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Updated: May 17, 2025
Every month, whilst I resided here, an inspector came round with his wand of authority, and fined every one who had not complied with the regulation. The Indians of the surrounding country have never been hostile to the European settlers. The rebels of Para and the Lower Amazons, in 1835-6, did not succeed in rousing the natives of the Solimoens against the whites.
It is curious that, although prevalent in many places on the Solimoens, no resident of Ega exhibited signs of the disease: the early explorers of the country, on noticing spotted skins to be very frequent in certain localities, thought they were peculiar to a few tribes of Indians.
This noble stream at its junction with the Amazons, seems, from its position, to be a direct continuation of the main river, while the Solimoens which joins at an angle and is somewhat narrower than its tributary, appears to be a branch instead of the main trunk of the vast water system.
It is scarcely exaggerating to say that the waters of the Solimoens are as well stocked with large alligators in the dry season, as a ditch in England is in summer with tadpoles.
I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent, with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars.
When I awoke the next morning, we were progressing by espia along the left bank of the Solimoens. The rainy season had now set in over the region through which the great river flows; the sand- banks and all the lower lands were already under water, and the tearing current, two or three miles in breadth, bore along a continuous line of uprooted trees and islets of floating plants.
We had been paddling all day along a monotonous shore, with the dreary Solimoens before us, here three to four miles broad, heavily rolling onward its muddy waters.
We set out in a small montaria, at four o'clock in the morning, again leaving the encampment asleep, and travelled at a good pace up the northern channel of the Solimoens, or that lying between the island Catua and the left bank of the river. The northern shore of the island had a broad sandy beach reaching to its western extremity.
The surface of the water was dotted with little islands of floating vegetation. Miller said that much of this came from the lagoons such as those where he had been hunting, beside the Solimoens lagoons filled with the huge and splendid Victoria lily, and with masses of water hyacinths.
The Rio Negro broadens considerably from its mouth upwards, and presents the appearance of a great lake; its black-dyed waters having no current, and seeming to be dammed up by the impetuous flow of the yellow, turbid Solimoens, which here belches forth a continuous line of uprooted trees and patches of grass, and forms a striking contrast with its tributary.
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