Chapter IX: Voyage Up the Tapajos (3)

We left Aveyros in the evening of the 21st, and sailed gently down with the soft land-breeze, keeping about a mile from the eastern shore. It was a brilliant moonlit night, and the men worked cheerfully at the oars when the wind was slack, the terral wafting from the forest a pleasant perfume like that of mignonette. At midnight we made a fire and got a cup of coffee, and at three o’clock in the morning reached the sitio of Ricardo’s father, an Indian named André, where we anchored and slept.

_September 22nd._—Old André with his squaw came aboard this morning. They brought three Tracajás, a turtle, and a basketful of Tracajá eggs, to exchange with me for cotton cloth and cashaça. Ricardo, who had been for some time very discontented, having now satisfied his longing to see his parents, cheerfully agreed to accompany me to Santarem. The loss of a man at this juncture would have been very annoying, with Captain Antonio ill at Aveyros, and not a hand to be had anywhere in the neighbourhood; but, if we had not called at André’s sitio, we should not have been able to have kept Ricardo from running away at the first landing-place. He was a lively, restless lad, and although impudent and troublesome at first, had made a very good servant. His companion, Alberto, was of quite a different disposition, being extremely taciturn, and going through all his duties with the quietest regularity.

We left at 11 a.m., and progressed a little before the wind began to blow from down river, when we were obliged again to cast anchor. The terral began at six o’clock in the evening, and we sailed with it past the long line of rock-bound coast near Itapuáma. At ten o’clock a furious blast of wind came from a cleft between the hills, catching us with the sails close-hauled, and throwing the canoe nearly on its beam-ends, when we were about a mile from the shore. José had the presence of mind to slacken the sheet of the mainsail, whilst I leapt forward and lowered the sprit of the foresail, the two Indians standing stupefied in the prow. It was what the canoe-men call a _trovoada secca_ or white squall. The river in a few minutes became a sheet of foam; the wind ceased in about half an hour, but the terral was over for the night, so we pulled towards the shore to find an anchoring place.

We reached Tapaiuna by midnight on the 23rd, and on the morning of the 24th arrived at the Retiro, where we met a shrewd Santarem trader, whom I knew, Senhor Chico Honorio, who had a larger and much better provided canoe than our own. The wind was strong from below all day, so we remained at this place in his company. He had his wife with him, and a number of Indians, male and female. We slung our hammocks under the trees, and breakfasted and dined together, our cloth being spread on the sandy beach in the shade after killing a large quantity of fish with _timbó_, of which we had obtained a supply at Itapuáma. At night we were again under way with the land breeze. The water was shoaly to a great distance off the coast, and our canoe having the lighter draught went ahead, our leadsman crying out the soundings to our companion: the depth was only one fathom, half a mile from the coast. We spent the next day (25th) at the mouth of a creek called Pini, which is exactly opposite the village of Boim, and on the following night advanced about twelve miles. Every point of land had a long spit of sand stretching one or two miles towards the middle of the river, which it was necessary to double by a wide circuit. The terral failed us at midnight when we were near an _ espera_, called Maraï, the mouth of a shallow creek.

_September 26th._—I did not like the prospect of spending the whole dreary day at Maraï, where it was impossible to ramble ashore, the forest being utterly impervious, and the land still partly under water. Besides, we had used up our last stick of firewood to boil our coffee at sunrise, and could not get a fresh supply at this place. So there being a dead calm on the river in the morning, I gave orders at ten o’clock to move out of the harbour, and try with the oars to reach Paquiatúba, which was only five miles distant. We had doubled the shoaly point which stretches from the mouth of the creek, and were making way merrily across the bay, at the head of which was the port of the little settlement, when we beheld to our dismay, a few miles down the river, the signs of the violent day breeze coming down upon us—a long, rapidly advancing line of foam with the darkened water behind it. Our men strove in vain to gain the harbour; the wind overtook us, and we cast anchor in three fathoms, with two miles of shoaly water between us and the land on our lee. It came with the force of a squall: the heavy billows washing over the vessel and drenching us with the spray. I did not expect that our anchor would hold; I gave out, however, plenty of cable and watched the result at the prow, José placing himself at the helm, and the men standing by the jib and foresail, so as to be ready if we dragged to attempt the passage of the Maraï spit, which was now almost dead to leeward. Our little bit of iron, however, held its place; the bottom being fortunately not so sandy as in most other parts of the coast; but our weak cable then began to cause us anxiety. We remained in this position all day without food, for everything was tossing about in the hold; provision-chests, baskets, kettles, and crockery. The breeze increased in strength towards the evening, when the sun set fiery red behind the misty hills on the western shore, and the gloom of the scene was heightened by the strange contrasts of colour; the inky water and the lurid gleam of the sky. Heavy seas beat now and then against the prow of our vessel with a force that made her shiver. If we had gone ashore in this place, all my precious collections would have been inevitably lost; but we ourselves could have scrambled easily to land, and re-embarked with Senhor Honorio, who had remained behind in the Piní, and would pass in the course of two or three days. When night came I lay down exhausted with watching and fatigue, and fell asleep, as my men had done sometime before. About nine o’clock, I was awakened by the montaria bumping against the sides of the vessel, which had veered suddenly round, and the full moon, previously astern, then shone full in the cabin. The wind had abruptly ceased, giving place to light puffs from the eastern shore, and leaving a long swell rolling into the shoaly bay.

