrous and fabulous statements of some of the first dis- 

 coverers of new countries, he promulgated a story, that its margins were inha- 

 bited by warlike women, armed with bows, from which it improperly acquired 

 the name by which it is universally known. In the year 1637, the Portuguese 

 Captian Pedro Teyxeyra before mentioned, conducted a fleet of forty-seven 

 canoes from Para up the Amazons, to the mouth of the Napo, and advanced up 

 the latter as far as it was naviciabie. On his return, in the following year, he 

 gave a circumstantial relation of both rivers, as did the Jesuit Cliristoval da 

 Cunha, who returned Teyxeyra from Quito, but neither of them met with 

 any of the Amazons Orellana pretended to have seen. This river is, without 

 exception, the largest in the world, having a course of upwards of four thousand 

 miles. It is not designated in the whole of its extent by the names already 



