The Naturalist on the River Amazons · Part IX

The situation of the town has many advantages; the climate is healthy; there are no insect pests; the soil is fertile and capable of growing all kinds of tropical produce (the coffee of the Rio Negro, especially, being of very superior quality), and it is near the fork of two great navigable rivers. The imagination becomes excited when one reflects on the possible future of this place, situated near the centre of the equatorial part of South America, in the midst of a region almost as large as Europe, every inch of whose soil is of the most exuberant fertility, and having water communication on one side with the Atlantic, and on the other with the Spanish republics of Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Barra is now the principal station for the lines of steamers which were established in 1853, and passengers and goods are transhipped here for the Solimoens and Peru. A steamer runs once a fortnight between Pará and Barra, and a bi-monthly one plies between this place and Nauta in the Peruvian territory. The steam-boat company is supported by a large annual grant, about £50,000 sterling, from the imperial government. Barra was formerly a pleasant place of residence, but it is now in a most wretched plight, suffering from a chronic scarcity of the most necessary articles of food. The attention of the settlers was formerly devoted almost entirely to the collection of the spontaneous produce of the forests and rivers; agriculture was consequently neglected, and now the neighbourhood does not produce even mandioca-meal sufficient for its own consumption. Many of the most necessary articles of food, besides all luxuries, come from Portugal, England, and North America. A few bullocks are brought now and then from Obydos, 500 miles off, the nearest place where cattle are reared in any numbers, and these furnish at long intervals a supply of fresh beef, but this is generally monopolised by the families of government officials. Fowls, eggs, fresh fish, turtles, vegetables, and fruit were excessively scarce and dear in 1859, when I again visited the place; for instance, six or seven shillings were asked for a poor lean fowl, and eggs were twopence-halfpenny a piece. In fact, the neighbourhood produces scarcely anything; the provincial government is supplied with the greater part of its funds from the treasury of Pará; its revenue, which amounts to about fifty contos of reis (£5600), derived from export taxes on the produce of the entire province, not sufficing for more than about one-fifth of its expenditure. The population of the province of the Amazons, according to a census taken in 1858, is 55,000 souls; the municipal district of Barra, which comprises a large area around the capital, containing only 4500 inhabitants. For the government, however, of this small number of people, an immense staff of officials is gathered together in the capital, and, notwithstanding the endless number of trivial formalities which Brazilians employ in every small detail of administration, these have nothing to do the greater part of their time. None of the people who flocked to Barra on the establishment of the new government seemed to care about the cultivation of the soil and the raising of food, although these would have been most profitable speculations. The class of Portuguese who emigrate to Brazil seem to prefer petty trading to the honourable pursuit of agriculture. If the English are a nation of shopkeepers, what are we to say of the Portuguese? I counted in Barra one store for every five dwelling-houses. These stores, or tavernas, have often not more than fifty pounds’ worth of goods for their whole stock, and the Portuguese owners, big lusty fellows, stand all day behind their dirty counters for the sake of selling a few coppers’ worth of liquors, or small wares. These men all give the same excuse for not applying themselves to agriculture, namely, that no hands can be obtained to work on the soil. Nothing can be done with Indians; indeed, they are fast leaving the neighbourhood altogether, and the importation of negro slaves, in the present praiseworthy temper of the Brazilian mind, is out of the question. The problem, how to obtain a labouring class for a new and tropical country, without slavery, has to be solved before this glorious region can become what its delightful climate and exuberant fertility fit it for—the abode of a numerous, civilised, and happy people.

