CHAPTER XVI.

Santarem-Population-Trade-River Tapajos--Cuiaba-Diamond regionAccount of the Indians of the Tapajos.

Santarem, four hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the Rio Negro, and six hundred and fifty miles from the sea, is the largest town of the province, after Pará. By official returns it numbers four thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven free, (eighty-seven being foreigners,) and one thousand five hundred and ninety-one slave inhabitants. There were two hundred and eighty-nine births, forty-two deaths, and thirty-two marriages, in the year 1849.

I would estimate the population of the town of Santarem at about two thousand souls. In the official returns, all the settlers on the cocoa plantations for miles round, and all the tapuios engaged in the navigation of the river, are reckoned in the estimate. This, I believe, is the case with all the towns; and thus the traveller is continually surprised to find population rated so high in places where he encounters but few people.

There is said to be a good deal of elephantiasis and leprosy among the poorer class of its inhabitants. I did not visit their residences, which are generally on the beach above the town, and therefore saw nothing of them; nor did I see much poverty or misery.

There are tokens of an increased civilization in a marble monument in the cemetery, and a billiard table. The houses are comfortably furnished, though I believe every one still sleeps in a hammock. The rides in the environs are agreeable, the views picturesque, and the horses good. A tolerably good and well-bitted horse may be had for seventy-five dollars; they graze in the streets and outskirts of the town, and are fed with Indian corn.

There is a church (one of the towers has lately tumbled down) and two or three primary schools. The gentlemen all wear gold watches, and take an immoderate quantity of snuff. I failed to get statistics of the present trade of Santarem; but an examination of the following tables furnished by Mr. Gouzennes, the intelligent and gentlemanly vice-consul of France, will show the increase in the exports of the place in the three years between 1843 and 1846.

These tables show the tonnage and cargoes of the vessels arriving in Santarem for three months in each year.

Mr. Gouzennes gave me the table for 1843, and to M. Castelnau the table for 1846. He also gave me a letter to M. Chaton, French consul at Pará, requesting that gentleman to give me his tables for the last year, (1851;) but they had been sent to France.

I think, but have no means of forming an accurate judgment, that the importations of Santarem have not increased in the same proportion in the years between 1846 and 1852. A few of these articles—such as the cotton, the coffee, a part of the tobacco, and the farinha-were probably consumed in Santarem. The rest were reshipped to Pará for consumption there, or for foreign exportation.

CONNEXION OF THE AMAZON AND LA PLATA. 305

The decrease in the consumption of farinha is significant, and shows an increased consumption of flour from the United States.

I had from Capt. Hislop, an old Scotchman, resident of Santarem, and who had traded much with Cuiabá, in the province of Matto Grosso, the following notices of the river Tapajos, and its connexion with the Atlantic, by means of the rivers Paraguay and La Plata.

Hence to the port of Itaituba, the river is navigable for large vessels, against a strong current, for fifteen days. The distance is about two hundred miles. From Itaituba the river is navigable for boats of six or eight tons, propelled by paddling, poling, or warping. There are some fifteen or twenty caxoieras, or rapids, to pass, where the boat has to be unloaded and the cargoes carried round on the backs of the crew. one or two the boat itself has to be hauled over the land.

At

The voyage to the head of navigation on the Rio Preto, a confluent of the Tapajos, occupies about two months. At this place mules are found to carry the cargo fifteen miles, to the village of Diamantino, situated on the high lands that divide the head-waters of the streams flowing south from those of the streams flowing north, which approach each other at this point very closely.

These high lands are rich in diamonds and minerals. I saw some in possession of Capt. Hislop. The gold dust is apparently equal in quality to that I had seen from California.

From Diamantino to Cuiabá the distance is ninety miles, the road crossing the Paraguay river, which there, at some seasons, is nearly dry and muddy, and at others a rapid and deep stream, dangerous for the mules to pass.

Some years ago a shorter land-carriage was discovered between the head-waters of the northern and southern streams.

By ascending the Arinos, a river which empties into the Tapajos, below the mouth of the Preto, a point was reached within eighteen miles by land-carriage of a navigable point on the Cuiabá river above the city. The boat was hauled over these eighteen miles by oxen, (showing that the passage can be neither very high nor rugged,) and launched upon the Cuiabá, which is navigable thence to the city.

