Manaus

“ There is Manãos, for instance, the capital of the State of Amazonas. Manãos is situated at the mouth of the Rio Negro, which empties into the Amazon a thousand miles from the coast. When Lieutenant Herndon was there in 1851, it was a wretched little town, containing but four hundred and seventy houses, most of them one story in height, and had a population of about four thousand—whites, Indians, mixed breeds, and negro slaves all combined. To-day it is a modern, rapidly growing city, with a population already numbering fifty thousand, perhaps more, including many foreigners. ”

“ A few settlements on the banks of the main river and some of its tributaries, either for trade with the Indians or for evangelizing purposes, had been founded by the Portuguese pioneers of European civilization. The total population of the Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin in 1850 was perhaps 300,000, of whom about two-thirds were white and slaves, the latter numbering about 25,000. The principal commercial city, Pará, had from 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants, including slaves. The town of Manãos, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, had from 1000 to 1500 population ”

“ With the introduction of steam vessels, which is now rapidly taking place, the trade of Manaos is destined to increase enormously. Woods used in building and furniture work, cocoa, caoutchouc, coffee, sarsaparilla, sugar-canes, indigo, muscado nuts, salt fish, turtle butter, and other commodities, are brought here from all parts, down the innumerable streams into the Rio Negro from the west and north, into the Madeira from the west and south, and then into the Amazon, and by it away eastward to the coast of the Atlantic. ”

“ The cities of Pará and Manãos have excellent tramways, many fine public buildings and private residences, gardens and public squares, all of which give evidence of artistic taste and great prosperity.
The number of inhabitants in the Brazilian Amazon basin (the states of Amazonas and Pará) is purely a matter of rough estimate. There may be 500,000 or 600,000, or more; for the immigration during recent years from the other parts of Brazil has been large, due to the rubber excitement. ”

“ Manaos is destined to be the St. Louis of the Amazon Valley, as it is the diverging and converging point for a great deal of commerce. Freight up or down the Amazon and its tributaries is generally transshipped here, and at some seasons of the year the river front is a scene of much activity. The population is a mixed one, and includes negroes, Indians, Brazilians, Portuguese, Italians, and half a dozen nationalities of Europe, together with a few Chinese and East Indians, and occasionally Englishmen and North Americans. ”

“ The chief articles of export are coffee (of superior quality) , sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, piassaba, and fish. The Negro at this point is really five or six miles wide, but the opposite shore is masked by low islands, so that it appears to be but a mile and a half.
The country around Manáos is quite romantic for the Amazonian Valley. The land is undulating and furrowed by ravines, and the vegetation covering it is marvelously rich and diversified. In the forest, two miles from the city, there is a natural curiosity celebrated by all travelers from Spix and Martius down. ”

“ In fact, the neighbourhood produces scarcely anything; the provincial government is supplied with the greater part of its funds from the treasury of Pará; its revenue, which amounts to about 50 contos of reis (5,600l.) , derived from export taxes on the produce of the entire province, not sufficing for more than about one-fifth of its expenditure. The population of the province of the Amazons, according to a census taken in 1858, is 55,000 souls; the municipal district of Barra, which comprises a large area around the capital, containing only 4500 inhabitants. ”

“ On this account Indians in this province are far more numerous than elsewhere in Brazil, and the Indian element may be said to prevail in the mongrel population, the negro proportion being much smaller than in South Brazil.
The city is built on the best available site for a port of entry to the Amazons region, and must in time become a vast emporium; for the northern shore of the main river, where alone a rival capital could be founded, is much more difficult of access to vessels, and is besides extremely unhealthy. ”

“ Labourers were demanded on every hand. The first immigrants, who settled about Manaos, were Indians from Bolivia and Peru; but their numbers were wholly insufficient.
"It was the influx of the inhabitants of Ceará, during the draught of 1877-79, that made the development of the rubber trade possible. From that date the colonization of the forest proceeded [106] rapidly. The seekers of rubber dispersed themselves throughout Amazonia; but the region most regularly exploited was the basin of the Rio Purus and that of the Rio Jurua. ”

“ The republic is composed of twenty states, one territory and the Federal District, in which is situated the national capital. The states are very uneven in size, the largest being Amazonas, with more than a million square miles of territory, one-third of the whole, and Sergipe having only about twenty-five thousand square miles. Out of the total population of about eighteen million, more than one-fifth live in the state of Minas Geraes, while the great state of Amazonas contains only about one person for each five square miles of territory. ”

“ The Purus and the Madeira are hereafter to be navigated by steamers. The valley of the Amazon in Brazil is as large as the area of the United States east of Colorado, while the valley of the Amazon in and out of Brazil is equal to all the United States east of California, Oregon, and Washington territory, and yet the population is not equal to the single city of Rio de Janeiro or the combined inhabitants of Boston and Chicago. It is estimated that a larger population can be sustained in the valley of the Amazon than elsewhere on the globe. ”

“ It is one of the most important towns of the Amazon between Para and Manáos, and is a port of call for all river steamers, and astation on the Amazon cable line. The national government has made it a station in its system of wireless telegraphy in the Amazon valley. Seen from the river the town is attractive in appearance, and consists of a European (white) and an Indian quarter, the latter of palm thatched huts. Ruins remain of a fort built in colonial times to protect the population against hostile Indians. ”