I found at Barra my companion, Mr. Wallace, who, since our joint Tocantins expedition, had been exploring, partly with his brother, lately arrived from England, the northeastern coast of Marajó, the river Capim (a branch of the Guamá, near Pará), Monte Alegre, and Santarem. He had passed us by night below Serpa, on his way to Barra, and so had arrived about three weeks before me. Besides ourselves, there were half-a-dozen other foreigners here congregated,—Englishmen, Germans, and Americans; one of them a Natural History collector, the rest traders on the rivers. In the pleasant society of these, and of the family of Senhor Henriques, we passed a delightful time; the miseries of our long river voyages were soon forgotten, and in two or three weeks we began to talk of further explorations. Meantime we had almost daily rambles in the neighbouring forest. The whole surface of the land down to the water’s edge is covered by the uniform dark-green rolling forest, the caá-apoam (convex woods) of the Indians, characteristic of the Rio Negro. This clothes also the extensive areas of lowland, which are flooded by the river in the rainy season. The olive-brown tinge of the water seems to be derived from the saturation in it of the dark green foliage during these annual inundations. The great contrast in form and colour between the forest of the Rio Negro and those of the Amazons arises from the predominance in each of different families of plants. On the main river, palms of twenty or thirty different species form a great proportion of the mass of trees, whilst on the Rio Negro, they play a very subordinate part. The characteristic kind in the latter region is the Jará (Leopoldinia pulchra), a species not found on the margins of the Amazons, which has a scanty head of fronds with narrow leaflets of the same dark green hue as the rest of the forest. The stem is smooth, and about two inches in diameter; its height is not more than twelve to fifteen feet; it does not, therefore, rise amongst the masses of foliage of the exogenous trees, so as to form a feature in the landscape, like the broad-leaved Murumurú and Urucurí, the slender Assaí, the tall Jauarí, and the fan-leaved Murití of the banks of the Amazons. On the shores of the main river the mass of the forest is composed, besides palms, of Leguminosæ, or trees of the bean family, in endless variety as to height, shape of foliage, flowers, and fruit; of silk-cotton trees, colossal nut-trees (Lecythideæ), and Cecropiæ; the underwood and water-frontage consisting in great part of broad-leaved Musaceæ, Marantaceæ, and succulent grasses: all of which are of light shades of green. The forests of the Rio Negro are almost destitute of these large-leaved plants and grasses, which give so rich an appearance to the vegetation wherever they grow; the margins of the stream being clothed with bushes or low trees, having the same gloomy monotonous aspect as the mangroves of the shores of creeks near the Atlantic. The uniformly small but elegantly-leaved exogenous trees, which constitute the mass of the forest, consist in great part of members of the Laurel, Myrtle, Bignoniaceous, and Rubiaceous orders. The soil is generally a stiff loam, whose chief component part is the Tabatinga clay, which also forms low cliffs on the coast in some places, where it overlies strata of coarse sandstone. This kind of soil and the same geological formation prevail, as we have seen, in many places on the banks of the Amazons, so that the great contrast in the forest-clothing of the two rivers cannot arise from this cause.

The forest was very pleasant for rambling. In some directions broad pathways led down gentle slopes, through what one might fancy were interminable shrubberies of evergreens, to moist hollows where springs of water bubbled up, or shallow brooks ran over their beds of clean white sand. But the most beautiful road was one that ran through the heart of the forest to a waterfall, which the citizens of Barra consider as the chief natural curiosity of their neighbourhood. The waters of one of the larger rivulets which traverse the gloomy wilderness, here fall over a ledge of rock about ten feet high. It is not the cascade itself, but the noiseless solitude, and the marvellous diversity and richness of trees, foliage, and flowers encircling the water basin that form the attraction of the place. Families make picnic excursions to this spot; and the gentlemen—it is said the ladies also—spend the sultry hours of midday bathing in the cold and bracing waters. The place is classic ground to the Naturalist from having been a favourite spot with the celebrated travellers Spix and Martius, during their stay at Barra in 1820. Von Martins was so much impressed by its magical beauty that he commemorated the visit by making a sketch of the scenery serve as background in one of the plates of his great work on the palms.

Birds and insects, however, were scarce amidst these charming sylvan scenes. I have often traversed the whole distance from Barra to the waterfall, about two miles by the forest road, without seeing or hearing a bird, or meeting with so many as a score of Lepidopterous and Coleopterous insects. In the thinner woods near the borders of the forest many pretty little blue and green creepers of the Dacnidæ group, were daily seen feeding on berries; and a few very handsome birds occurred in the forest. But the latter were so rare that we could obtain them only by employing a native hunter, who used to spend a whole day, and go a great distance to obtain two or three specimens. In this way I obtained, amongst others, specimens of the Trogon pavoninus (the Suruquá grande of the natives), a most beautiful creature, having soft golden green plumage, red breast, and an orange-coloured beak; also the Ampelis Pompadoura, a rich glossy-purple chatterer with wings of a snowy-white hue.

After we had rested some weeks in Barra, we arranged our plans for further explorations in the interior of the country. Mr. Wallace chose the Rio Negro for his next trip, and I agreed to take the Solimoens. My colleague has already given to the world an account of his journey on the Rio Negro, and his adventurous ascent of its great tributary the Uapés. I left Barra for Ega, the first town of any importance on the Solimoens, on the 26th of March, 1850. The distance is nearly 400 miles, which we accomplished in a small cuberta, manned by ten stout Cucama Indians, in thirty-five days. On this occasion, I spent twelve months in the upper region of the Amazons; circumstances then compelled me to return to Pará. I revisited the same country in 1855, and devoted three years and a half to a fuller exploration of its natural productions. The results of both journeys will be given together in subsequent chapters of this work; in the meantime, I will proceed to give an account of Santarem and the river Tapajos, whose neighbourhoods I investigated in the years 1851-4.

