United States or Democratic Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Batalha offered no position that he could hope to defend until the arrival of Loison; therefore, sending word to that general to move from Torras Novas, as soon as he reached that town, to Santarem, and then to march to join him at Rolica, he fell back to Alcobaca and then to Obidos, a town with a Moorish castle, built on a gentle eminence in the middle of a valley.
Since the disorders of 1835-6, when they committed great havoc amongst the peaceable settlements from Santarem to the Rio Negro, and were pursued and slaughtered in great numbers by the Mundurucus in alliance with the Brazilians, they have given no serious trouble.
All now was excitement, heightened by the unexpected nature of an occurrence which not even speculation had calculated upon. It was but a few days before, and the news had reached Torres Vedras that a powerful reinforcement was in march to join Massena's army, and their advanced guard had actually reached Santarem.
It seizes the fly not with its jaws, but with its fore and middle feet, and carries it off tightly held to its breast. Wherever the traveller lands on the Upper Amazons in the neighbourhood of a sand-bank he is sure to be attended by one or more of these useful vermin-killers. The bay of Mapiri was the limit of my day excursions by the river-side to the west of Santarem.
These matters arranged, the house put in order, and a rude table, with a few chairs, bought or borrowed to furnish the house with, I was ready in three or four days to commence my Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood. I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from the other settlements on the Amazons.
In 1809, Barra became the chief town of the Rio Negro district; many Portuguese and Brazilians from other provinces then settled here; spacious houses were built, and it grew, in the course of thirty or forty years, to be, next to Santarem, the principal settlement on the banks of the Amazons.
This latter bears a large eatable fruit, curious in having a hollow chamber between the pulp and the kernel, beset with hard spines which produce serious wounds if they enter the skin. The eatable part appeared to me not much more palatable than a raw potato; but the inhabitants of Santarem are very fond of it, and undertake the most toilsome journeys on foot to gather a basketful.
Some are found commonly in every part of the country, and one is peculiar to the open campos of Santarem; but, as nearly all the species are found together at Ega, where the forest swarmed with their armies, I have left an account of the habits of the whole genus for this part of my narrative.
On our arrival at Vallé, on the 12th of Nov. we found the enemy behind the Rio Maior, occupying the heights of Santarem, and exchanged some shots with their advanced posts. In the course of the night we experienced one of those tremendous thunderstorms which used to precede the Wellington victories, and which induced us to expect a general action on the following day.
Amongst the fruits, there was a kind called atta, which I did not see in any other part of the country. It belongs to the Anonaceous order, and the tree which produces it grows apparently wild in the neighbourhood of Santarem.
Word Of The Day