“ Amazonas, first of the inland States, and the largest of all, has Colombia and Venezuela north, Pará east, Matto Grosso, Bolivia, and Acre south, and Peru and Colombia west. Its area is equal to that of our three Pacific Coast States with Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Colorado. In this great space the population, estimated at 435,000, is about one person to 11⁄2 square miles. Manaos, the capital, and the various other centres of population by the river side mean rubber. ”

“ The Mundurucús are perhaps the most numerous and formidable tribe of Indians now surviving in the Amazons region. They inhabit the shores of the Tapajos (chiefly the right bank) , from 3° to 7° south latitude, and the interior of the country between that part of the river and the Madeira. On the Tapajos alone they can muster, I was told, 2000 fighting men; the total population of the tribe may be about 20,000. They were not heard of until about ninety years ago, when they made war on the Portuguese settlements ”

“ And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the great river.
From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to become a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of any sort until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed between two picturesque and unequal precipices. ”

“ A fine new Market is not of small importance. The broad, clean, well shaded streets are often lined with beautiful villas and gardens; though but a degree and a half from the equator the heat is not excessive, rarely above 90° Fahr.
Manaos. The visitor to Pará, is likely to be on his way up the Amazon to Manaos or Iquitos; if a bit of an explorer, perchance to Bolivia by the newly practicable Madeira and Mamoré route, or to the rubber regions in any one of five countries. ”

“ But, with the exception of a very few who have business relations in that direction, the people of the city of Pará, as a rule, know as little of the northern mouth of the Amazon as they do of the mouth, of the Nile. And no wonder; for the Araguarý region can not be considered an attractive one in any respect, while the relations of the Paraenses with the ontside world are all through the Pará, River, which is the main channel, and the only one used nowadays by vessels visiting the Amazon, whether stopping at Para or going farther up the valley. ”

“ Numerous mounted Amazons—musty-looking Ethiopic figures in blue and white smocks, and party-coloured bead helmets—kept the inquisitive crowd at a distance with their long white wands; whilst an escort of three hundred chosen spearmen, flanked by nobles, eunuchs, and pages on horseback, brought up the rear, amid the thumping of nugáreet from the hill top, and the shrill acclamations of the entire female population of the town, which rung from every eminence in honour of the nuptials of Princess Belete Shatchau. ”

“ Since their emancipation, the negroes prefer fishing to any other mode of existence, and the Americans that came here as colonists have mostly gone back disappointed. There is really no laboring class here, and until there is we can have no agriculture. The land would produce abundantly, but there is nobody to cultivate it. I doubt if there are five hundred acres of tilled land on the Amazon, between this point and the foot of the Andes."
The exports of Manaos are rubber, coffee, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, pissaba, chinchona, fish, and turtles. ”

“ When they have had no recent arrival from Manaos, neither coffee, sugar, tea, nor bread are to be had in the village. As there is no beach here, the fishing is done at a distance on the other side of the river; and when the waters are very high, fish are not obtained even there. At such times the Indians live exclusively on farinha d’agua and water. This meagre diet, though injurious to the health, satisfies the cravings of hunger with those accustomed to it; but the few whites in this solitary place suffer severely. ”

“ To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone—or, in other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba—and that is (although some ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly swept by westerly winds. ”

“ Amazonas, the largest of the states of Brazil, lies south of British Guiana, Venezuela, and Columbia, and between Peru on the west and Pard on the east. It has an area of 732,250 square miles, and in 1900, had a population of only 207,000. Manãos. the capital, is its chief port. ”

“ Maranhão, a little larger, has Piauhy east and south, Goyaz south and west, almost touching Bahia between these two; it has Pará also on the west. Its coast line is 100 miles more than Piauhy’s. Cotton is the chief agricultural product, but others exist; the cattle industry is important, much live stock going to Amazonas; there is good forest wealth, various minerals, and important cotton factories.
São Luis do Maranhão, the capital, population 50,000, is called the chief port though troubled by sand, while Tutoya is excellent. ”

“ Closer we moved to the equator and hotter blazed the sun. And then, at last, early in the dawn we swung steadily out of the great mouth of the Madeira River and into the greater waters of the Amazon, hugging the shore. The little river steamer breasted the current up to Manaos, while on either side the little dugouts of the Indians dotted the river in the cool morning shooting turtles with a bow and arrow for the market at Manaos. ”

“ Through it flows the greatest river of the world, the Amazon, whose banks are covered with rich tropical vegetation, most beautiful to behold. Its forests are full of birds of brilliant plumage and strange animals, while the Indians, who were once the only people here, are not yet all civilized.
The Little Brazilian Cousins are nearly all descended from the Portuguese who came to this land, and made it their own, before it finally became a republic like the United States. They built many great cities, and have cultivated the [viii] country so that now it is becoming rich and powerful. ”

“ Fancy going through a city, anywhere in Europe, in our own days, without seeing either a beggar or a poverty stricken individual of any sort. Dirt, squalor, drunkenness, profane language, sickness, rags, and a thousand other miseries, meet us at every turn in the poorer quarters of our big cities. But not one of these things did I note in New Amazonia. Purity, peace, health, harmony, and comfort reigned in their stead, and presented a picture such as I had never hoped to gaze upon in this world. ”