A few words on my visit to Pará in 1851 may be here introduced. I descended the river from Ega, to the capital, a distance of 1400 miles, in a heavily-laden schooner belonging to a trader of the former place. The voyage occupied no less than twenty-nine days, although we were favoured by the powerful currents of the rainy season. The hold of the vessel was filled with turtle oil contained in large jars, the cabin was crammed with Brazil nuts, and a great pile of sarsaparilla, covered with a thatch of palm leaves, occupied the middle of the deck. We had, therefore, (the master and two passengers) but rough accommodation, having to sleep on deck, exposed to the wet and stormy weather, under little toldos or arched shelters, arranged with mats of woven lianas and maranta leaves. I awoke many a morning with clothes and bedding soaked through with the rain. With the exception, however, of a slight cold at the commencement, I never enjoyed better health than during this journey. When the wind blew from up river or off the land, we sped away at a great rate; but it was often squally from those quarters, and then it was not safe to hoist the sails. The weather was generally calm, a motionless mass of leaden clouds covering the sky, and the broad expanse of waters flowing smoothly down with no other motion than the ripple of the current. When the wind came from below, we tacked down the stream; sometimes it blew very strong, and then the schooner, having the wind abeam, laboured through the waves, shipping often heavy seas which washed everything that was loose from one side of the deck to the other.

On arriving at Pará, I found the once cheerful and healthy city desolated by two terrible epidemics. The yellow fever, which visited the place the previous year (1850) for the first time since the discovery of the country, still lingered after having carried off nearly 5 per cent of the population. The number of persons who were attacked, namely, three-fourths of the entire population, showed how general the onslaught is of an epidemic on its first appearance in a place. At the heels of this plague came the smallpox. The yellow fever had fallen most severely on the whites and mamelucos, the negroes wholly escaping; but the smallpox attacked more especially the Indians, negroes, and people of mixed colour, sparing the whites almost entirely, and taking off about a twentieth part of the population in the course of the four months of its stay. I heard many strange accounts of the yellow fever. I believe Pará was the second port in Brazil attacked by it. The news of its ravages in Bahia, where the epidemic first appeared, arrived some few days before the disease broke out. The government took all the sanitary precautions that could be thought of; amongst the rest was the singular one of firing cannon at the street corners, to purify the air. Mr. Norris, the American consul, told me the first cases of fever occurred near the port and that it spread rapidly and regularly from house to house, along the streets which run from the waterside to the suburbs, taking about twenty-four hours to reach the end. Some persons related that for several successive evenings before the fever broke out the atmosphere was thick, and that a body of murky vapour, accompanied by a strong stench, travelled from street to street. This moving vapour was called the “Maî da peste” (“the mother or spirit of the plague”); and it was useless to attempt to reason them out of the belief that this was the forerunner of the pestilence. The progress of the disease was very rapid. It commenced in April, in the middle of the wet season. In a few days, thousands of persons lay sick, dying or dead. The state of the city during the time the fever lasted may be easily imagined. Towards the end of June it abated, and very few cases occurred during the dry season from July to December.

As I said before, the yellow fever still lingered in the place when I arrived from the interior in April. I was in hopes I should escape it, but was not so fortunate; it seemed to spare no newcomer. At the time I fell ill, every medical man in the place was worked to the utmost in attending the victims of the other epidemic; it was quite useless to think of obtaining their aid, so I was obliged to be my own doctor, as I had been in many former smart attacks of fever. I was seized with shivering and vomit at nine o’clock in the morning. Whilst the people of the house went down to the town for the medicines I ordered, I wrapped myself in a blanket and walked sharply to and fro along the veranda, drinking at intervals a cup of warm tea, made of a bitter herb in use amongst the natives, called Pajémarióba, a leguminous plant growing in all waste places. About an hour afterwards, I took a good draught of a decoction of elder blossoms as a sudorific, and soon after fell insensible into my hammock. Mr. Philipps, an English resident with whom I was then lodging, came home in the afternoon and found me sound asleep and perspiring famously. I did not wake until almost midnight, when I felt very weak and aching in every bone of my body. I then took as a purgative, a small dose of Epsom salts and manna. In forty-eight hours the fever left me, and in eight days from the first attack, I was able to get about my work. Little else happened during my stay, which need be recorded here. I shipped off all my collections to England, and received thence a fresh supply of funds. It took me several weeks to prepare for my second and longest journey into the interior. My plan now was first to make Santarem headquarters for some time, and ascend from that place the river Tapajos as far as practicable. Afterwards I intended to revisit the marvellous country of the Upper Amazons, and work well its natural history at various stations I had fixed upon, from Ega to the foot of the Andes.

Chapter VIII. SANTAREM

Situation of Santarem — Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants — Climate — Grassy Campos and Woods — Excursions to Mapirí, Mahicá, and Irurá, with Sketches of their Natural History; Palms, Wild Fruit Trees, Mining Wasps, Mason Wasps, Bees, and Sloths

