20 
SANTAREM. 
Chap. L 
backs and fled. Their numbers were estimated at 
2000 men ; the remnant of the force escaped across the 
campos to the village of Altar do Chao, twenty miles 
distant, whence they scattered themselves along the 
shores of the Tapajos, and gave great trouble to the 
Brazilians for many years afterwards. Several expedi- 
tions were sent from Santarem to reduce them, a task 
in which the Government was aided by the friendly 
Munduruciis of the Upper Tapajos, a large body of 
whom, under the leadership of their Tushaua Joaquim, 
made war on the hostile Indians on the lower parts 
both of the Madeira and the Tapajos, until they were 
nearly exterminated. 
The country around Santarem is not clothed with 
dense and lofty forest, like the rest of the great humid 
river plain of the Amazons. It is a campo region ; a 
slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, wooded 
only in patches, or with single scattered trees. A good 
deal of the country on the borders of the Tapajos, which 
flows from the great campo area of Interior Brazil, is of 
this description. On this account I consider the eastern 
side of the river, towards its mouth, to be a northern 
prolongation of the continental land, and not a portion 
of the alluvial flats of the Amazons. The soil is a 
coarse gritty sand; the . substratum, which is visible in 
some places, consisting of sandstone conglomerate pro- 
bably of the same formation as that which underlies 
the Tabatinga clay in other parts of the river valley. 
The surface is carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit 
for pasture, growing to a uniform height of about a 
