Travels on the Amazon

CHAPTER XIII

Voyage down the Rio Negro—Arrive at Barra—Obtaining a Passport—State of the City—Portuguese and Brazilian Enterprise—System of Credit—Trade—Immorality, and its Causes—Leave Barra—A Storm on the Amazon—Sarsaparilla—A Tale about Death—Pará—The Yellow Fever—Sail for England—Ship takes Fire—Ten Days in the Boats—Get picked up—Heavy Gales—Short of Provisions—Storm in the Channel—Arrive at Deal.

At length, on the 23rd of April, I bade adieu, with much pleasure, to São Jeronymo. I stopped at several places to buy beiju, fish, pacovas, and any parrots I could meet with. My Indians went several times, early in the morning, to the gapó to catch frogs, which they obtained in great numbers, stringing them on a sipó, and, boiling them entire, entrails and all, devoured them with much gusto. The frogs are mottled of various colours, have dilated toes, and are called Juí.

On the 26th we reached São Joaquim, where I stayed a day, to make some cages for my birds, and embark the things I had left with Senhor Lima.

On the 28th I went on to São Gabriel, and paid my respects to the new Commandante, and then enjoyed a little conversation with my friend Mr. Spruce. Several of my birds died or were lost here, and at São Joaquim. A little black monkey killed and devoured two which had escaped from their cages, and one of my most valuable and beautiful parrots (a single specimen) was lost in passing the falls. I had left São Joaquim with fifty-two live animals (monkeys, parrots, etc.), which, in a small canoe, were no little trouble and annoyance.

I was lucky enough to get the Commandante to send a soldier with me in charge of the Correio, or post, and thus ensured my passage to Barra without further delays, a point on which I had been rather uneasy. Leaving São Gabriel I stayed for the night at the house of Senhor Victoríno, of whom I bought several green parrots, and a beautiful "anacá," or purple and red-necked crested parrot, in place of the one which had gone overboard while passing the falls at São Gabriel. The following day I reached the house of Senhor Palheta, and thought myself fortunate to purchase of him another anacá for seven shillings; but the very next morning it died from cold, having flown into the river, and become completely chilled before it could be rescued.

On the 2nd of May I arrived at the sitio of my old friend Senhor Chagas, who made me breakfast with him, and sold me some farinha, coffee, and a lot of guinea-fowls' eggs; and embraced me with great affection at parting, wishing me every happiness. The same night I reached Castanheiro, where I particularly wished to get a pilot, to take me down the east bank of the river, for the purpose of making a sketch-survey of that side, and ascertaining the width of this extraordinary stream. Senhor Ricardo, who is the Capitão dos Trabalhadores, immediately gave me an order to embark a man, whose house I should pass the next day, and who, he said, was perfectly acquainted with that side of the river. After breakfasting with him the next morning, I left, well satisfied to have a prospect of accomplishing this long-cherished scheme. On arriving at the house, however, it was empty, and there was no sign of it having been inhabited for some weeks, so that I had to give up all hopes of completing my project.

I applied again to the Subdelegarde, João Cordeiro, whose house I reached the next day, and also to the lieutenant of Senhor Ricardo, but without effect; all making the usual reply, "Não ha gente nenhum aqui" (there is not a single person about there); so I was reluctantly compelled to proceed down the river by the same course which I had already traversed three times, as, by attempting to go on the other route without a pilot, I might lose my way, and not get to Barra for a month.

The fever and ague now attacked me again, and I passed several days very uncomfortably. We had almost constant rains; and to attend to my numerous birds and animals was a great annoyance, owing to the crowded state of the canoe, and the impossibility of properly cleaning them during the rain. Some died almost every day, and I often wished I had had nothing whatever to do with them, though, having once taken them in hand, I determined to persevere.

On the 8th I reached Barcellos, and here I was annoyed by having to give an account of what I had in my canoes, and pay duty, the new Government of Barra not allowing anything to escape without contributing its share.