I have already given a short account of the size, situation, and general appearance of Santarem. Although containing not more than 2500 inhabitants, it is the most civilised and important settlement on the banks of the main river from Peru to the Atlantic. The pretty little town, or city as it is called, with its rows of tolerably uniform, white-washed and red-tiled houses surrounded by green gardens and woods, stands on gently sloping ground on the eastern side of the Tapajos, close to its point of junction with the Amazons. A small eminence on which a fort has been erected, but which is now in a dilapidated condition, overlooks the streets, and forms the eastern limit of the mouth of the tributary. The Tapajos at Santarem is contracted to a breadth of about a mile and a half by an accretion of low alluvial land, which forms a kind of delta on the western side; fifteen miles further up the river is seen at its full width of from ten to a dozen miles, and the magnificent hilly country, through which it flows from the south, is then visible on both shores. This high land, which appears to be a continuation of the central table-lands of Brazil, stretches almost without interruption on the eastern side of the river down to its mouth at Santarem. The scenery as well as the soil, vegetation, and animal tenants of this region, are widely different from those of the flat and uniform country which borders the Amazons along most part of its course. After travelling week after week on the main river, the aspect of Santarem with its broad white sandy beach, limpid dark-green waters, and line of picturesque hills rising behind over the fringe of green forest, affords an agreeable surprise. On the main Amazons, the prospect is monotonous unless the vessel runs near the shore, when the wonderful diversity and beauty of the vegetation afford constant entertainment. Otherwise, the unvaried, broad yellow stream, and the long low line of forest, which dwindles away in a broken line of trees on the sea-like horizon and is renewed, reach after reach, as the voyages advances, weary by their uniformity.

I arrived at Santarem on my second journey into the interior, in November, 1851, and made it my head-quarters for a period, as it turned out, of three years and a half. During this time I made, in pursuance of the plan I had framed, many excursions up the Tapajos, and to other places of interest in the surrounding region. On landing, I found no difficulty in hiring a suitable house on the outskirts of the place. It was pleasantly situated near the beach, going towards the aldeia or Indian part of the town. The ground sloped from the back premises down to the waterside and my little raised veranda overlooked a beautiful flower-garden, a great rarity in this country, which belonged to the neighbours. The house contained only three rooms, one with brick and two with boarded floors. It was substantially built, like all the better sort of houses in Santarem, and had a stuccoed front. The kitchen, as is usual, formed an outhouse placed a few yards distant from the other rooms. The rent was 12,000 reis, or about twenty-seven shillings a month. In this country, a tenant has no extra payments to make; the owners of house property pay a dizimo or tithe, to the “collectoria geral,” or general treasury, but with this the occupier of course has nothing to do. In engaging servants, I had the good fortune to meet with a free mulatto, an industrious and trustworthy young fellow, named José, willing to arrange with me; the people of his family cooked for us, whilst he assisted me in collecting; he proved of the greatest service in the different excursions we subsequently made. Servants of any kind were almost impossible to be obtained at Santarem, free people being too proud to hire themselves, and slaves too few and valuable to their masters to be let out to others. These matters arranged, the house put in order, and a rude table, with a few chairs, bought or borrowed to furnish the house with, I was ready in three or four days to commence my Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood.

I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from the other settlements on the Amazons. At Cametá, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as on the Rio Negro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well with the aborigines. In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending of the two races has not been here on a large scale. I did not find the inhabitants the pleasant, easy-going, and blunt-spoken country folk that are met with in other small towns of the interior. The whites, Portuguese and Brazilians, are a relatively more numerous class here than in other settlements, and make great pretensions to civilisation; they are the merchants and shopkeepers of the place; owners of slaves, cattle estates, and cacao plantations. Amongst the principal residents must also be mentioned the civil and military authorities, who are generally well-bred and intelligent people from other provinces. Few Indians live in the place; it is too civilised for them, and the lower class is made up (besides the few slaves) of half-breeds, in whose composition negro blood predominates. Coloured people also exercise the different handicrafts; the town supports two goldsmiths, who are mulattoes, and have each several apprentices; the blacksmiths are chiefly Indians, as is the case generally throughout the province. The manners of the upper class (copied from those of Pará) are very stiff and formal, and the absence of the hearty hospitality met with in other places, produces a disagreeable impression at first. Much ceremony is observed in the intercourse of the principal people with each other, and with strangers. The best room in each house is set apart for receptions, and visitors are expected to present themselves in black dress coats, regardless of the furious heat which rages in the sandy streets of Santarem towards mid-day, the hour when visits are generally made. In the room a cane-bottomed sofa and chairs, all lacquered and gilded, are arranged in quadrangular form, and here the visitors are invited to seat themselves, whilst the compliments are passed, or the business arranged. In taking leave, the host backs out his guests with repeated bows, finishing at the front door. Smoking is not in vogue amongst this class, but snuff-taking is largely indulged in, and great luxury is displayed in gold and silver snuff-boxes. All the gentlemen, and indeed most of the ladies also, wear gold watches and guard chains. Social parties are not very frequent; the principal men being fully occupied with their business and families, and the rest spending their leisure in billiard and gambling rooms, leaving wives and daughters shut up at home. Occasionally, however, one of the principal citizens gives a ball. In the first that I attended, the gentlemen were seated all the evening on one side of the room, and the ladies on the other, and partners were allotted by means of numbered cards, distributed by a master of the ceremonies. But the customs changed rapidly in these matters after steamers began to run on the Amazons (in 1853), bringing a flood of new ideas and fashions into the country. The old, bigoted, Portuguese system of treating women, which stifled social intercourse and wrought endless evils in the private life of the Brazilians, is now being gradually, although slowly, abandoned.

