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To conclude, the place is one of the most picturesque on the Upper Amazon. Tabatinga is destined to become before long a station of some importance, and will no doubt rapidly develop, for there will stop the Brazilian steamers which ascend the river, and the Peruvian steamers which descend it. There they will tranship passengers and cargoes.
"And it was I who offered him a passage on the raft!" exclaimed Benito, with a gesture of despair. "Brother," said Manoel, "you need not reproach yourself. Torres would have joined us sooner or later. He was not the man to abandon such a trail. Had we lost him at Tabatinga, we should have found him at Manaos." "Yes, Manoel, you are right. But we are not concerned with the past now.
I shall not be installed ten minutes in the square at Tabatinga, with my cup and ball in hand the cup and ball I have brought on board, and which I can manage with pretty pleasantly before a circle of braves and squaws will have formed around me. They will struggle for my favors. I could remain here for a month, and the whole tribe of the Ticunas would come to me to have their hair looked after!
Beyond Manacapuru all traces of high land cease; both shores of the river, henceforward for many hundred miles, are flat, except in places where the Tabatinga formation appears in clayey elevations of from twenty to forty feet above the line of highest water. The country is so completely destitute of rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is seen during many weeks' journey.
I still hoped to be able to turn my face westward again, to gather the yet unseen treasures of the marvellous countries lying between Tabatinga and the slopes of the Andes; but although, after a short rest in Ega, the ague left me, my general health remained in a state too weak to justify the undertaking of further journeys.
But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post.
"I have come from the neighborhood of Iquitos." "So have I!" exclaimed Fragoso. "I have come down the Amazon from Iquitos to Tabatinga. May I ask your name?" "No objection at all," replied the stranger. "My name is Torres."
It does not require much for an English or American village to become in a few years the center of considerable commerce. The river is very beautiful along this part of its course. The influence of ordinary tides is not perceptible at Tabatinga, which is more than six hundred leagues from the Atlantic.
It was on the evening of the 25th of June that the jangada stopped before Tabatinga, the first Brazilian town situated on the left bank, at the entrance of the river of which it bears the name, and belonging to the parish of St. Paul, established on the right a little further down stream. Joam Garral had decided to pass thirty-six hours here, so as to give a little rest to the crew.
On the top of the Tabatinga lies a bed of sand, in some places several feet thick, and the whole formation rests on strata of sandstone, which are exposed only when the river reaches its lowest level.
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