On the 11th we passed the mouth of the Rio Branco, and I noticed for the first time the peculiar colour of the water, which is a very pale yellow-olive, almost milky, very different from, and much whiter than, the waters of the Amazon, and making its name of the "White River" very appropriate. In the dry season the waters are much clearer.

In the morning I reached Pedreiro, and purchased a turtle, which we stopped to cook, a short distance below the village; it was a very large and fat one, and we fried the greater part of the meat in fat for the rest of the voyage. At a sitio, in the evening, I bought two parrots, and the next morning, at Ayrão, five more; and in the afternoon, at another sitio, a blue macaw, a monkey, a toucan, and a pigeon. At night we had a storm of rain and wind, and for a long time beat about in the middle of the river, tossed by the waves, without being able to find the shore.

On the 15th we reached "Ai purusá," where I bought some fish and maize. Here was lying a fine harpy eagle, which Senhor Bagatta had shot the day before, and, having plucked out some of the wing-feathers, had left it to rot; I thus just missed, by a day, getting a specimen of this bird, which I so much desired, and which I had never been able to procure during a four years' residence in the country. We had plenty more rain every night, making the journey very disagreeable; and at length, on the 17th, reached Barra do Rio Negro, now the capital of the new Province of Amazonas.

I was here kindly received by my friend Henrique Antony; and I spent all the day in searching for some house or lodging, which was very hard to be procured, every house being occupied, and rents having much risen, from the influx of strangers and traders consequent on the arrival of the new Government. However, by the evening I succeeded in getting a small mud-floored, leaky-roofed room, which I was glad to hire, as I did not know how long I might be obliged to remain in Barra, before I could obtain a passage to Pará. The next morning I could not disembark my things till the new Custom-house opened, at nine o'clock; when I had to pay duties on every article, even on my bird-skins, insects, stuffed alligators, etc., and so it was night before I got everything on shore. The next day I paid off my Indians, and settled myself to wait patiently and attend to my menagerie, till I could get a passage to Pará.

For three weeks I had been nearly lame, with a sore and inflamed toe, into which the chegoes had burrowed under the nail, and rendered wearing a shoe, or walking, exceedingly painful; having been compelled to move about the last few days, it had inflamed and swelled, and I was now therefore glad to remain quietly at home, and by poultices and plaisters endeavour to cure it. During the short time the Indians had remained in charge of my canoe, while I was looking after a house, they had lost three of my birds; but I soon found I had quite enough left to keep me constantly employed attending to them. My parrots, in particular, of which I had more than twenty, would persist in wandering about into the street, and I lost several of my best, which were, no doubt, safely domiciled in some of the adjoining houses. I was much annoyed, too, by persons constantly coming to me, to sell them parrots or monkeys; and my repeated assurances, that I myself wanted to buy more, did not in the least check the pertinacity of my would-be customers.

The city was now full of fashionably-dressed young men, who received the public money for services they did not know how to perform. Many of them could not fill up a few dozen words in a printed form without making blunders, or in a shorter time than two or three hours; their contemplations seeming scarcely to rise beyond their polished-leather boots and gold watch-chains. As it was necessary to get a passport, I presented myself at the office of the "Chef de Policia," for the purpose; but was told that I must first advertise my intention of leaving in the newspaper. I accordingly did so, and about a week after went again. I was now requested to bring a formal application in writing, to have a passport granted me: I returned, and prepared one, and the next day went with it; now the Chef was engaged, and he must sign the requisition before anything else could be done. I called again the next day, and now that the requisition was signed, I had a blank form given me to go and get stamped in another office, in a distant part of the city. Off I had to go,—get the stamp, which took two clerks to sign, and paid my eight vintems for it; armed with this, I returned to the police-office, and now, to my surprise, the passport was actually made out and given me; and on paying another twelve vintems (sixpence), I was at liberty to leave Barra whenever I could; for as to leaving it whenever I pleased, that was out of the question.

