FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 29 
Venezuela the only books in the Spanish language 
existing there were " El Sepulcro, por Anna Rad- 
cliffe," and a translation of one of the Duchesse 
d' Abrantes' novels. They are scarcely more 
numerous at Tarapoto, where one of the most 
famous books is Waverley 6 ahora sesenta anos, 
por Sir Gualterio Scott." In short, so far as I can 
judge of South America from having seen only 
the most thinly-inhabited portions of it, I can truly 
say that Mrs. Radcliffe, Walter Scott, and Alex- 
andre Dumas are far more popular there than 
Cervantes and Camoens. To the credit of the 
Brazilians, they are far more familiar with the 
Lusiads than the Spanish Americans are with Do7t 
Quixote. . . . 
Well, we reached Nauta, beyond which the 
Brazilian steamers do not proceed. Nauta is an 
Indian village established about twenty years ago 
just above the mouth of the Ucayali. It is a good 
way within the frontier of Peru, but is at present 
the seat of the frontier garrison (of twenty-five 
men) and also of the government of a department 
with provisional limits and a provisional name 
(Dept. del Litoral do Loreto), nearly conterminous 
with the ancient province of Maynas. Two steamers 
were got out here two years ago from the United 
States where they had been purchased for two or 
three times their value. They were intended to 
navigate the Huallaga and Ucayali; but proved 
such trashy things — slightly built of pine wood, 
and containing large, coarsely-made, high-pressure 
engines that were continually shaking the boats 
leaky — that the Peruvians could make nothing of 
them, and they are at this moment lying rotting in 