This was about three years ago; but the trade, for some reason, is still carried on by the old route of the Preto, and the land-carriage of one hundred and five miles to Cuiabá.

A person once attempted to descend by the San Manoel, a river that rises in the same high lands as the Preto and Arinos, and empties into the Tapajos, far below them; but he encountered so many obstructions to navigation that he lost all but life.

The passage from Diamantino to Santarem occupies about twentysix days.

Cuiabá is a flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, situated on the river of the same name, which is thence navigable for large vessels to its junction with the Paraguay, which river is free from impediments to the ocean. It is the chief town of the rich province of Matto Grosso. It receives its supplies-the lighter articles of merchandise and luxury-by land, from Rio Janeiro, and its heavier articles— such as cannot be transported on mules for a great distance-by this route of the Tapajos. These are principally salt, iron, iron implements, wines, liquors, arms, crockeries, and guaraná, of which the people there are passionately fond.

St. Ubes or Portuguese salt is worth in Cuiabá thirteen and a half dollars the panero, of one hundred and eight pounds. Lately, however, salt has been discovered on the bottom and shores of a lake in Bolivia, near the Paraguay river. It undergoes some process to get rid of its impurities, and then is sold at four dollars the panero.

Cuiabá pays for these things in diamonds, gold dust, and hides. The diamond region is, as I have before said, in the neighborhood of the village of Diamantino, situated on the high lands that divide the head waters of the tributaries of the Amazon and La Plata. M. Castelnau visited this country, and I give the following extracts from his account of it. He says:

"The mines of gold, and especially those of diamonds, to which the city of Diamantino owes its foundation and its importance, appear to have been known from the time the Paulistas made their first settlements in the province of Matto Grosso; but, under the Portuguese government, the working of the diamond mines was prohibited to individuals under the severest penalties.

"A military force occupied the diamond districts, and watched the Crown slaves who labored in the search of this precious mineral. Every person finding one of these stones was obliged to remit it to the superintendency of diamonds at Cuyaba, for which he received a moderate recompense, whilst he would have been severely punished if detected in appropriating it.

"At this period, throughout Brazil, the commerce in diamonds was prohibited, as strictly as their extraction, to all except the special agents named by the government for this purpose.

"Subsequently to the government of João Carlos, of whom we have already spoken, this commerce became more or less tolerated, then altogether free.

"If, as we are assured, the laws which heretofore governed this branch of industry are not legally repealed, they have at least completely fallen into disuse. The inhabitants of Diamantino only complain that the prohibition of the slave trade renders it impossible for them to profit by the wealth of the country.

"In 1746 valuable diamonds were found, for the first time, in Matto Grosso, and were soon discovered in great quantities in the little river of Ouro. The governor, Manuel Antunes Nogueiza, designing to take possession of these lands for the benefit of the Crown, ejected the inhabitants therefrom. Famine made great ravages among the wretches thus deprived of their homes.

"From that time the country seems to have suffered every evil. A long drought was followed by a terrible earthquake on the 24th September, 1746. It was not until May 13, 1805, that the inhabitants were again permitted to take possession of their property, but upon condition of remitting to the Crown, under severe penalties, all the diamonds found.

"In 1809 a royal mandate established at Cuyabá a diamond junta. “Gold and diamonds, which are always united in this region, as in many others, are found, especially in the numerous water-courses which furrow it, and also throughout the whole country.

"After the rains, the children of Diamantino hunt for the gold contained in the earth even of the streets, and in the bed of the river Ouro, which, as has been said, passes through the city; and they often collect to the value of one or two patacas (from eight to fifteen grains) Brazil weight.

"It is related that a negro, pulling vegetables in his garden, found a diamond in the earth attached to the roots. It is also said that, shortly before our arrival at Diamantino, a muleteer, driving a stake in the ground to tie his mules to, found a diamond of the weight of a demioitava, (about nine carats.) This last circumstance occurred in the chapada (table land) of San Pedro.

"We have heard it stated that diamonds are sometimes found in the stomachs of the fowls.

"The rivers Diamantino, Ouro, and Paraguay appear already to be completely exhausted. The river Burité continues to furnish many stones; but the Santa Anna, so to speak, is still virgin, and, notwithstanding the incredible quantity of diamonds taken from it, it does not appear to have lost its primitive richness.

"It would appear, however, that diamond-hunting is not as productive as it is believed; for they quote in the country, as very remarkable,