The city of Barra, the capital of the Province and the residence of the President, was now in a very miserable condition. No vessel had arrived from Pará for five months, and all supplies were exhausted. Flour had been long since finished, consequently there was no bread; neither was there biscuit, butter, sugar, cheese, wine, nor vinegar; molasses even, to sweeten our coffee, was very scarce; and the spirit of the country (caxaça) was so nearly exhausted, that it could only be obtained retail, and in the smallest quantities: everybody was reduced to farinha and fish, with beef twice a week, and turtle about as often. This state of destitution was owing to there having been a vessel lost a month before, near Barra, which was coming from Pará; and at this time of the year, when the river is full, and the winds adverse, the passage frequently takes from seventy days to three months,—having to be performed almost entirely by warping with a rope sent ahead in a canoe, against the powerful current of the Amazon. It may therefore be well imagined that Barra was not the most agreeable place in the world to reside in, when, joined to the total absence of amusement and society which universally prevails there, the want of the common necessaries of life had also to be endured.

Several vessels were leaving for Pará, but all were so completely filled as not to have room for me or my baggage; and I had to wait in patience for the arrival of a small canoe from the Solimões, in which Senhor Henrique guaranteed me a passage to Pará.

Before proceeding with my journey, I will note the few observations that occur to me on the character and customs of the inhabitants of this fine country. I of course speak solely of the province of Pará, and it is probable that to the rest of Brazil my remarks may not in the least apply; so different in every respect is this part of the Empire from the more southern and better-known portion. There is, perhaps, no country in the world so capable of yielding a large return for agricultural labour, and yet so little cultivated; none where the earth will produce such a variety of valuable productions, and where they are so totally neglected; none where the facilities for internal communication are so great, or where it is more difficult or tedious to get from place to place; none which so much possesses all the natural requisites for an immense trade with all the world, and where commerce is so limited and insignificant.

This may well excite some wonder, when we remember that the white inhabitants of this country are the Portuguese and their descendants,—the nation which a few centuries ago took the lead in all great discoveries and commercial enterprises,—which spread its colonies over the whole world, and exhibited the most chivalric spirit of enterprise in overcoming the dangers of navigation in unknown seas, and of opening a commercial intercourse with barbarous or uncivilised nations.

But yet, as far as I myself have been able to observe, their national character has not changed. The Portuguese, and their descendants, exhibit here the same perseverance, the same endurance of every hardship, and the same wandering spirit, which led and still leads them to penetrate into the most desolate and uncivilised regions in pursuit of commerce and in search of gold. But they exhibit also a distaste for agricultural and mechanical labour, which appears to have been ever a part of their national character, and which has caused them to sink to their present low condition in the scale of nations, in whatever part of the world they may be found. When their colonies were flourishing in every quarter of the globe, and their ships brought luxuries for the supply of half the civilised world, a great part of their population found occupation in trade, in the distribution of that wealth which set in a constant stream from America, Asia, and Africa, to their shores; but now that this stream has been diverted into other channels by the energy of the Saxon races, the surplus population, averse from agriculture, and unable to find a support in the diminished trade of the country, swarm to Brazil, in the hope that wealth may be found there, in a manner more congenial to their tastes.

Thus we find the province of Pará overrun with traders, the greater part of whom deserve no better name than pedlars, only they carry their goods in a canoe instead of upon their backs. As their distaste for agriculture, or perhaps rather their passionate love of trade, allows scarcely any of them to settle, or produce anything for others to trade in, their only resource is in the indigenous inhabitants of the country; and as these are also very little given to cultivation except to procure the mere necessaries of life, it results that the only articles of commerce are the natural productions of the country, to catch or collect which requires an irregular and wandering life, better suited to an Indian's habits than the settled and continued exertions of agriculture. These products are principally dried fish, and oil from the turtles' eggs and cow-fish, for the inland trade; and sarsaparilla, piassaba, india-rubber, Brazil-nuts, balsam of capivi, and cacao, for the exports. Though the coffee-plant and sugar-cane grow everywhere almost spontaneously, yet coffee and sugar have to be imported from other parts of Brazil for home consumption. Beef is everywhere bad, principally because there are no good pastures near the towns where cattle brought from a distance can be fattened, and no one thinks of making them, though it might easily be done. Vegetables are also very scarce and dear, and so are all fruits, except such as the orange and banana, which once planted only require the produce to be gathered when ripe; fowls in Pará are 3s. 6d. each, and sugar as dear as in England. And all this because nobody will make it his business to supply any one of these articles! There is a kind of gambling excitement in trade which outshines all the steady profits of labour, and regular mechanics are constantly leaving their business to get a few goods on credit and wander about the country trading.

