The Andes And The Amazon; Or, Across The Continent Of South America

NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Harper &amp; Brothers , In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York....

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WHOSE PROFOUND RESEARCHES HAVE THROWN SO MUCH LIGHT UPON EVERY DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE, AND WHOSE CHARMING "VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE" HAS SO PLEASANTLY ASSOCIATED HIS NAME WITH OUR SOUTHERN CONTINENT, THESE SKETCHES OF THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON ARE, BY PERMISSION, MOST RESPECTFULLY Dedicated.

"Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Terra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."— Darwin's Journal , p. 503. Preface Introductio

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PREFACE.

This volume is one result of a scientific expedition to the equatorial Andes and the river Amazon. The expedition was made under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and consisted of the following gentlemen besides the writer: Colonel Staunton, of Ingham University, Leroy, N.Y.; F.S. Williams, Esq., of Albany, N.Y.; and Messrs. P.V. Myers and A. Bushnell, of Williams College. We sailed from New York July 1, 1867; and, after crossing the Isthmus of Panama and touching at Paita, Peru, our

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INTRODUCTION

Rev. J.C. FLETCHER, author of "brazil and brazilians." In this day of many voyages, in the Old World and the New, it is refreshing to find an untrodden path. Central Africa has been more fully explored than that region of Equatorial America which lies in the midst of the Western Andes and upon the slopes of these mountain monarchs which look toward the Atlantic. In this century one can almost count upon his hand the travelers who have written of their journeys in this unknown region. Our own Her

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CHAPTER I.

Guayaquil.— First and Last Impressions.— Climate.— Commerce.— The Malecon.— Glimpse of the Andes.— Scenes on the Guayas.— Bodegas.— Mounted for Quito.— La Mona.— A Tropical Forest. Late in the evening of the 19th of July, 1867, the steamer "Favorita" dropped anchor in front of the city of Guayaquil. The first view awakened visions of Oriental splendor. Before us was the Malecon, stretching along the river, two miles in length—at once the most beautiful and the most busy street in the emporium of

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CHAPTER II.

Our Tambo.— Ascending the Andes.— Camino Real.— Magnificent Views.— Guaranda.— Cinchona.— The Summit.— Chimborazo.— Over the Andes.— Chuquipoyo the Wretched.— Ambato.— A Stupid City.— Cotopaxi.— The Vale of Machachi.— Arrival at Quito. We reached Savaneta at 5 P.M. This little village of hardly twenty houses becomes the Bodegas, or place of deposit for the mountains six months in the year, for in the invierno the roads are flooded, and canoes take the place of mules from Savaneta to Babahoyo. Ev

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CHAPTER III.

Early History of Quito.— Its Splendor under the Incas.— Crushed by Spain.— Dying now.— Situation.— Altitude.— Streets.— Buildings. Quito is better known than Ecuador. Its primeval history, however, is lost in obscurity. In the language of Prescott, "the mists of fable have settled as darkly round its history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World." Founded, nobody knows when, by the kings of the Quitus, it was conquered about the year 1000 by a more civilized race, the

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CHAPTER IV.

Population of Quito.— Dress.— Manners.— Character.— Commerce.— Agriculture.— Manufactures.— Arts.— Education.— Amusements.— Quito Ladies. Quitonians claim for their capital eighty thousand inhabitants; but when we consider that one fourth of the city is covered with ecclesiastical buildings, and that the dwelling-houses are but two stories high, we see that there is not room for more than half that number. From thirty thousand to forty thousand is the estimate of the venerable Dr. Jameson, who h

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CHAPTER V.

Ecuador.— Extent.— Government.— Religion.— A Protestant Cemetery in Quito.— Climate.— Regularity of Tropical Nature.— Diseases on the Highlands. The republic of Ecuador looks like a wedge driven into the continent between the Marañon and the Putumayo. It has 1200 miles of Pacific coast, and an area of about two hundred thousand square miles, including the Galápagos Islands. Peru, however, claims the oriental half, drawing her northern boundary from Tumbez through Canélos and Archidona; and she i

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CHAPTER VI.

Astronomic Virtues of Quito.— Flora and Fauna of the Valley of Quito.— Primeval Inhabitants of the Andes.— Quichua Indians. Quito, with a position unparalleled for astronomical purposes, has no observatory. The largest telescope in the city is about five feet long, but the astute professor of natural philosophy in the Jesuit College who has charge of it had not the most distant idea that an eclipse of the sun would occur on the 29th of August, and an eclipse of the moon fifteen days later. In an

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Ecuadorian Volcanoes

10,000 ft. Chimborazo. 10,000 ft. Chimborazo. 10,000 ft. Cotopaxi. 10,000 ft. Cotopaxi. 10,000 ft. Caraguairazo. 10,000 ft. Caraguairazo. 10,000 ft. Pichincha. 10,000 ft. Pichincha. We will now speak more particularly of the Andes of the equator. The mountain chain is built up of granite, gneissoid, and schistose rocks, often in vertical position, and capped with trachyte and porphyry. [60] Large masses of solid rock are rarely seen; every thing is cracked, calcined, or triturated. While in Boli

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CHAPTER VIII.

