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Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 105 sqq.; The Scapegoat> pp. 259 sqq. The scene was described to Mr. Herndon by a French engineer and architect, M. de Lincourt, who witnessed it at Manduassu, a village on the Tapajos river. Mr. Herndon adds: "The Tocandeira ants not only bite, but are also armed with a sting like the wasp; but the pain felt from it is more violent.
A long spit of sand extends into mid-river, beyond which is an immense expanse of dark water, the further shore of the Tapajos being barely visible as a thin grey line of trees on the horizon. The transparency of air and water in the dry season when the brisk east wind is blowing, and the sharpness of outline of hills, woods, and sandy beaches, give a great charm to this spot.
We now approached, in fact, the mouth of the Tapajos, whose clear olive- green waters here replaced the muddy current against which we had so long been sailing. Although this is a river of great extent 1000 miles in length, and, for the last eighty miles of its course, four to ten in breadth its contribution to the Amazons is not perceptible in the middle of the stream.
John Aracu and his family all fell victims, with the exception of his wife; my kind friend Antonio Malagueita also died, and a great number of people in the Mundurucu village. The descent of the Tapajos in the height of the dry season, which was now close at hand, is very hazardous on account of the strong winds, absence of current, and shoaly water far away from the coasts.
I revisited the same country in 1855, and devoted three years and a half to a fuller exploration of its natural productions. The results of both journeys will be given together in subsequent chapters of this work; in the meantime, I will proceed to give an account of Santarem and the river Tapajos, whose neighbourhoods I investigated in the years 1851-4.
Preparations for Voyage-First Day's Sail Loss of Boat Altar de Chao Modes of Obtaining Fish Difficulties with Crew Arrival at Aveyros Excursions in the Neighbourhood White Cebus, and Habits and Dispositions of Cebi Monkeys Tame Parrot Missionary Settlement Entering the River Cupari Adventure with Anaconda Smoke-dried Monkey Boa-constrictor Village of Mundurucu Indians, and Incursion of a Wild Tribe Falls of the Cupari Hyacinthine Macaw Re-emerge into the broad Tapajos Descent of River to Santarem
Fiala and Lieutenant Lauriado stayed at Utiarity to take canoes and go down the Papagaio, which had not been descended by any scientific party, and perhaps by no one. They were then to descend the Juruena and Tapajos, thereby performing a necessary part of the work of the expedition.
He was the head of the exploring expeditions sent out by the Brazilian Government to traverse for the first time this unknown land; to map for the first time the courses of the rivers which from the same divide run into the upper portions of the Tapajos and the Madeira, two of the mighty affluents of the Amazon, and to build telegraph-lines across to the Madeira, where a line of Brazilian settlements, connected by steamboat lines and a railroad, again occurs.
The Tapajos at Santarem is contracted to a breadth of about a mile and a half by an accretion of low alluvial land, which forms a kind of delta on the western side; fifteen miles further up the river is seen at its full width of from ten to a dozen miles, and the magnificent hilly country, through which it flows from the south, is then visible on both shores.
I was obliged then to descend to Para, but returned, after finishing the examination of the middle part of the Lower Amazons and the Tapajos, in 1855, with my Santarem assistant and better provided for making collections on the upper river.
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