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August 29th The Moju, a stream slightly inferior to the Thames in size, is connected about twenty miles from its mouth by means of a short, artificial canal with a small stream, the Igarape- mirim, which flows the opposite way into the water-system of the Tocantins.
We weighed anchor at night, and on the following day found ourselves gliding along the dark-brown waters of the Moju. Joao da Cunha, like most of his fellow countrymen, took matters very easily. He was going to be absent in the interior several years, and therefore, intended to diverge from his route to visit his native place, Cameta, and spend a few days with his friends.
We reached the end of the Goajara about midday, and then entered the narrower channel of the Moju. Up this we travelled, partly rowing and partly sailing between the same unbroken walls of forest, until the morning of the 28th.
He could see no signs of human occupation whatever, save for a weedy ruin of a house and the green-stained facade of the long-deserted monastery at Mojû, with a forest tree growing out of a vacant window space, and great creepers netted across its vacant portals.
Into it three large rivers discharge their waters, namely, the Guama, the Acara, and the Moju so that it forms a kind of sub-estuary within the grand estuary of Para. It is nearly four miles broad.
The next day, we threaded the Igarape-mirim, and on the 19th descended the Moju. Senor Machado and I by this time had become very good friends. At every interesting spot on the banks of the Moju, he manned the small boat and took me ashore.
That part of the Para river which lies in front of the city, as I have already explained, forms a narrow channel, being separated from the main waters of the estuary by a cluster of islands. This channel is about two miles broad, and constitutes part of the minor estuary of Goajara, into which the three rivers Guama, Moju, and Acara discharge their waters.
We were told that there were formerly eleven large sugar mills on the banks of the Moju, while now there are only three. At Burujuba, there is a large monastery in a state of ruin; part of the edifice, however, was still inhabited by a Brazilian family. The walls are four feet in thickness.
Then came the Tocantins, whose waters, due to the different rivers of the province of Goyaz, mingle with those of the Amazon by an embouchure of great size, then the Moju, then the town of Santa Ana. Majestically the panorama of both banks moved along without a pause, as though some ingenious mechanism necessitated its unrolling in the opposite direction to that of the stream.
On the following day we entered the Anapu, and on the 30th September, after threading again the labyrinth of channels communicating between the Tocantins and the Moju, arrived at Para. I will now give a short account of Cameta, the principal town on the banks of the Tocantins, which I visited for the second time, in June,1849. Mr.
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