The Volcanoes of Ecuador.— Western Cordillera.— Chimborazo.— Iliniza.— Corazon.— Pichincha.— Descent into its Crater. Coming up from Peru through the cinchona forests of Loja, and over the barren hills of Assuay, the traveler reaches Riobamba, seated on the threshold of magnificence—like Damascus, an oasis in a sandy plain, but, unlike the Queen of the East, surrounded with a splendid retinue of snowy peaks that look like icebergs floating in a sea of clouds. On our left is the most sublime spec

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CHAPTER IX.

The Volcanoes of Ecuador.— Eastern Cordillera.— Imbabura.— Cayambi.— Antisana.— Cotopaxi.— Llanganati.— Tunguragua.— Altar.— Sangai. Near the once busy city of Otovalo, utterly destroyed in the late earthquake, the two Cordilleras join, and, turning to the right, we go down the eastern range. The first in order is Imbabura, [77] which poured forth a large quantity of mud, with thousands of fishes, seven years before the similar eruption of Caraguairazo. At its feet is the beautiful lake of San P

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CHAPTER X.

The Valley of Quito.— Riobamba.— A Bed of "Fossil Giants."— Chillo Hacienda.— Otovalo and Ibarra.— The Great Earthquake of 1868. The Valley of Quito has about the same size and shape as the basin of Salt Lake, but it is five thousand feet higher. [92] The two cordilleras inclosing it are tied by the mountain-knots of Assuay and Chisinchi, so that the valley is subdivided into three basins, those of Cuenca, Ambato, and Quito proper, which increase in beauty and altitude as we travel north. There

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CHAPTER XI.

"The Province of the Orient," or the Wild Napo Country.— The Napos, Zaparos, and Jívaros Indians.— Preparations to cross the Continent. On the eastern slope of the Ecuadorian Andes, between the Marañon and its tributary the Putumayo, lies the Napo country. This almost unknown region has the area of New York and New England together. The government of Quito, by a sonorous decree in 1854, baptized it "La Provincia del Oriente." Peru likewise claims it, but neither republic has done any thing to co

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CHAPTER XII.

Departure from Quito.— Itulcachi.— A Night in a Bread-tray.— Crossing the Cordillera.— Guamani.—Papallacta.— Domiciled at the Governor's.— An Indian Aristides.— Our Peon Train.— In the Wilderness. Forty miles east-southeast of Quito, on the eastern slope of the Eastern Cordillera, and on the western edge of the great forest, is the Indian village of Papallacta. From the capital to this point there is a path just passable for horses; but thence to the Napo travelers must take to their feet. Throu

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CHAPTER XIII.

Baeza.— The Forest.— Crossing the Cosanga.— Curi-urcu.— Archidona.— Appearance, Customs, and Belief of the Natives.— Napo and Napo River. Eight hours' hard travel from Pachamama brought us to Baeza. This "Antigua Ciudad," as Villavicencio calls it, was founded in 1552 by Don Egilio Ramirez Dávalos, and named after the quite different spot where Scipio the Younger routed Asdrubal a thousand years before. It consists of two habitations, the residence of two families of Tumbaco Indians, situated in

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CHAPTER XIV.

Afloat on the Napo.— Down the Rapids.— Santa Rosa and its mulish Alcalde.— Pratt on Discipline.— Forest Music.—Coca.— Our Craft and Crew.— Storm on the Napo. We embarked November 20th on our voyage down the river. It is no easy matter to hire or cajole the Indians for any service. Out of feast-time they are out of town, and during the festival they are loth to leave, or are so full of chicha they do not know what they want. We first woke up the indolent alcalde by showing him the President's ord

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CHAPTER XV.

Sea-Cows and Turtles' Eggs.— The Forest.— Peccaries.— Indian Tribes on the Lower Napo.— Anacondas and Howling Monkeys.— Insect Pests.— Battle with Ants.— Barometric Anomaly.— First View of the Amazon,— Pebas. The thirtieth of November was an exciting day on the monotonous Napo. We fell in with numerous sea-cows sporting in the middle of the stream. They were greatly disturbed by the sight of our huge craft, and, lifting their ugly heads high out of the water, gave a peculiar snort, as if in defi

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CHAPTER XVI.

Down the Amazon.— Steam on the Great River.— Loreto.— San Antonio.— Tabatinga.— Brazilian Steamers.— Scenery on the Amazon.— Tocantíns.— Fonte Boa.— Ega.— Rio Negro.— Manáos. We left Pebas for Tabatinga in the Peruvian steamer "Morona," Captain Raygado. Going up to Jerusalem by railroad, or ascending the Nile by a screw whisking the sacred waters, is not so startling as the sight of a steamer in the heart of South America. There is such a contrast between the primeval wildness of the country and

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CHAPTER XVII.

