Read the book: «Oregon and Eldorado; or, Romance of the Rivers», page 17

CHAPTER XII.
HERNDON'S EXPEDITION CONTINUED

On the 4th of July, the travellers arrived at the great mining station of Cerro Pasco. The weather was so cold, that the lieutenant, not being quite well, sat by the fire all day, trying to keep himself warm. The town is a most curious-looking place, entirely honey-combed, and having the mouths of mines, some of them two or three yards in diameter, gaping everywhere. From the top of a hill, the best view is obtained of the whole. Vast pits, called Tajos, surround this hill, from which many millions of silver have been taken; and the miners are still burrowing, like so many rabbits, in their bottoms and sides. The hill is penetrated in every direction; and it would not be surprising if it should cave in, any day, and bury many in its ruins. The falling-in of mines is of frequent occurrence: one caved in, some years ago, and buried three hundred persons. An English company undertook mining here in 1825, and failed. Vast sums have been spent in constructing tunnels, and employing steam machinery to drain the mines; and the parties still persevere, encouraged by discovering, that, the lower they penetrate, the richer are the ores. The yield of these mines is about two million dollars' worth a year, which is equal to the yield of all the other mines of Peru together.

The lieutenant found the leading people here, as well as at Tarma, enthusiastic on the subject of opening the Amazon to foreign commerce. It will be a great day for them, they say, when the Americans get near them with a steamer.

On the 14th of July, they arrived at a spot of marshy ground, from which trickled in tiny streams the waters, which, uniting with others, swell till they form the broad River Huallaga, one of the head tributaries of the Amazon. Their descent was now rapid; and the next day they found themselves on a sudden among fruit-trees, with a patch of sugar-cane, on the banks of the stream. The sudden transition from rugged mountain-peaks, where there was no cultivation, to a tropical vegetation, was marvellous. Two miles farther on, they came in sight of a pretty village, almost hidden in the luxuriant vegetation. The whole valley here becomes very beautiful. The land, which is a rich river-bottom, is laid off into alternate fields of sugar-cane and alfalfa. The blended green and yellow of this growth, divided by willows, interspersed with fruit-trees, and broken into wavy lines by the serpentine course of the river, presented a scene which filled them with pleasurable emotions, and indicated that they had exchanged a semi-barbarous for a civilized society.

The party had had no occasion to complain of want of hospitality in any part of their route; but here they seemed to have entered upon a country where that virtue flourished most vigorously, having at its command the means of gratifying it. The owner of the hacienda of Quicacan, an English gentleman named Dyer, received the lieutenant and his large party exactly as if it were a matter of course, and as if they had quite as much right to occupy his house as they had to enter an inn. The next day they had an opportunity to compare with the Englishman a fine specimen of the Peruvian country gentleman. Col. Lucar is thus described: "He is probably the richest and most influential man in the province. He seems to have been the father of husbandry in these parts, and is the very type of the old landed proprietor of Virginia, who has always lived upon his estates, and attended personally to their cultivation. Seated at the head of his table, with his hat on to keep the draught from his head, and which he would insist upon removing unless I would wear mine; his chair surrounded by two or three little negro children, whom he fed with bits from his plate; and attending with patience and kindness to the clamorous wants of a pair of splendid peacocks, a couple of small parrots of brilliant and variegated plumage, and a beautiful and delicate monkey, – I thought I had never seen a more perfect pattern of the patriarch. His kindly and affectionate manner to his domestics, and to his little grand-children, a pair of sprightly boys, who came in the evening from the college, was also very pleasing." The mention of a college in a region in some respects so barbarous may surprise our readers; but such there is. It has a hundred pupils, an income of seventy-five thousand dollars yearly, chemical and philosophical apparatus, and one thousand specimens of European minerals.

Ijurra, our lieutenant's Peruvian companion, had written to the governor of the village of Tingo Maria, the head of canoe navigation on the Huallaga, to send Indians to meet the travellers here, and take their luggage on to the place of embarkation.

July 30. – The Indians came shouting into the farm-yard, thirteen in number. They were young, slight, but muscular-looking fellows, and wanted to shoulder the trunks, and be off at once. The lieutenant, however, gave them some breakfast; and then the party set forward, and, after a walk of six miles, reached the river, and embarked in the canoe. Two Indian laborers, called peons, paddled the canoe, and managed it very well. The peons cooked their dinner of cheese and rice, and made them a good cup of coffee. They are lively, good-tempered fellows, and, properly treated, make good and serviceable travelling companions. The canoe was available only in parts of the river where the stream was free from rapids. Where these occur, the cargo must be landed, and carried round. Lieut. Herndon and his party were compelled to walk a good part of the distance to Tingo Maria, which was thirty-six miles from where they first took the canoe.