The religious festivals were not so numerous here as in other towns, and when they did take place, were very poor and ill attended. There is a handsome church, but the vicar showed remarkably little zeal for religion, except for a few days now and then when the Bishop came from Pará on his rounds through the diocese. The people are as fond of holiday-making here as in other parts of the province; but it seemed to be a growing fashion to substitute rational amusements for the processions and mummeries of the saints’ days. The young folks are very musical, the principal instruments in use being the flute, violin, Spanish guitar, and a small four-stringed viola, called cavaquinho. During the early part of my stay at Santarem, a little party of instrumentalists, led by a tall, thin, ragged mulatto, who was quite an enthusiast in his art, used frequently to serenade their friends in the cool and brilliant moonlit evenings of the dry season, playing French and Italian marches and dance music with very good effect. The guitar was the favourite instrument with both sexes, as at Pará; the piano, however, is now fast superseding it. The ballads sung to the accompaniment of the guitar were not learned from written or printed music, but communicated orally from one friend to another. They were never spoken of as songs, but modinhas, or “little fashions,” each of which had its day, giving way to the next favourite brought by some young fellow from the capital. At festival times there was a great deal of masquerading, in which all the people, old and young, white, negro, and Indian, took great delight. The best things of this kind used to come off during the Carnival, in Easter week, and on St. John’s Eve; the negroes having a grand semi-dramatic display in the streets at Christmas time. The more select affairs were got up by the young whites, and coloured men associating with whites. A party of thirty or forty of these used to dress themselves in uniform style, and in very good taste, as cavaliers and dames, each disguised with a peculiar kind of light gauze mask. The troop, with a party of musicians, went the round of their friends’ houses in the evening, and treated the large and gaily-dressed companies which were there assembled to a variety of dances. The principal citizens, in the large rooms of whose houses these entertainments were given, seemed quite to enjoy them; great preparations were made at each place; and, after the dance, guests and masqueraders were regaled with pale ale and sweetmeats. Once a year the Indians, with whom masked dances and acting are indigenous, had their turn, and on one occasion they gave us a great treat. They assembled from different parts of the neighbourhood at night, on the outskirts of the town, and then marched through the streets by torchlight towards the quarter inhabited by the whites, to perform their hunting and devil dances before the doors of the principal inhabitants. There were about a hundred men, women, and children in the procession. Many of the men were dressed in the magnificent feather crowns, tunics, and belts, manufactured by the Mundurucús, and worn by them on festive occasions, but the women were naked to the waist, and the children quite naked, and all were painted and smeared red with anatto. The ringleader enacted the part of the Tushaua, or chief, and carried a sceptre, richly decorated with the orange, red, and green feathers of toucans and parrots. The pajé or medicine-man came along, puffing at a long tauarí cigar, the instrument by which he professes to make his wonderful cures. Others blew harsh, jarring blasts with the turé, a horn made of long and thick bamboo, with a split reed in the mouthpiece. This is the war trumpet of many tribes of Indians, with which the sentinels of predatory hordes, mounted on a lofty tree, gave the signal for attack to their comrades. Those Brazilians who are old enough to remember the times of warfare between Indians and settlers, retain a great horror of the turé, its loud, harsh note heard in the dead of the night having been often the prelude to an onslaught of bloodthirsty Múras on the outlying settlements. The rest of the men in the procession carried bows and arrows, bunches of javelins, clubs, and paddles. The older children brought with them the household pets; some had monkeys or coatis on their shoulders, and others bore tortoises on their heads. The squaws carried their babies in aturas, or large baskets, slung on their backs, and secured with a broad belt of bast over their foreheads. The whole thing was accurate in its representation of Indian life, and showed more ingenuity than some people give the Brazilian red man credit for. It was got up spontaneously by the Indians, and simply to amuse the people of the place.

The people seem to be thoroughly alive to the advantages of education for their children. Besides the usual primary schools, one for girls, and another for boys, there is a third of a higher class, where Latin and French, amongst other accomplishments, are taught by professors, who, like the common schoolmasters, are paid by the provincial government. This is used as a preparatory school to the Lyceum and Bishop’s seminary, well-endowed institutions at Pará, whither it is the ambition of traders and planters to send their sons to finish their studies. The rudiments of education only are taught in the primary schools, and it is surprising how quickly and well the little lads, both coloured and white, learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. But the simplicity of the Portuguese language, which is written as it is pronounced, or according to unvarying rules, and the use of the decimal system of accounts, make these acquirements much easier than they are with us. Students in the superior school have to pass an examination before they can be admitted at the colleges in Pará, and the managers once did me the honour to make me one of the examiners for the year. The performances of the youths, most of whom were under fourteen years of age, were very creditable, especially in grammar; there was a quickness of apprehension displayed which would have gladdened the heart of a northern schoolmaster. The course of study followed at the colleges of Pará must be very deficient; for it is rare to meet with an educated Paraense who has the slightest knowledge of the physical sciences, or even of geography, if he has not travelled out of the province. The young men all become smart rhetoricians and lawyers; any of them is ready to plead in a law case at an hour’s notice; they are also great at statistics, for the gratification of which taste there is ample field in Brazil, where every public officer has to furnish volumes of dry reports annually to the government; but they are woefully ignorant on most other subjects. I do not recollect seeing a map of any kind at Santarem. The quick-witted people have a suspicion of their deficiencies in this respect, and it is difficult to draw them out on geography; but one day a man holding an important office betrayed himself by asking me, “On what side of the river was Paris situated?” This question did not arise, as might be supposed, from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from the idea, that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he had heard of must lie on one shore or the other. The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks.

Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is glorious; during six months of the year, from August to February, very little rain falls, and the sky is cloudless for weeks together, the fresh breezes from the sea, nearly 400 miles distant, moderating the great heat of the sun. The wind is sometimes so strong for days together, that it is difficult to make way against it in walking along the streets, and it enters the open windows and doors of houses, scattering loose clothing and papers in all directions. The place is considered healthy; but at the changes of season, severe colds and ophthalmia are prevalent. I found three Englishmen living here, who had resided many years in the town or its neighbourhood, and who still retained their florid complexions; the plump and fresh appearance of many of the middle-aged Santarem ladies also bore testimony to the healthfulness of the climate. The streets are always clean and dry, even in the height of the wet season; good order is always kept, and the place pretty well supplied with provisions. None but those who have suffered from the difficulty of obtaining the necessities of life at any price in most of the interior settlements of South America, can appreciate the advantages of Santarem in this respect. Everything, however, except meat, was dear, and becoming every year more so. Sugar, coffee, and rice, which ought to be produced in surplus in the neighbourhood, are imported from other provinces, and are high in price; sugar, indeed, is a little dearer here than in England. There were two or three butchers’ shops, where excellent beef could be had daily at twopence or twopence-halfpenny per pound. The cattle have not to be brought from a long distance as at Pará, being bred on the campos, which border the Lago Grande, only one or two days’ journey from the town. Fresh fish could be bought in the port on most evenings, but as the supply did not equal the demand, there was always a race amongst purchasers to the waterside when the canoe of a fisherman hove in sight. Very good bread was hawked round the town every morning, with milk, and a great variety of fruits and vegetables. Amongst the fruits, there was a kind called atta, which I did not see in any other part of the country. It belongs to the Anonaceous order, and the tree which produces it grows apparently wild in the neighbourhood of Santarem. It is a little larger than a good-sized orange, and the rind, which encloses a mass of rich custardy pulp, is scaled like the pineapple, but green when ripe, and encrusted on the inside with sugar. To finish this account of the advantages of Santarem, the delicious bathing in the clear waters of the Tapajos may be mentioned. There is here no fear of alligators; when the east wind blows, a long swell rolls in on the clean sandy beach, and the bath is most exhilarating.

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. It is on this account that 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 probably 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 foot. The patches of wood look like copses in the middle of green meadows; they are called by the natives “ilhas de mato,” or islands of jungle; the name being, no doubt, suggested by their compactness of outline, neatly demarcated in insular form from the smooth carpet of grass, around them. They are composed of a great variety of trees loaded with succulent parasites, and lashed together by woody climbers like the forest in other parts. A narrow belt of dense wood, similar in character to these ilhas, and like them sharply limited along its borders, runs everywhere parallel and close to the river. In crossing the campo, the path from the town ascends a little for a mile or two, passing through this marginal strip of wood; the grassy land then slopes gradually to a broad valley, watered by rivulets, whose banks are clothed with lofty and luxuriant forest. Beyond this, a range of hills extends as far as the eye can reach towards the yet untrodden interior. Some of these hills are long ridges, wooded or bare; others are isolated conical peaks, rising abruptly from the valley. The highest are probably not more than a thousand feet above the level of the river. One remarkable hill, the Serra de Muruarú, about fifteen miles from Santarem, which terminates the prospect to the south, is of the same truncated pyramidal form as the range of hills near Almeyrim. Complete solitude reigns over the whole of this stretch of beautiful country. The inhabitants of Santarem know nothing of the interior, and seem to feel little curiosity concerning it. A few tracks from the town across the campo lead to some small clearings four or five miles off, belonging to the poorer inhabitants of the place; but, excepting these, there are no roads, or signs of the proximity of a civilised settlement.