Down the Amazon.— Serpa.—Villa Nova.— Obidos.— Santarem.— A Colony of Southerners.— Monte Alégre.— Porto do Moz.— Leaving the Amazon.—Breves.— Pará River.— The City of Pará.— Legislation and Currency.— Religion and Education.— Nonpareil Climate. At 10 p.m. we left Manáos in the "Tapajos," an iron steamer of seven hundred tons. We missed the snow-white cleanliness and rigid regularity of the "Icamiaba," and Captain José Antunes Rodrigues de Oliveira Catramby was quite a contrast to Lieutenant Nun

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CHAPTER XVIII.

The River Amazon.— Its Source and Magnitude.— Tributaries and Tints.— Volume and Current.— Rise and Fall.— Navigation.— Expeditions on the Great River. Near the silver mines of Cerro Pasco, in the little Lake of Lauricocha, just below the limit of perpetual winter, rises the "King of Waters." [148] For the first five hundred miles it flows northerly, in a continuous series of cataracts and rapids, through a deep valley between the parallel Cordilleras of Peru. Upon reaching the frontier of Ecuad

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CHAPTER XIX.

The Valley of the Amazon.— Its Physical Geography.— Geology.— Climate.— Vegetation. From the Atlantic shore to the foot of the Andes, and from the Orinoco to the Paraguay, stretches the great Valley of the Amazon. In this vast area the United States might be packed without touching its boundaries. It could contain the basins of the Mississippi, the Danube, the Nile, and the Hoang-Ho. It is girt on three sides by a wall of mountains: on the north are the highlands of Guiana and Venezuela; on the

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CHAPTER XX.

Life within the Great River.— Fishes.— Alligators.— Turtles.— Porpoises and Manatís. The Amazon is a crowded aquarium, holding representatives of every zoological class—infusoria, hydras, fresh-water shells (chiefly Ampullaria, Melania, and Unios), aquatic beetles (belonging mostly to new genera), fishes, reptiles, water birds, and cetaceans. The abundance and variety of fishes are extraordinary; so also are the species. This great river is a peculiar ichthyic province, and each part has its cha

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CHAPTER XXI.

Life around the Great River.— Insects.— Reptiles.— Birds.— Mammals. The forest of the Amazon is less full of life than the river. Beasts, birds, and reptiles are exceedingly scarce; still there is, in fact, a great variety, but they are widely scattered and very shy. In the animal, as in the vegetable kingdom, diversity is the law; there is a great paucity of individuals compared with the species. [173] Insects are rare in the dense forest; they are almost confined to the more open country along

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CHAPTER XXII.

Life around the Great River.— Origin of the Red Man.— General Characteristics of the Amazonian Indians.— Their Languages, Costumes, and Habitations.— Principal Tribes.— Mixed Breeds.— Brazilians and Brazil. We come now to the genus Homo. Man makes a very insignificant figure in the vast solitudes of the Amazon. Between Manáos and Pará, the most densely-peopled part of the valley, there is only one man to every four square miles; and the native race takes a low place in the scale of humanity. As

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CHAPTER XXIII.

How to Travel in South America.— Routes.— Expenses.— Outfit.— Precautions.— Dangers. The most vague and incorrect notions prevail in respect to traveling in South America. The sources of trustworthy and desirable information are very meagre. Murray has not yet published a "Hand-book for the Andes;" routes, methods, and expenses of travel are almost unknown; and the imagination depicts vampires and scorpions, tigers and anacondas, wild Indians and fevers without end, impassable rivers and inacces

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IN MEMORIAM.

"A life that all the Muses decked With gifts of grace that might express All comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilizing intellect."—Tennyson. On the east of the city of Quito is a beautiful and extensive plain, so level that it is literally a table-land . It is the classic ground of the astronomy of the eighteenth century: here the French and Spanish academicians made their celebrated measurement of a meridian of the earth. As you stand on the edge of this plain just without the city, you

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APPENDIX A.

Barometrical Measurements across South America. [188] Vocabularies from the Quichua, Záparo, Yágua, and Cámpas Languages. [Spanish Pronunciation] ( The Conibos count by twos. Thus, one is avícho; two , rabói. Above two, so many twos, as four is rabói-rabói; and six , rabói-rabói-rabói. Ten is expressed by spreading both hands, and twenty by bringing fingers and toes together. Thus the Caribs. Decimal numeration is found among all the American aborigines, ancient and modern, juxtaposition usually

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CAMPAS WORDS.

( My informant on numerals, a boy, though quite intelligent, could go no farther; but the tribe undoubtedly count ten. )...

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COMMERCE OF THE AMAZON.

View the continuation of the table by scrolling or click here for an expanded version. I.— Value of Products Exported from different Towns on the Amazon by the Imperial Steamers in 1867. [190] II. Articles Exported from Pará to the United States in 1860. III. Articles Imported from the United States to Pará in 1860 . IV. Duties on Principal Imports from United States at Pará . This Tariff went into operation February 23, 1861....

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ADDENDA.

Orchilla , page 29.—This valuable lichen comes chiefly from Tumbez. It is not found on the rocks, like the orchilla of the Old World, but grows on various trees. The foliage of a tree disappears when the orchilla commences. The sea air is indispensable to its production, as it is found only near the coast. Religious Intolerance , p. 91.—The expression "Protestant dogs" has since been publicly repeated by a priest in a sermon, who told the people to confess, or they would be treated in a similar

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