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Updated: May 17, 2025
The mighty Maranon, as the natives call the Upper Amazon or the Solimoens, as it is named by the Portuguese was before us, having flowed down for many hundred miles from the mountain lake of Lauricocha, in Peru, 12,500 feet above the sea-level.
We spent the night of the 7th of November pleasantly on the smooth sands, where the jaguars again serenaded us, and on the succeeding morning we commenced our return voyage to Ega. We first doubled the upper end of the island of Catua, and then struck off for the right bank of the Solimoens.
After we had rested some weeks in Barra, we arranged our plans for further explorations in the interior of the country. Mr. Wallace chose the Rio Negro for his next trip, and I agreed to take the Solimoens. My colleague has already given to the world an account of his journey on the Rio Negro, and his adventurous ascent of its great tributary the Uapes.
A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the Solimoens; and from 1855, one ran regularly every two months between the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and accomplishing the distance in ascending, about 1200 miles, in eighteen days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these changes.
The upper part of the Amazon is frequently called the Solimoens, which name it retains as far south as the mouth of the River Negro. About sixty miles further east, its largest southern affluent the gigantic Madeira unites its milky waters with the turbid stream of the main river.
Our return route was by the rarely frequented north-easterly channel of the Solimoens, through which flows part of the waters of its great tributary stream, the Japura. We travelled for five hours along the desolate, broken, timber-strewn shore of Baria. The channel is of immense breadth, the opposite coast being visible only as a long, low line of forest.
The only other tribe of this neighbourhood concerning which I obtained any information were the Majeronas, whose territory embraces several hundred miles of the western bank of the river Jauari, an affluent of the Solimoens, 120 miles beyond St. Paulo. These are a fierce, indomitable, and hostile people, like the Araras of the river Madeira; they are also cannibals.
Daniel had not seen anything of the other Indians, and thought it was useless waiting any longer for Tracajas; we therefore sent him to call in the whole party, and made off ourselves, as quickly as we could, for the canoe. The rest of the night was passed most miserably; as indeed were very many of my nights on the Solimoens.
Barra is now the principal station for the lines of steamers which were established in 1853, and passengers and goods are transhipped here for the Solimoens and Peru. A steamer runs once a fortnight between Para and Barra, and a bi-monthly one plies between this place and Nauta in the Peruvian territory.
I have myself collected specimens of these shells in the clay beds along the banks of the Solimoens, near Teffe, and might have mistaken them for fossils of that formation had I not known how Naiades burrow in the mud. Like all such accumulations, it is totally free from stratification.
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