"I saw here," says our traveller, "the lucernago, or fire-fly of this country. It is a species of beetle, carrying two white lights in its eyes, or rather in the places where the eyes of insects generally are, and a red light between the scales of the belly; so that it reminded me somewhat of the ocean steamers. They are sometimes carried to Lima (enclosed in an apartment cut into a sugar-cane), where the ladies at balls or theatres put them in their hair for ornament."

At Tingo Maria, their arrival was celebrated with much festivity. The governor got up a ball for them, where there was more hilarity than ceremony. The next morning, the governor and his wife accompanied our friends to the port. The governor made a short address to the canoe-men, telling them that their passengers were "no common persons; that they were to have a special care of them; to be very obedient," &c. They then embarked, and stood off; the boatmen blowing their horns, and the party on shore waving their hats, and shouting their adieus.

The party had two canoes, about forty feet long by two and a half broad, each hollowed out of a single log. The rowers stand up to paddle, having one foot in the bottom of the boat, and the other on the gunwale. There is a man at the bow of the boat to look out for rocks or sunken trees ahead; and a steersman, who stands on a little platform at the stern of the boat, and guides her motions. When the river was smooth, and free from obstruction, they drifted with the current, the men sitting on the trunks and boxes, chatting and laughing with each other; but, when they approached a "bad place," their serious looks, and the firm position in which each one planted himself at his post, showed that work was to be done. When the bark had fairly entered the pass, the rapid gestures of the bow-man, indicating the channel; the graceful position of the steersman, holding his long paddle; and the desperate exertions of the rowers, the railroad rush of the canoes, and the wild screaming laugh of the Indians as the boat shot past the danger, – made a scene so exciting as to banish the sense of danger.

After this specimen of their travel, let us take a glimpse of their lodging. "At half-past five, we camped on the beach. The first business of the boatmen, when the canoe is secured, is to go off to the woods, and cut stakes and palm-branches to make a house for the 'commander.' By sticking long poles in the sand, chopping them half-way in two about five feet above the ground, and bending the upper parts together, they make in a few minutes the frame of a little shanty, which, thickly thatched with palm-leaves, will keep off the dew or an ordinary rain. Some bring the drift-wood that is lying about the beach, and make a fire. The provisions are cooked and eaten, the bedding laid down upon the leaves that cover the floor of the shanty, the mosquito nettings spread; and after a cup of coffee, a glass of grog, and a cigar (if they are to be had), everybody retires for the night by eight o'clock. The Indians sleep round the hut, each under his narrow mosquito curtain, which glisten in the moonlight like so many tombstones."

The Indians have very keen senses, and see and hear things that would escape more civilized travellers. One morning, they commenced paddling with great vigor; for they said they heard monkeys ahead. It was not till after paddling a mile that they reached the place. "When we came up to them," says the lieutenant, "we found a gang of large red monkeys in some tall trees by the river-side, making a noise like the grunting of a herd of hogs. We landed; and, in a few moments, I found myself beating my way through the thick undergrowth, and hunting monkeys with as much excitement as I had ever felt in hunting squirrels when a boy." They found the game hard to kill, and only got three, – the lieutenant, with his rifle, one; and the Indians, with their blow-guns, two. The Indians roasted and ate theirs, and Lieut. Herndon tried to eat a piece; but it was so tough, that his teeth would make no impression upon it.

Aug. 19. – The party arrived at Tarapoto. It is a town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants, and the district of which it is the capital numbers six thousand. The principal productions are rice, cotton, and tobacco; and cotton-cloth, spun and woven by the women, with about as little aid from machinery as the women in Solomon's time, of whom we are told, "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." The little balls of cotton thread which the women spin in this way are used as currency (and this in a land of silver-mines), and pass for twenty-five cents apiece in exchange for other goods, or twelve and a half cents in money. Most of the trade is done by barter. A cow is sold for one hundred yards of cotton cloth; a fat hog, for sixty; a large sheep, twelve; twenty-five pounds of salt fish, for twelve; twenty-five pounds of coffee, six; a head of plantains, which will weigh from forty to fifty pounds, for three needles; and so forth. All transportation of merchandise by land is made upon the backs of Indians, for want of roads suitable for beasts of burden. The customary weight of a load is seventy-five pounds: the cost of transportation to Moyobamba, seventy miles, is six yards of cloth. It is easy to obtain, in the term of six or eight days, fifty or sixty peons, or Indian laborers, for the transportation of cargoes, getting the order of the governor, and paying the above price, and supporting the peons on the way. The town is the most important in the province of Mainas. The inhabitants are called civilized, but have no idea of what we call comfort in their domestic arrangements. The houses are of mud, thatched with palm, and have uneven earth floors. The furniture consists of a grass hammock, a standing bedplace, a coarse table, and a stool or two. The governor of this populous district wore no shoes, and appeared to live pretty much like the rest of them.

