Tocantins River

“ The river view from Cametá is magnificent. The town is situated, as already mentioned, on a high bank, which forms quite a considerable elevation for this flat country, and the broad expanse of dark-green waters is studded with low, palm-clad islands, the prospect down river, however, being clear, or bounded only by a sea-like horizon of water and sky. The shores are washed by the breeze-tossed waters into little bays and creeks, fringed with sandy beaches. The Tocantins has been likened, by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, to the Ganges. ”

“ Towards night, we were obliged to cast anchor over a shoal in the middle of the river to await the ebb tide. The wind blew very strongly, and this, together with the incoming flow, caused such a heavy sea that it was impossible to sleep. The vessel rolled and pitched until every bone in our bodies ached with the bumps we received, and we were all more or less sea-sick. On the following day we entered the Anapú, and on the 30th September, after threading again the labyrinth of channels communicating between the Tocantins and the Moju, arrived at Pará. ”

“ The old man is very timid, and will never trust himself in the stormy waters of the main river if he can find a creek, though it go a long distance about.
The channels are so intricate that we find, at the bifurcations, bits of sail cloth hung on the bushes, to guide the navigators on the route to Pará. Those channels which lead to Cametá, on the Tocantins, and other places, are not marked.
We passed occasionally farm houses, with mills for grinding sugar-cane. The mills are as rude as those in Mainas, and I believe make nothing but rum. ”

“ The future of these four countries is assured, so far as the gifts of nature can assure it. The world will always want what they produce.
Far more doubtful is the future of the third section, the Selvas, or forest-covered Amazonian plain. It includes nearly all the western half of Brazil, and the eastern parts of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. An estimate of its area at 2,300,000 square miles, including the basin of the Tocantins river, might not be extravagant. ”

“ A settler named Barros, into whose territory the Indian penetrated, then built a canoe on which he embarked with the Indian and three slaves upon the river Manoel Alves Grande; this stream in a day and a half carried them into the Tocantins, on which in due time they met a vessel from Pará. After this successful expedition, Barros was employed in opening up a communication along this important route. Throughout Maranham the cultivation of cotton had, for the most part, superseded that of the sugar-cane. The captaincy produces an abundance of fruit of the finest quality. ”

“ Case put in.
“I don’t see how we’ve got along without a dog as long as we have,” grinned Jule.
“What sort of a river is this Para stream?” asked Case, as the Rambler pressed on through what seemed to be a lake anywhere from ten to fifteen miles in width, with a row of long islands hugging the south shore.
“No river at all,” Frank replied. “It is merely an estuary, as you will see when the Atlantic tide meets the current coming down from the west. And the river that runs into this estuary isn’t the Para at all. It is the Tocantins, a stream a thousand miles long. ”

“ The prospect from the village was magnificent, over the green wooded islands, far away to the grey line of forest on the opposite shore of the Tocantins. We were now well out of the low alluvial country of the Amazons proper, and the climate was evidently much drier than it is near Pará. They had had no rain here for many weeks, and the atmosphere was hazy around the horizon; so much so that the sun, before setting, glared like a blood-red globe. At Pará this never happens; the stars and sun are as clear and sharply defined when they peep above the distant tree-tops as they are at the zenith. ”

“ Leavens, up the river Tocantins, whose mouth lies about forty-five miles in a straight line, but eighty miles following the bends of the river channels, to the south-west of Pará. This river, as before stated, has a course of 1600 miles, and stands third in rank amongst the streams which form the Amazons system. The preparations for the journey took a great deal of time and trouble. We had first to hire a proper vessel, a two-masted vigilinga twenty-seven feet long, with a flat prow and great breadth of beam and fitted to live in heavy seas ”

“ The town in 1849 was estimated to contain about 5000 inhabitants, but the municipal district of which Cametá is the capital numbered 20,000; this, however, comprised the whole of the lower part of the Tocantins, which is the most thickly populated part of the province of Pará. The productions of the district are cacao, india-rubber, and Brazil nuts. The most remarkable feature in the social aspect of the place is the hybrid nature of the whole population, the amalgamation of the white and Indian races being here complete. ”

“ The aborigines were originally very numerous on the western bank of the Tocantins, the principal tribe having been the Camútas, from which the city takes its name. They were a superior nation, settled, and attached to agriculture, and received with open arms the white immigrants who were attracted to the district by its fertility, natural beauty, and the healthfulness of the climate. The Portuguese settlers were nearly all males, the Indian women were good-looking, and made excellent wives ”

“ Between Faro and Obydos, to which place the tide reaches, it decreases to less than a mile; but below Obydos it widens again, and after the junction of the Tapajos it is nearly seven miles across. The width of the channel of Braganza do Norte, the northern mouth of this vast river, is 30 miles opposite the island Marajó, and 50 at its embouchure; that of the Tangipurà channel is 18 miles at the junction of the Tocantins, and 30 at its mouth. ”

“ The two great river basins of the Amazon-Tocantins and La Plata comprise within themselves, approximately, three-fifths of the total area of Brazil. Large areas of these great river plains are annually flooded, the flood-plains of the Amazon extending nearly across the whole country and comprising thousands of square miles. The Amazon plain is heavily forested and has a slope of less than one inch to the mile within Brazilian territory—one competent authority placing it at about one-fifth of an inch per mile. ”

“ There are occasional frosts, but snow is never seen. Of Goyaz and Matto Grosso very little can be said. The lower river valleys of the Tocantins-Araguaya, Xingú, Tapajós and Paraguay are essentially tropical, their climate being hot and humid like that of the Amazon. The higher valleys of the Paraná and its tributaries, and of the rivers which flow northward, are sub-tropical in character, having high sun temperatures and cool nights. ”

