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Updated: June 1, 2025
The Incas of Peru had pushed their conquests and their religious wars as far as the banks of the Napo and the Amazon, where their language extended over a small space of land; but the civilization of the Peruvians, of the inhabitants of Quito, and of the Muyscas of New Grenada, never appears to have had any sensible influence on the moral state of the nations of Guiana.
Alexis, however, was under the impression that monkeys of some kind were making the strange noises for not only are there many species of these in the forests of the Napo, but some that can imitate the voices of other animals. Of course, with monkeys, there could be no danger: since none of the American quadrumana are large enough or strong enough to attempt an attack upon man.
That they roam in great flocks through the canela forests, and devour with avidity the blossoms of these trees, is undoubtedly a fact of which our travellers had the evidence of their own eyes while on their journey up the river Napo.
But we must return to Gonzalo Pizarro. His embarrassment and consternation had been great, when on arriving at the confluence of the Napo and Marañon, he had not found Orellana, who was to have been awaiting him.
He put Orellana in charge of the vessel, and ordered him to float slowly down the river while the other part of the army marched along the shore. The march was very slow and toilsome, and after a few weeks the food began to get low. At this time Pizarro heard of a rich country farther down the stream, where the Napo flowed into a larger river. This country he wished to reach.
In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon to Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues.
From the foundation of Para by Caldeira, in 1615, to the settlement of the boundary line between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions, Peru and Brazil, in 1781-91, numbers of these expeditions were undertaken in succession . The largest was the one commanded by Pedro Texeira in 1637-9, who ascended the river to Quito by way of the Napo, a distance of about 2800 miles, with 45 canoes and 900 men, and returned to Para without any great misadventure by the same route.
Orellana, borne swiftly down the current of the Napo, had reached the point of its confluence with the Amazon in less than three days; accomplishing in this brief space of time what had cost Pizarro and his company two months. He had found the country altogether different from what had been represented; and, so far from supplies for his countrymen, he could barely obtain sustenance for himself.
According to their usual practice, they had hired one of the native hunters of the district to act as a guide, and assist them in finding the haunts of Bruin. In Napo they were fortunate in meeting with the very man in the person of a mestizo, or half-blood Indian, who followed hunting for his sole calling.
The idea then seized them to commit themselves to the chances of the stream, although ignorant whither it would lead. So onward they went. Another remarkable voyage was accomplished, in a similar manner, by a Spaniard named Lopez d'Aguirre, from Cusco, in Peru, down the Ucayali, a branch of the Amazons flowing from the south, and therefore, from an opposite direction to that of the Napo.
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