After this I resolved not to move a step beyond Paquiatúba without an additional man, and one who understood the navigation of the river at this season. We reached the landing-place at ten o’clock, and anchored within the mouth of the creek. In the morning I walked through the beautiful shady alleys of the forest, which were water-paths in June when we touched here in ascending the river to the house of Inspector Cypriano. After an infinite deal of trouble, I succeeded in persuading him to furnish me with another Indian. There are about thirty families established in this place, but the able-bodied men had been nearly all drafted off within the last few weeks by the Government, to accompany a military expedition against runaway negroes, settled in villages in the interior. Senhor Cypriano was a pleasant-looking and extremely civil young Mameluco. He accompanied us, on the night of the 28th, five miles down the river to Point Jaguararí, where the man lived whom he intended to send with me. I was glad to find my new hand a steady, middle-aged and married Indian; his name was of very good promise, Angelo Custodio (Guardian Angel).

Point Jaguararí forms at this season of the year a high sandbank, which is prolonged as a narrow spit, stretching about three miles towards the middle of the river. We rounded this with great difficulty on the night of the 29th, reaching before daylight a good shelter behind a similar sandbank at Point Acarátingari, a headland situated not more than five miles in a straight line from our last anchoring place. We remained here all day; the men beating _timbó_ in a quiet pool between the sandbank and the mainland, and obtaining a great quantity of fish, from which I selected six species new to my collection. We made rather better progress the two following nights, but the terral now always blew strongly from the north-north-east after midnight, and thus limited the hours during which we could navigate, forcing us to seek the nearest shelter to avoid being driven back faster than we came.

On the 2nd of October, we reached Point Cajetúba and had a pleasant day ashore. The river scenery in this neighbourhood is of the greatest beauty. A few houses of settlers are seen at the bottom of the broad bay of Aramána-í at the foot of a range of richly-timbered hills, the high beach of snow-white sand stretching in a bold curve from point to point. The opposite shores of the river are ten or eleven miles distant, but towards the north is a clear horizon of water and sky. The country near Point Cajetúba is similar to the neighbourhood of Santarem: namely, campos with scattered trees. We gathered a large quantity of wild fruit: Cajú, Umirí, and Aápiránga. The Umirí berry (Humirium floribundum) is a black drupe similar in appearance to the Damascene plum, and not greatly unlike it in taste. The Aápiránga is a bright vermilion-coloured berry, with a hard skin and a sweet viscid pulp enclosing the seeds. Between the point and Altar do Chao was a long stretch of sandy beach with moderately deep water; our men, therefore, took a rope ashore and towed the cuberta at merry speed until we reached the village. A long, deeply laden canoe with miners from the interior provinces passed us here. It was manned by ten Indians, who propelled the boat by poles; the men, five on each side, trotting one after the other along a plank arranged for the purpose from stem to stern.

It took us two nights to double Point Cururú, where, as already mentioned, the river bends from its northerly course beyond Altar do Chao. A confused pile of rocks, on which many a vessel heavily laden with farinha has been wrecked, extends at the season of low water from the foot of a high bluff far into the stream. We were driven back on the first night (October 3rd) by a squall. The light terral was carrying us pleasantly round the spit, when a small black cloud which lay near the rising moon suddenly spread over the sky to the northward; the land breeze then ceased, and furious blasts began to blow across the river. We regained, with great difficulty, the shelter of the point. It blew almost a hurricane for two hours, during the whole of which time the sky over our heads was beautifully clear and starlit. Our shelter at first was not very secure, for the wind blew away the lashings of our sails, and caused our anchor to drag. Angelo Custodio, however, seized a rope which was attached to the foremast, and leapt ashore; had he not done so, we should probably have been driven many miles backwards up the storm-tossed river. After the cloud had passed, the regular east wind began to blow, and our further progress was effectually stopped for the night. The next day we all went ashore, after securing well the canoe, and slept from eleven o’clock till five under the shade of trees.

The distance between Point Cururú and Santarem was accomplished in three days, against the same difficulties of contrary and furious winds, shoaly water, and rocky coasts. I was thankful at length to be safely housed, with the whole of my collections, made under so many privations and perils, landed without the loss or damage of a specimen. The men, after unloading the canoe and delivering it to its owner, came to receive their payment. They took part in goods and part in money, and after a good supper, on the night of the 7th October, shouldered their bundles and set off to walk by land some eighty miles to their homes. I was rather surprised at the good feeling exhibited by these poor Indians at parting. Angelo Custodio said that whenever I should wish to make another voyage up the Tapajos, he would be always ready to serve me as pilot. Alberto was undemonstrative as usual; but Ricardo, with whom I had had many sharp quarrels, actually shed tears when he shook hands and bid me the final “adios.”