“ If it be as unpalateable to carnivorous animals as it is to man, the immunity from persecution which it would thereby enjoy would account for its existing in such great numbers throughout the country.
A great number of the insects which we found here were different from those of Pará. Species characteristic of the one locality were replaced by allied species in the other, a fact which would tend to the conclusion that the Tocantins serves, to some extent, as a barrier to migration. ”

“ Now there is no such discovery on the river Tocantines, which comprehends the whole capitania of Goyaz: the first account places it near a river, which indeed runs into the Amazons, like the Tocantines, but which was sought for passing near the upper branches, and west of the river Cuiaba, a situation in which the river Chingu alone is found; other explorers place it on the Araguaya, which renders it useless to look there, for it is more than two hundred leagues north-west of the place sought. ”

“ At Gatun, the canal which has been carried through the artificial lake made by damming the Chagres River, turns sharply away from that water course on the way to the new port of Balboa. The six or eight miles of the tropical river which we are to traverse have been untouched by the activities of the canal builders. The sluggish stream flows between walls of dense green jungle, as silent as though behind their barrier only a mile or two away there were not men by the thousands making great flights of aquatic steps to lift the world’s ocean carriers over the hills. ”

“ Examining the affidavits and other evidence introduced in this case, it is clear to us that the Rio Grande is not navigable within the limits of the territory of New Mexico. The mere fact that logs, poles, and rafts are floated down a stream occasionally and in times of high water does not make it a navigable river. ”

“ Beyond the lake there must be a clean-cut over or through the mountains to the Pacific, and here six locks are reckoned sufficient. Cross-cuts from one bend in the river to another can be constructed at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or less, per mile. The canal must be sunk or raised at intervals; there will, therefore, at various points be the need of a wall of great strength and durability, from one hundred and thirty to three hundred feet in height or depth.
The annual rain-fall in the river region between Lake Nicaragua and the Caribbean Sea is twenty feet ”

“ The hill on which the port of Tocache is situated, is about thirty feet above the present level of the river, and by boiling point is one thousand five hundred and seventy-nine feet above the level of the sea.
A canoe arrived from Juan Juy, and a party of two from Saposoa by 146 land. These are towns further down the river. Each party had its pitakas, (hide trunks,) containing straw hats, rice, tobacco, and tocuyo listado, a striped cotton cloth, much used in Huanuco for "tickings." It is astonishing to see how far this generally lazy people will travel for a dollar. ”

“ The northern part of the State is rather barren, but the highlands at the south are forest clad, with fertile valleys raising a variety of agricultural products, chiefly for home consumption. There is one considerable river, the Tocuyo, several hundred miles long, which rises in the mountains of Lara, flows north, then east through Yaracuy and Falcón to the sea. With many affluents, the two of importance are the Carora and the Baragua on the left. The Rio Tocuyo comes down through a long valley, while many short rivers rising on the outer range descend rapidly to the sea. ”

“ This stream is the last that runs eastward, and soon after crossing it the track comes to the highest point over which the road to Tacna passes. Before descending, one notices to the northward, deeply indented on the side of the peak of Tacora, the aqueduct which conveys the water of the river Maury, an affluent of the Desaguadero, to the town of Tacna. This pass, which is called Chulancani, is surmounted by a huge cairn, or “apacheta,” [380] composed principally of the bones of the mules and donkeys that have fallen victims to the soroche. ”

“ The Colorado now absolutely has lost all possibilities for commerce. Pioneer conditions are about the same as far southward as the Laguna dam. This structure, built to divert water for the Yuma and Imperial valleys, absolutely bars the river channel for navigation. Above it and below it now are only ferries and a few power boats. The great Imperial canal system, at a point below Yuma, for much of the year drains the river flow. Where good-sized steamers once plied from tidewater, at the head of the Gulf of California, now, for months at a time, is only a dry sand wash. ”

“ I should judge from the periodical overflow of the lands, the heat of the sun, and the lightness and richness of the soil, that this would be the finest rice country in the world.
We started at twelve with two canoes and twelve men; river fifty yards broad, eighteen feet deep, and with three miles an hour current; a stream called the Tocache empties into it about half a mile below the port. It forces its way through five channels, over a bank of stones and sand. It is doubtless a fine large-looking river when at high water. The country is hilly on the right and flat on the left-hand side. ”

“ But these lakes, after the manner of other bodies of water, generally, in the high elevations of the American Cordilleras—Titicaca, in Peru, to wit—are gradually perishing by evaporation, their waters diminishing century by century. The Valley of Mexico, however, of recent years has received an artificial hydrographic outlet in the famous drainage canal and tunnel, which conducts the overflow into a tributary of the Panuco river, and so to the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ The summits of this range have been but seldom seen by white men, and have never been scaled. The river drains the whole territory, but loses itself in a terrific marsh before its tide reaches the Mexican gulf, toward which it runs. The current is exceedingly rapid; and, after passing for hundreds of miles under the land and under the sea, it unites its submarine torrent near the west end of Cuba, with that of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and thus forms that great oceanic river called the Gulf Stream. ”

“ The Canadian River traverses three States. It originates in the high country of northern New Mexico, flowing southeast from there into the Texas Panhandle. New Mexico has erected two dams on the River, the Conchas Dam and the Ute Dam, which provide irrigation water for farming and municipal water for the city of Tucumcari, New Mexico. In Texas, the Sanford Project diverts water to serve the municipal and industrial requirements of Texas cities throughout the Texas Panhandle region, from Amarillo to Lubbock. ”