The appearance of the campos changes very much according to the season. There is not that grand uniformity of aspect throughout the year which is observed in the virgin forest, and which makes a deeper impression on the naturalist the longer he remains in this country. The seasons in this part of the Amazons region are sharply contrasted, but the difference is not so great as in some tropical countries, where, during the dry monsoon, insects and reptiles go into a summer sleep, and the trees simultaneously shed their leaves. As the dry season advances (August, September), the grass on the campos withers, and the shrubby vegetation near the town becomes a mass of parched yellow stubble. The period, however, is not one of general torpidity or repose for animal or vegetable life. Birds certainly are not so numerous as in the wet season, but some kinds remain and lay their eggs at this time—for instance, the ground doves (Chamæpelia). The trees retain their verdure throughout, and many of them flower in the dry months. Lizards do not become torpid, and insects are seen both in the larva and the perfect states, showing that the aridity of the climate has not a general influence on the development of the species. Some kinds of butterflies, especially the little hairstreaks (Theclæ), whose caterpillars feed on the trees, make their appearance only when the dry season is at its height. The land molluscs of the district are the only animals which æstivate; they are found in clusters, Bulimi and Helices, concealed in hollow trees, the mouths of their shells closed by a film of mucus. The fine weather breaks up often with great suddenness about the beginning of February. Violent squalls from the west or the opposite direction to the trade-wind then occur. They give very little warning, and the first generally catches the people unprepared. They fall in the night, and blowing directly into the harbour, with the first gust sweep all vessels from their anchorage; in a few minutes a mass of canoes, large and small, including schooners of fifty tons burthen, are clashing together, pell-mell, on the beach. I have reason to remember these storms, for I was once caught in one myself, whilst crossing the river in an undecked boat about a day’s journey from Santarem. They are accompanied with terrific electric explosions, the sharp claps of thunder falling almost simultaneously with the blinding flashes of lightning. Torrents of rain follow the first outbreak; the wind then gradually abates, and the rain subsides into a steady drizzle, which continues often for the greater part of the succeeding day. After a week or two of showery weather, the aspect of the country is completely changed. The parched ground in the neighbourhood of Santarem breaks out, so to speak, in a rash of greenery; the dusty, languishing trees gain, without having shed their old leaves, a new clothing of tender green foliage; a wonderful variety of quick-growing leguminous plants springs up; and leafy creepers overrun the ground, the bushes, and the trunks of trees. One is reminded of the sudden advent of spring after a few warm showers in northern climates; I was the more struck by it as nothing similar is witnessed in the virgin forests amongst which I had passed the four years previous to my stay in this part. The grass on the campos is renewed, and many of the campo trees, especially the myrtles, which grow abundantly in one portion of the district, begin to flower, attracting by the fragrance of their blossoms a great number and variety of insects, more particularly Coleoptera. Many kinds of birds; parrots, toucans, and barbets, which live habitually in the forest, then visit the open places. A few weeks of comparatively dry weather generally intervene in March, after a month or two of rain. The heaviest rains fall in April, May, and June; they come in a succession of showers, with sunny, gleamy weather in the intervals. June and July are the months when the leafy luxuriance of the campos, and the activity of life, are at their highest. Most birds have then completed their moulting, which extends over the period from February to May. The flowering shrubs are then mostly in bloom, and numberless kinds of Dipterous and Hymenopterous insects appear simultaneously with the flowers. This season might be considered the equivalent of summer in temperate climates, as the bursting forth of the foliage in February represents the spring; but under the equator there is not that simultaneous march in the annual life of animals and plants, which we see in high latitudes; some species, it is true, are dependent upon others in their periodical acts of life, and go hand-in-hand with them, but they are not all simultaneously and similarly affected by the physical changes of the seasons.

I will now give an account of some of my favourite collecting places in the neighbourhood of Santarem, incorporating with the description a few of the more interesting observations made on the Natural History of the localities. To the west of the town there was a pleasant path along the beach to a little bay, called Mapirí, about five miles within the mouth of the Tapajos. The road was practicable only in the dry season. The river at Santarem rises on the average about thirty feet, varying in different years about ten feet, so that in the four months from April to July, the water comes up to the edge of the marginal belt of wood already spoken of. This Mapiri excursion was most pleasant and profitable in the months from January to March, before the rains became too continuous. The sandy beach beyond the town is very irregular, in some places forming long spits on which, when the east wind is blowing, the waves break in a line of foam; at others, receding to shape out quiet little bays and pools. On the outskirts of the town a few scattered huts of Indians and coloured people are passed, prettily situated on the margin of the white beach, with a background of glorious foliage; the cabin of the pure-blood Indian being distinguished from the mud hovels of the free negroes and mulattoes by its light construction, half of it being an open shed where the dusky tenants are seen at all hours of the day lounging in their open-meshed grass hammocks. About two miles on the road we come to a series of shallow pools, called the Laguinhos, which are connected with the river in the wet season, but separated from it by a high bank of sand topped with bushes at other times. There is a break here in the fringe of wood, and a glimpse is obtained of the grassy campo. When the waters have risen to the level of the pools, this place is frequented by many kinds of wading-birds. Snow-white egrets of two species stand about the margins of the water, and dusky-striped herons may be seen half hidden under the shade of the bushes. The pools are covered with a small kind of water-lily, and surrounded by a dense thicket. Amongst the birds which inhabit this spot is the rosy-breasted Troupial (Trupialis Gulanensis), a bird resembling our starling in size and habits, and not unlike it in colour, with the exception of the rich rosy vest. The water at this time of the year overflows a large level tract of campo bordering the pools, and the Troupials come to feed on the larvæ of insects which then abound in the moist soil.

