Madeira River

“ The Purús, a very sluggish river, enters the Amazon west of the Madeira, which it parallels as far south as the falls of the latter stream. It runs through a continuous forest at the bottom of the great depression lying between the Madeira river, which skirts the edge of the Brazilian sandstone plateau, and the Ucayali which hugs the base of the Andes. ”

“ The Madeira-Mamoré railroad is an isolated railroad, being built in the western part of Brazil by an American company under contract [254] with the Brazilian government. One must go a thousand miles up the Amazon, and then six hundred and sixty miles up the Madeira River to Santo Antonio de Rio Madeira, where this line begins, and which is in the very heart of South America. Above the rapids there are several hundred more miles of navigable waters, upon which a service of steamers is maintained. There are few people in that section of the country, and it may never be popular with immigrants. ”

“ About three miles above Crato is Umaitá, a thriving Portuguese settlement belonging to Don Juan Montero, who is the wealthiest settler on the Madeira River. He has a small steamer of his own that trades between Umaitá and Pará. Das Abeillas, a Brazilian rubber collector’s head-quarters, is the next station passed, and then an ascending steamer enters on the reserve of the Parententin Indians, and steams through some score or so of leagues of lands where no settler has yet been able to keep a footing. ”

“ The banks are, as a rule, much higher and better defined than those of the Amazon, there being few, if any, lagoons on its course from Serpa to the rapids.
The only trade of consequence at present on the river Madeira is the collection of rubber, the forests on either bank abounding in groves of the Syphonia elastica, the tree that yields this valuable product. The rubber trade, as at present carried on, on this river, is a most delusive one, and few, if any, of the speculators have gained fortunes from their labours. ”

“ But the riches of Bolivia are locked up. Small parcels of precious goods may be got out over the Andean barrier, on mule back; or they may dribble in a thin stream down the Beni, Mamoré, and Madre de Dios rivers—rivers which unite not far from the Brazilian boundary to form the Rio Madeira. The Beni is a very great and deep river which has a course of 1500 miles before it contributes its volume to the Madeira. The Rio Madeira, a broad and deep stream in the rainy season, reaches the Amazon in another 1100 miles. ”

“ The novelty of this Madeira is already beginning to merge into the yellow of the river, the blue of the sky, and the green of the jungle, with but the occasional variation of low roseous cliffs. The average width of the river may be less than a quarter of a mile. It is loaded with floating timber, launched upon it by “terras-cahidas,” landslides, caused by the rains, which carry away sections of the forest each large enough to furnish an English park with trees. Sometimes we see a bight in the bank where such a collapse has only recently occurred, the wreckage of trees being still fresh. ”

“ In size of basin and volume of water it far exceeds the Mississippi. For a distance of 180 miles from shore the Atlantic is freshened by its waters, which vary in depth in the estuary from 90 to 900 feet. Among its 1100 tributaries, great and small, there are seven more than 1000 miles long, not counting the Marañon and Ucayali, by which it is formed. One, the Madeira River, has a length of 3000 miles. In the great region which it drains there are 1200 varieties of birds and 8000 animals not found elsewhere, to say nothing of the plants. The soil is so rich that corn is returned 800 fold. ”

“ Mountainous countries are doubtless favourable to the promotion of personal activity; and certainly the way in which the natives go up and down the steep paths here, with burthens on their backs, especially in such a climate, is something remarkable.
It is no wonder that the English are fond of Madeira, but a very great wonder that far larger numbers do not resort thither, to pass the winter months, with the numerous facilities of steam navigation now presented to them. ”

“ Nevertheless, from the report of one of his lieutenants who had examined its mouth, and from the stories of the rubbergatherers, or seringueiros, Colonel Rondon had come to the conclusion that this was the largest affluent of the Madeira, with such a body of water that it must have a big drainage basin. He thought that the Dúvida was probably one of its head streams—although every existing map represented the lay of the land to be such as to render impossible the existence of such a river system and drainage basin. ”

“ The boundary between the clay-coloured flood of the Madeira and the dark water of the tributary was straight and distinct. From a distance the black water seemed like ink, but we found it quite clear and bright. The Jaci is not an important branch river, but it was, at this period of the rains, wider than the Thames at Richmond, and without doubt very much deeper. The appearance of the forest on the Jaci was quite different from the palisades of the parent stream. On the Madeira there is commonly a narrow shelf of bank, above which the jungle rises as would a sheer cliff. ”

“ The rains in far Bolivia, overflowing the swamps there, during some months of the year increase the depth of the Madeira by forty-five feet. The local rainy season would make hardly any difference to it. The river is fed from reservoirs which stretch beneath the Andes.
There is rarely anything to show why, for a spell, the pilot should take us straight ahead in mid-stream, and then again tack to and fro across, sometimes brushing the foliage with our shrouds. ”

“ But between Guajara-Merim and San Antonio the Madeira comes down a terrace 250 miles in length of nineteen dangerous cataracts. The Bolivian rubber collectors shoot those rapids in their batelaōes, large vessels carrying sometimes ten tons of produce and a crew of a dozen men, when the river is full. Many are overturned, and the produce and the men are lost. The Madeira traverses a country notorious even on the Amazon for its fever, and quite unexplored a mile inland anywhere 181 on its banks; the rubber hunters, too, have to reckon with wandering tribes of hostile Indians. ”

“ The river near its junction with the Madeira is about 200 yards in width, is very deep, and is very abundantly stocked with fish; indeed, all the rivers and ravines that debouch into the big river amongst the rapids are full of fish at the junction, as it would seem that the fish like to frequent the quieter waters there met with. While we were breakfasting at a small clearing about a mile or so above the rapid, three of the Pacaguaras came up with a quantity of fine fresh maize, but no yucas or plantains ”