Vessels of five feet draught of water may ascend the river, at the lowest stage of the water, to within eighteen miles of Tarapoto.

Our travellers accompanied a large fishing-party. They had four or five canoes, and a large quantity of barbasco; a root which has the property of stupefying, or intoxicating, the fish. The manner of fishing is to close up the mouth of an inlet of the river with a network made of reeds; and then, mashing the barbasco-root to a pulp, throw it into the water. This turns the water white, and poisons it; so that the fish soon begin rising to the surface, dead, and are taken into the canoes with small tridents, or pronged sticks. Almost at the moment of throwing the barbasco into the water, the smaller fish rise to the surface, and die in one or two minutes; the larger fish survive longer.

The salt fish, which constitutes an important article of food and also of barter trade, is brought from down the river in large pieces of about eight pounds each, cut from the vaca marina, or sea-cow, also found in our Florida streams, and there called manatee. It is found in great numbers in the Amazon and its principal tributaries. It is not, strictly speaking, a fish, but an animal of the whale kind, which nourishes its young at the breast. It is not able to leave the water; but, in feeding, it gets near the shore, and raises its head out. It is most often taken when feeding.

Our travellers met a canoe of Indians, one man and two women, going up the river for salt. They bought, with beads, some turtle-eggs, and proposed to buy a monkey they had; but one of the women clasped the little beast in her arms, and set up a great outcry, lest the man should sell it. The man wore a long cotton gown, with a hole in the neck for the head to come through, and short, wide sleeves. He had on his arm a bracelet of monkeys' teeth, and the women had nose-rings of white beads. Their dress was a cotton petticoat, tied round the waist; and all were filthy.

Sept. 1. – They arrived at Laguna. Here they found two travelling merchants, a Portuguese and a Brazilian. They had four large boats, of about eight tons each, and two or three canoes. Their cargo consisted of iron and iron implements, crockery-ware, wine, brandy, copper kettles, coarse short swords (a very common implement of the Indians), guns, ammunition, salt, fish, &c., which they expected to exchange for straw hats, cotton cloth, sugar, coffee, and money. They were also buying up all the sarsaparilla they could find, and despatching it back in canoes. They invited our travellers to breakfast; and the lieutenant says, "I thought that I never tasted any thing better than the farinha, which I saw now for the first time."

Farinha is a general substitute for bread in all the course of the Amazon below the Brazilian frontier. It is used by all classes; and the boatmen seemed always contented with plenty of salt fish and farinha. The women make it in this way: They soak the root of the mandioc in water till it is softened a little, when they scrape off the skin, and grate the root upon a board, which is made into a rude grater by being smeared with some of the adhesive gums of the forest, and then sprinkled with pebbles. The white grated pulp is put into a conical-shaped bag made of the coarse fibres of the palm. The bag is hung up to a peg driven into a post of the hut; a lever is put through a loop at the bottom of the bag; the short end of the lever is placed under a chock nailed to the post below; and the woman hangs her weight on the long end. This elongates the bag, and brings a heavy pressure upon the mass within, causing the juice to ooze out through the wicker-work of the bag. When sufficiently pressed, the mass is put on the floor of a mud oven; heat is applied, and it is stirred with a stick till it granulates into very irregular grains, and is sufficiently toasted to drive off all the poisonous qualities which it has in a crude state. It is then packed in baskets (lined and covered with palm-leaves) of about sixty-four pounds' weight, which are generally sold all along the river at from seventy-five cents to one dollar. The sediment of the juice is tapioca, and is used to make custards, puddings, starch, &c. It will surprise some of our readers to be told that the juice extracted in the preparation of these wholesome and nutritive substances is a powerful poison, and used by the Indians for poisoning the points of their arrows.