There is, I should think, no country where such a universal and insecure system of credit prevails as here. There is hardly a trader, great or small, in the country, that can be said to have any capital of his own. The merchants in Pará, who have foreign correspondents, have goods out on credit; they sell on credit to the smaller merchants or shopkeepers of Pará; these again supply on credit the negociantes in the country towns. From these last the traders up the different rivers get their supplies also on credit. These traders give small parcels of goods to half-civilised Indians, or to any one who will take them, to go among the wild Indian tribes and buy up their produce. They, however, have to give credit to the Indians, who will not work till they have been paid six months beforehand; and so they are paid for sarsaparilla or oil, which is still in the forest or the lake. And at every step of this credit there is not the slightest security; and robbery, waste, and a profuse squandering away of the property of others, is of constant occurrence. To cover all these chances of loss, the profits are proportionably great at every step, and the consumer often has to pay two shillings a yard for calico worth twopence, and everything else in like proportion. It is these apparently enormous profits that lead mechanics and others into trade, as they do not consider the very small business that can be done in a given time, owing to the poverty of the country and the enormous number of traders in proportion to the purchasers. It seems a very nice and easy way of getting a living, to sell goods at double the price you pay for them, and then again to sell the produce you receive at double what you pay for it; but as the greater part of the small traders do not get rid of more than a hundred pounds' worth of goods in a year, and the expenses of Indians and canoes, their families and bad debts, wines and liquors, and the waste which always takes place where everything is obtained upon credit, are often double that sum, it is not to be wondered at that they are almost all of them constantly in debt to their correspondents, who, when they have once thus got a hold on them, do not allow them easily to get free.

It is this universal love of trade which leads, I think, to three great vices very prevalent here—drinking, gambling, and lying,—besides a whole host of trickeries, cheatings, and debaucheries of every description. The life of a river trader admits of little enjoyment to a man who has no intellectual resources; it is not therefore to be wondered at that the greater part of these men are more or less addicted to intoxication; and when they can supply themselves on credit with as much wine and spirits as they like, there is little inducement to break through the habit. A man who, if he had to pay ready money, would never think of drinking wine, when he can have it on credit takes twenty or thirty gallons with him in his canoe, which, as it has cost him nothing, is little valued, and he perhaps arrives at the end of his voyage without a drop. In the towns in the interior every shop sells spirits, and numbers of persons are all day drinking, taking a glass at every place they go to, and, by this constant dramming, ruining their health perhaps more than by complete intoxication at more distant intervals. Gambling is almost universal in a greater or less degree, and is to be traced to that same desire to gain money by some easier road than labour, which leads so many into commerce; and the great number of traders, who have to get a living out of an amount of business which would not be properly sufficient for one-third the number, leads to the general use of trickery and lying of every degree, as fair means to be employed to entrap a new customer or to ruin a rival trader. Truth, in fact, in matters of business is so seldom made use of, that a lie seems to be preferred even when it can serve no purpose whatever, and where the person addressed must be perfectly aware of the falsehood of every asseveration made; but Portuguese politeness does not permit him by word or look to throw any doubt on his friend's veracity. I have been often amused to hear two parties endeavouring to cheat each other, by assertions which each party knew to be perfectly false, and yet pretended to receive as undoubted fact.