“ The population of the island is estimated at upwards of 100,000, or, at least was so till lately; but there is a good deal of emigration going on, and owing to the late distress it is likely to increase materially, both to Demerara and the Brazils, where the natives prove to be most valuable labourers.
The history of Madeira, or at least its political history, is of no great importance. Like Brazil, it is named after its wood, and so is its capital, Funchal, from a species of fern abounding in still greater profusion than the magnificent timber. ”

“ Thus it arises that in every town of the Beni the females are in a majority of perhaps five to one over the males, and the populations are decreasing. According to the data given by a Portuguese exploring expedition, which travelled in 1749 from Pará to Matto Grosso viâ the river Madeira, an account of which has been published in a compilation, by Colonel George Earl Church, of the explorations that have been made in the valley of the river Madeira, there was then in the fifteen missions of the Beni, a total population of 26,000 Indians ”

“ We are about to pass out of the Madeira Plate, having arrived at the northeast corner of the territory of Bolivia. The lands about the mouths of the Beni and Mamoré are now inhabited by wild Indians; some parts of them are free from inundation. Cacao grows wild in the forests. The head of the Madeira contains a number of islands. Here we find the outlet of streams flowing from the Andes and from the Brazils collected together in one large river. ”

“ Shortly afterwards they glided past the mouth of the Madeira, a mile and a half broad, which discharges a volume of water little inferior to that of the main river. For the Madeira has its sources far to the south, and descends partly from the cordilleras of Peru and Bolivia, partly from the plateau of Brazil.
Woods and no end of water, month after month! The heat is the same all the year round—not very excessive, seldom 104°, but still oppressive and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was not monotonous. ”

“ The Canomá is an outlet to the waters of the Madeira when this river is fuller than the main Amazons, which is the case from November to February. But it also receives the contributions of eight other independent rivers, most of which have broad, lake-like expansions of water near their junction with the Canomá. One of them, the Andirá-mirim, I was told, is a league broad for some distance from its mouth. The country bordering these interior waters is extremely fertile, and the broad lakes have clear waters and sandy shores. They abound in fish and turtle. ”

“ As we hurried down to the beach we passed several invalids, lying in hammocks swung on upright poles at head and feet and protected from the sun’s rays by awnings; these were carried by servants, and in this gentle manner they enjoyed the air and saw the sights offered on the beach without much fatigue.
What an English graveyard the Island of Madeira is! It is sad to see the feeble creatures there with the deluded idea that Madeira will give health to their tired lungs. It may in a few cases, as some plants will flourish in the climate that will kill others ”

“ Monday morning, February 2.—We dropped our anchor a quarter of a mile from the town of Funchal. We rose at six, had a cup of coffee, packed up our water-proof bags, and went on deck to get a first glimpse of Madeira. A glorious sight presented itself, producing a magical effect upon the cold, wet, dirty, sea-sick passenger who had emerged from his atrocious native climate but ten days before. Picture to yourself a deep blue sky, delicately tinted at the horizon, not a cloud to be seen, the ocean as blue as the Mediterranean. ”

“ The lower course of the Madeira presents, for more than four hundred and sixty miles, a picture of grand simplicity, and, it must be owned, monotony, which, magnificent as it appears at first, wearies the eye and sickens the heart at last,—a dead calm on an unruffled, mirror-like sheet of water glaring in the sun, and, as far as the eye can reach, two walls of dark green forest, with the dark-blue firmament above them ”

“ Any feeling of disappointment that the traveller may have experienced from his first cursory glance at the island must surely be quickly dispelled on landing, especially if this should be in the month of January, when, having left the snows and frosts of Europe behind, after travelling for four days he is basking in the almost perpetual sunshine of so-called winter in Madeira. Lovers of flowers—and to those I most recommend a visit to the island—will find fresh beauties even at every turn of the street: the gorgeous-coloured creepers seem to have taken possession everywhere. ”

“ The substantial works of the Gonçalo-Machico highway, the telegraph-posts, and the yellow-green lines of sugar-cane, were the only changes I could detect in Eastern Madeira. Nothing more charming than the variety and contrast of colours after the rusty-brown raiment which Southern Europe dons in mid-December. Even the barren, arid, and windswept eastern slopes glowed bright with the volcanic muds locally called laterites, and the foliated beds of saibros and maçapés, decomposed tufas oxidised red and yellow. ”

“ Certainly, at a later date, we met in the primitive forests of the Nicobar islands, or in Java, Luzon, and the Caroline islands, with grander and more imposing scenery; but none that surpassed in fragrance, luxuriance, and loveliness the floral beauty of Madeira.
The anchorage of Funchal [12] is merely an open, exceedingly unsafe roadstead, which affords so little protection to60 ships that often in southerly winds they are obliged to get under sail. This is especially the case in the winter, when the sea often rushes into the small unprotected bay with fearful violence. ”

“ Also the First Gentleman in Europe in the early decades of this century, by cultivating and disseminating a preference for sherry, did much to put the nose of our glorious Madeira out of joint; for men are, alas! too apt to forget the glory of this Madeira and wholly to ignore his royal descent. It is a far cry to 1421, when Prince Henry colonised Madeira, the woody island, with grape stocks from Candia, and to this day the romance and joy lingers about these island vineyards. ”

“ Madeira is reputedly dangerous also for typhoid affections, for paralysis, and for apoplexy. There is still another change to come. The valley north of the beautiful and ever maligned 'Dead Sea' of Palestine, where the old Knights Templar had their sugar-mills and indigo-manufactories, has peculiar merits. Lying some 1,350 feet below the Mediterranean, it enables a man to live with a quarter of a lung: you may run till your legs fail with fatigue, but you can no more get out of breath than you can sink in the saline waters of Lake Asphaltites. ”