CHAPTER XIII.
HERNDON'S EXPEDITION CONTINUED

The Huallaga is navigable, for vessels drawing five feet depth of water, 285 miles; and forty miles farther for canoes. Our travellers had now arrived at its junction with the Amazon; and their first sight of its waters is thus described: "The march of the great river in its silent grandeur was sublime; but in the untamed might of its turbid waters, as they cut away its banks, tore down the gigantic denizens of the forest, and built up islands, it was awful. I was reminded of our Mississippi at its topmost flood; but this stream lacked the charm which the plantation upon the bank, the city upon the bluff, and the steamboat upon the waters, lend to its fellow of the North. But its capacities for trade and commerce are inconceivably great; and to the touch of steam, settlement, and cultivation, this majestic stream and its magnificent water-shed would start up in a display of industrial results that would make the Valley of the Amazon one of the most enchanting regions on the face of the earth."

Lieut. Herndon speaks of the Valley of the Amazon in language almost as enthusiastic as that of Sir Walter Raleigh: "From its mountains you may dig silver, iron, coal, copper, zinc, quicksilver, and tin; from the sands of its tributaries you may wash gold, diamonds, and precious stones; from its forests you may gather drugs of virtues the most rare, spices of aroma the most exquisite, gums and resins of the most varied and useful properties, dyes of hue the most brilliant, with cabinet and building woods of the finest polish and the most enduring texture. Its climate is an everlasting summer, and its harvest perennial."

Sept. 8. – The party encamped at night on an island near the middle of the river. "The Indians, cooking their big monkeys over a large fire on the beach, presented a savage and most picturesque scene. They looked more like devils roasting human beings, than any thing mortal." We ask ourselves, on reading this, whether some such scene may not have given rise to the stories of cannibalism which Raleigh and others record.

They arrived at Nauta, a village of a thousand inhabitants, mostly Indians. The governor of the district received them hospitably. Each district has its governor, and each town its lieutenant-governor. These are of European descent. The other authorities of a town are curacas, captains, alcades, and constables. All these are Indians. The office of curaca is hereditary, and is not generally interfered with by the white governor. The Indians treat their curaca with great respect, and submit to corporal punishment at his mandate.

Sarsaparilla is one of the chief articles of produce collected here. It is a vine of sufficient size to shoot up fifteen or twenty feet from the root without support. It thus embraces the surrounding trees, and spreads to a great distance. The main root sends out many tendrils, generally about the thickness of a straw, and five feet long. These are gathered, and tied up in bundles of about an arroba, or thirty-two pounds' weight. It is found on the banks of almost every river of the region; but many of these are not worked, on account of the savages living on them, who attack the parties that come to gather it. The price in Nauta is two dollars the arroba, and in Europe from forty to sixty dollars.

From Nauta, Lieut. Herndon ascended the Ucayali, a branch of the Amazon, stretching to the north-west in a direction somewhat parallel to the Huallaga. There is the essential difference between the two rivers, as avenues for commerce, that the Ucayali is still in the occupation of savage tribes, unchristianized except where under the immediate influence of the mission stations planted among them; while the population of the Huallaga is tolerably advanced in civilization. The following sentences will give a picture of the Indians of the Ucayali: "These people cannot count, and I can never get from them any accurate idea of numbers. They are very little removed above 'the beasts that perish.' They are filthy, and covered with sores. The houses are very large, between thirty and forty feet in length, and ten or fifteen in breadth. They consist of immense roofs of small poles and canes, thatched with palm, and supported by short stakes, four feet high, planted in the ground three or four feet apart, and having the spaces, except between two in front, filled in with cane. They have no idea of a future state, and worship nothing. But they can make bows and canoes; and their women weave a coarse cloth from cotton, and dye it. Their dress is a long cotton gown. They paint the face, and wear ornaments suspended from the nose and lower lip."

Next let us take a view of the means in operation to elevate these people to civilization and Christianity. Sarayacu is a missionary station, governed by four Franciscan friars, who are thus described: "Father Calvo, meek and humble in personal concerns, yet full of zeal and spirit for his office, clad in his long serge gown, belted with a cord, with bare feet and accurate tonsure, habitual stoop, and generally bearing upon his shoulder a beautiful and saucy bird of the parrot kind, was my beau-ideal of a missionary monk. Bregati is a young and handsome Italian, whom Father Calvo sometimes calls St. John. Lorente is a tall, grave, and cold-looking Catalan. A lay-brother named Maguin, who did the cooking, and who was unwearied in his attentions to us, made up the establishment. I was sick here, and think that I shall ever remember with gratitude the affectionate kindness of these pious and devoted friars of St. Francis."

