William Lewis Herndon, Lieutenant, U.S.N.

“ Antonio Vital, hearing of his death and seeing himself abandoned, without hope of succor, determined to commit himself to the downward current; and, embarking in a canoe with six Indians, he soon reached the Jesuit missionary stations near the mouth of the Ucayali. Directed by these missionaries, he ascended the Marañon, the Huallaga, and the river Mayo as far as it is navigable. He then disembarked, travelled by land through Moyobamba and Chachapoyas, and passing through Lima arrived at Jauxa, whence he had set out with Father Biedma. ”

“ Madame Godin des Odonnais, wife of one of the French commissioners who was sent with Condamine to measure an arc of the meridian near Quito, started in 1769, from Rio Bamba, in Ecuador, to join her husband in Cayenne by the route of the Amazon. She embarked at Canelos, on the Borbonaza, with a company of eight persons; two, besides herself, being females. On the third day the Indians who conducted their canoe deserted: another Indian, whom they found sick in a hovel near the bank, and employed as pilot, fell from the canoe in endeavoring to pick up the hat of one of the party, and was drowned. ”

“ In 1726, the converted Indians about the head of canoe navigation on the Huallaga, (the tidings of the gospel were first carried to these from Huanuco, by Felipe Luyendo, in 1631,) crossing the hills that border that river on its eastern bank, discovered a wooded plain, which was named Pampa del Sacramento, from the day of its discovery being the festival of Corpus Cristi. This was a new field for the missionary; and by 1760, the Fathers of the college at Ocopa had penetrated across this plain to the Ucayali, and re-established the missions of Manoa, the former spiritual conquests of Biedma. ”

“ Officers of the French navy, stimulated by the example of those of the English, who had preceded them in the exploration of the Amazon, made also important hydrographical observations of the course of that river, which show that its principal outlet is along the shores of French Guyana, whence France may command the fluvial navigation and the commerce of those vast regions. ”

“ Between the years 1639 and 1648, Padre Tomas de Chavas, a Dominican, entered among the Chunchos, from Cochabamba, in Bolivia. He took twelve of them to Lima, where they were baptized. He then went back and lived among them fourteen years, making many expeditions. His last was in 1654 among the Moxos Indians of the Mamoré. He there cured a cacique of some infirmity, and the Emperor of the Musus (this is the great Paititi or gilded King of the Spaniards) sent six hundred armed men to the cacique of the Moxos, demanding that the reverend father should be sent to cure his Queen. ”

“ Gibbon from penetrating to the eastward of Cuzco, and seeking in that direction the sources of the Purus. This character is entirely distinct from that of the Indians of the plains everywhere in South America, who are, in general, gentle, docile, and obedient, and who fear the white man with an abject and craven fear.
Love of dominion and power had induced the Indian princes of Peru to waste their treasures and the lives of their subjects in the subjugation of the Montaña. A stronger passion was now to urge a stronger people in the same direction. ”

“ According to Garcilasso de la Vega, himself a descendant of the Incas, the attention of the Peruvian government was directed to the country east of the Andes even before the time of the Spanish conquest. The sixth Inca, Rocca, sent his son, Yahuar Huaccac, at the head of 15,000 men, with three generals as companions and advisers, to the conquest of the country to the northward and eastward of Cuzco, called Antisuyo, inhabited by Indians called Antis. ”

“ About this time the Franciscans, also penetrating from Tarma by the valleys of Chanchamayo and Vitoc, established the missions of the Cerro de la Sal and the Pajonal. The Cerro de la Sal is described as a mountain of rock and red earth, with veins of salt of thirty yards in breadth, to which the Indians, for many miles round, were in the habit of repairing for their supply. The Pajonal is a great grassy plain, enclosed between the river Pachitea and a great bend of the Ucayali. ”

“ Here the father
16 INTRODUCTORY.
found a large town inhabited by an incredible number of savages, all soldiers, guarding this great port of the river, and entrance into the empire of the Musus. No women were to be seen; they lived in another town, a league off, and only came in by day to bring food and drink to the warriors, and returned at night.
“He observed that the river at this place divided into many arms, all appearing navigable, and formed large islands, on which were great towns. He travelled hence twenty-seven days, when he arrived at court. ”

“ The Indians, however, in the course of time, revolted, murdered their oppressors, and destroyed their towns. Up to the last three years this has been a sealed country to the white man. I shall have occasion to refer to it again.
While these efforts to penetrate the Montaña to the eastward of Cuzco were being made, Gonzalo Pizarro fitted out at Quito an expedition, consisting of 350 Spaniards and 4,000 Indians, with large supplies of provisions and live stock. ”

“ In consequence, the government of Peru invites all who desire it to take advantage, and make use of the natural productions of these regions, where emigrants of all nations shall have all the political and religious guarantees necessary in the exercise of their industry. ”

“ Chili, in arts and civilization, is far ahead of any other South American republic. There are many young men of native families, educated in the best manner in Europe, who would be ornaments to any society ”

“ These show the pains I have taken with the government of Louis Philippe, King of France, in order to open a new line of commercial communication between Cayenne and French Guyana and the republics of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
But I have always thought that our America, by the intelligence of its people, was to make a great social and commercial change ”

“ Her clothes were soon torn to rags, her body lacerated by her exertions in forcing her way through the tangled and thorny undergrowth, and she was kept constantly in a state of deadly terror by the howl of the tiger and the hiss of the serpent. It is wonderful that she preserved her reason. Eight terrible days and nights did she wander alone in the howling wilderness, supported by a few berries and birds’ eggs. Providentially (one cannot say accidentally) she stuck the river at a point where two Indians (a man and a woman)
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were just launching a canoe. ”

“ President of the French Republic.
PRINCE: In bringing to the notice of your Excellency the adjoined copy, which is a duplicate of my note, laid before the executive power which governed republican France in June, 1848, my object is to call the attention of your Excellency to the same project which Napoleon, your august uncle, conceived for the aggrandizement of the most important colony which France possesses in the New World — French Guyana. ”

“ I had him cut in pieces, as was just; for, believe me, señor, wherever I am, people live according to the law.
“In the year 1559 the Marquis of Cañete sent to the Amazon Pedro de Ursoa, a Navarrese, or rather a Frenchman. We sailed on the largest rivers of Peru till we came to a gulf of fresh water. We had already gone 300 leagues, when we killed that bad and ambitious captain. ”

“ Here they found lying upon the ground a man, five yards in height, members in proportion, long snout, projecting teeth, vesture of beautiful leopard skin, short and shriveled, and, for a walking stick, a tree, which he played with as with a cane. ”

“ U. S. ship Vandalia — Valparaiso — Santiago — Vicente Pazos — Prepatory orders — Lima — Means of information — Conquests of the Incas in the Montaña — First explorations of the Spaniards — Madame Godin.
Attached to the U. S. ship Vandalia, of the Pacific squadron, lying at anchor in the harbor of Valparaiso, in the month of August, 1850, I received a communication from the Superintendent of the National Observatory, (1st cousin) Matthew Fontaine Maury informing me that orders to explore the Valley of the Amazon would be sent me by the next mail steamer. ”