Beyond the Laguinhos there succeeds a tract of level beach covered with trees which form a beautiful grove. About the month of April, when the water rises to this level, the trees are covered with blossom, and a handsome orchid, an Epidendron with large white flowers, which clothes thickly the trunks, is profusely in bloom. Several kinds of kingfisher resort to the place. Four species may be seen within a small space: the largest as big as a crow, of a mottled-grey hue, and with an enormous beak; the smallest not larger than a sparrow. The large one makes its nest in clay cliffs, three or four miles distant from this place. None of the kingfishers are so brilliant in colour as our English species. The blossoms on the trees attract two or three species of hummingbirds, the most conspicuous of which is a large swallow-tailed kind (Eupetomena macroura), with a brilliant livery of emerald green and steel blue. I noticed that it did not remain so long poised in the air before the flowers as the other smaller species; it perched more frequently, and sometimes darted after small insects on the wing. Emerging from the grove there is a long stretch of sandy beach; the land is high and rocky, and the belt of wood which skirts the river banks is much broader than it is elsewhere. At length, after rounding a projecting bluff, the bay at Mapirí is reached. The river view is characteristic of the Tapajos; the shores are wooded, and on the opposite side is a line of clay cliffs with hills in the background clothed with a rolling forest. A long spit of sand extends into mid-river, beyond which is an immense expanse of dark water, the further shore of the Tapajos being barely visible as a thin grey line of trees on the horizon. The transparency of air and water in the dry season when the brisk east wind is blowing, and the sharpness of outline of hills, woods, and sandy beaches, give a great charm to this spot.

Whilst resting in the shade during the great heat of the early hours of afternoon, I used to find amusement in watching the proceedings of the sand wasps. A small pale green kind of Bembex (Bembex ciliata), was plentiful near the bay of Mapirí. When they are at work, a number of little jets of sand are seen shooting over the surface of the sloping bank. The little miners excavate with their forefeet, which are strongly built and furnished with a fringe of stiff bristles; they work with wonderful rapidity, and the sand thrown out beneath their bodies issues in continuous streams. They are solitary wasps, each female working on her own account. After making a gallery two or three inches in length in a slanting direction from the surface, the owner backs out and takes a few turns round the orifice apparently to see whether it is well made, but in reality, I believe, to take note of the locality, that she may find it again. This done, the busy workwoman flies away; but returns, after an absence varying in different cases from a few minutes to an hour or more, with a fly in her grasp, with which she re-enters her mine. On again emerging, the entrance is carefully closed with sand. During this interval she has laid an egg on the body of the fly which she had previously benumbed with her sting, and which is to serve as food for the soft, footless grub soon to be hatched from the egg. From what I could make out, the Bembex makes a fresh excavation for every egg to be deposited; at least in two or three of the galleries which I opened there was only one fly enclosed.

I have said that the Bembex on leaving her mine took note of the locality; this seemed to be the explanation of the short delay previous to her taking flight; on rising in the air also the insects generally flew round over the place before making straight off. Another nearly allied but much larger species, the Monedula signata, whose habits I observed on the banks of the Upper Amazons, sometimes excavates its mine solitarily on sand-banks recently laid bare in the middle of the river, and closes the orifice before going in search of prey. In these cases the insect has to make a journey of at least half a mile to procure the kind of fly, the Motúca (Hadrus lepidotus), with which it provisions its cell. I often noticed it to take a few turns in the air round the place before starting; on its return it made without hesitation straight for the closed mouth of the mine. I was convinced that the insects noted the bearings of their nests and the direction they took in flying from them. The proceeding in this and similar cases (I have read of something analogous having been noticed in hive bees) seems to be a mental act of the same nature as that which takes place in ourselves when recognising a locality. The senses, however, must be immeasurably more keen and the mental operation much more certain in them than it is in man, for to my eye there was absolutely no landmark on the even surface of sand which could serve as guide, and the borders of the forest were not nearer than half a mile. The action of the wasp would be said to be instinctive; but it seems plain that the instinct is no mysterious and unintelligible agent, but a mental process in each individual, differing from the same in man only by its unerring certainty. The mind of the insect appears to be so constituted that the impression of external objects or the want felt, causes it to act with a precision which seems to us like that of a machine constructed to move in a certain given way. I have noticed in Indian boys a sense of locality almost as keen as that possessed by the sand-wasp. An old Portuguese and myself, accompanied by a young lad about ten years of age, were once lost in the forest in a most solitary place on the banks of the main river. Our case seemed hopeless, and it did not for some time occur to us to consult our little companion, who had been playing with his bow and arrow all the way whilst we were hunting, apparently taking no note of the route. When asked, however, he pointed out, in a moment, the right direction of our canoe. He could not explain how he knew; I believe he had noted the course we had taken almost unconsciously; the sense of locality in his case seemed instinctive.