The government is paternal. The Indians recognize in the "padre" the power to appoint and remove curacas, captains, and other officers; to inflict stripes, and to confine in the stocks. They obey the priests' orders readily, and seem tractable and docile. The Indian men are drunken and lazy: the women do most of the work; and their reward is to be maltreated by their husbands, and, in their drunken frolics, to be cruelly beaten, and sometimes badly wounded.

Our party returned to the Amazon; and we find occurring in their narrative names which are familiar to us in the history of our previous adventurers. They touched at Omaguas, the port where Madame Godin found kind friends in the good missionary and the governor, and where she embarked on her way to the galiot at Loreto; and they passed the mouth of the Napo, which enters the Amazon from the north, – the river down which Orellana passed in the first adventure. The lieutenant says, "We spoke two canoes that had come from near Quito by the Napo. There are few Christianized towns on the Napo; and the rowers of the boats were a more savage-looking set than I had seen," – so slow has been the progress of civilization in three hundred years.

The Amazon seems to be the land of monkeys. Our traveller says, "I bought a young monkey of an Indian woman to-day. It had coarse gray and white hair; and that on the top of its head was stiff, like the quills of the porcupine, and smoothed down in front as if it had been combed. I offered the little fellow some plantain; but, finding he would not eat, the woman took him, and put him to her breast, when he sucked away manfully and with great gusto. She weaned him in a week, so that he would eat plantain mashed up, and put into his mouth in small bits; but the little beast died of mortification because I would not let him sleep with his arms around my neck."

They got from the Indians some of the milk from the cow-tree. This the Indians drink, when fresh; and, brought in a calabash, it had a foamy appearance, as if just drawn from the cow. It, however, coagulates very soon, and becomes as hard and tenacious as glue. It does not appear to be as important an article of subsistence as one would expect from the name.

Dec. 2. – They arrived at Loreto, the frontier town of the Peruvian territory, and which reminds us again of Madame Godin, who there joined the Portuguese galiot. Loreto is situated on an eminence on the left bank of the river, which is here three-fourths of a mile wide, and one hundred feet deep. There are three mercantile houses in Loreto, which do a business of about ten thousand dollars a year. The houses at Loreto are better built and better furnished than those of the towns on the river above. The population of the place is two hundred and fifty, made up of Brazilians, mulattoes, negroes, and a few Indians.

At the next town, Tabatinga, the lieutenant entered the territory of Brazil. When his boat, bearing the American flag, was descried at that place, the Brazilian flag was hoisted; and when the lieutenant landed, dressed in uniform, he was received by the commandant, also in uniform, to whom he presented his passport from the Brazilian minister at Washington. As soon as this document was perused, and the lieutenant's rank ascertained, a salute of seven guns was fired from the fort; and the commandant treated him with great civility, and entertained him at his table, giving him roast beef, which was a great treat.

It was quite pleasant, after coming from the Peruvian villages, which are all nearly hidden in the woods, to see that Tabatinga had the forest cleared away from about it; so that a space of forty or fifty acres was covered with green grass, and had a grove of orange-trees in its midst. The commandant told him that the trade of the river was increasing very fast; that, in 1849, scarce one thousand dollars' worth of goods passed up; in 1850, two thousand five hundred dollars; and this year, six thousand dollars.

The sarsaparilla seems thus far to have been the principal article of commerce; but here they find another becoming of importance, —manteca, or oil made of turtle-eggs. The season for making manteca generally ends by the 1st of November. A commandant is appointed every year to take care of the beaches, prevent disorder, and administer justice. Sentinels are placed at the beginning of August, when the turtles commence depositing their eggs. They see that no one wantonly interferes with the turtles, or destroys the eggs. The process of making the oil is very disgusting. The eggs are collected, thrown into a canoe, and trodden into a mass with the feet. Water is poured on, and the mass is left to stand in the sun for several days. The oil rises to the top, is skimmed off, and boiled in large copper boilers. It is then put in earthen pots of about forty-five pounds' weight. Each pot is worth, on the beach, one dollar and thirty cents; and at Pará, from two and a half to three dollars. The beaches of the Amazon and its tributaries yield from five to six thousand pots annually. It is used for the same purposes as lard with us.