The Amazon, and the Atlantic Slopes of South America. A series of letters published in the National intelligencer and Union newspapers, under the signature of "Inca,"

Front matter

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Chapter I

True policy — The Amazon country, its climate and productions ; healthy — Why the Amazon is a well-watered country, and why it is different from other inter-tropical countries.

The "policy of commerce," and not athe policy of conquest," is the policy of the United States.

The spirit of the age, animated by private enterprise, is every day seeking new fields for its peaceful triumphs, and commerce can accomplish throughout the world no achievements like those which will note its coming, and signalize its marches up and down the Amazon, and the other great rivers of that greatest of water-sheds, the Atlantic slopes of South America.

Men may talk about Cuba and Japan ; but of all the diplomatic questions of the day, the free navigation of those majestic water-courses, and their tributaries, is to this country the most interesting and important. It surpasses them all. It is paramount.

The country that is drained by the Amazon, if reclaimed from the savage, the wild beast, and the reptile, and reduced to cultivation now, would be capable of supporting with its produce the population of the whole world.

It is a rice country. The common yield of rice is forty for one. It is reaped five months after planting, and may be planted at any time of the year. Thus the farmer may plant one bushel of rice to-day — in five months hence he will gather forty from it. Planting these forty, he may, in another five months, gather sixteen hundred bushels. In ten months the earth yields an increase there of a thousand-fold and more.

Corn, too, may be planted at any time, and in three months is fit for gathering. Thus the husbandman there may gather four crops of corn a year. Its seasons are an everlasting summer, with a perpetual round of harvests.

It is the policy of commerce — and commerce is the policy of these United States — to open that river to steam, and its valley to settlement and cultivation ; its earth, its air, and its waters to the business and wants of trade and traffic.

There, upon that Atlantic slope of South America, in the valley of the La Plata, and in the valley of the Amazon, Nature in all her ways has been most bountiful.

There the vegetable kingdom displays its forces in all their most perfect grandeur, and in all their might; and there, too, the mineral kingdom is most dazzling with its wealth.

In that region of country wagon-roads are few, turnpikes unknown, and the first railway has yet to be built ; and though the La Plata drains a country nearly as large and many times more fertile than is our own Mississippi valley, and though that of the Amazon is twice as great, and its tributaries many times longer, more navigable, and numerous, yet the steamboat upon those waters is a problem almost untried. In the valley of the Amazon the plough is unknown: and the American rifle and axe, the great implements of settlement and civilization, are curiosities.

For more than three hundred years the white man has been established in that Amazonian basin, and for more than three hundred years it has remained a howling wilderness. Owing to the mismanagement of its rulers, the European has made no impression — none — no, not the least — upon its forests. How long shall this continue to be so ?

Has diplomacy no arts, commerce no charms, by which this policy may be broken up ; by which its rivers may be opened to navigation, its forests to settlement, its pampas to cultivation ?

What commerce has done for South America is as nothing in comparison with what it will do. It has fringed only the sea-coast of that continent with settlement and cultivation. The great interior has never been touched. The heart of the country is a commercial blank; nor is it to be reached except through the powers of steam, and the free use of its majestic water-courses.

It is of this country — of the importance of settling it up, of sending there the emigrant, the steamboat, the axe, and the plough, with the messengers and agencies of commerce — that I wish to speak.

Let us, therefore, first see where it is, how far off it is, and what is its actual condition, and then we will be enabled the better to judge as to the true course of policy which it would be best for the commercial nations of the earth to take with regard to it.

The semi-continent of South America is very nearly in shape that of a right-angled triangle. Its hypotenuse rests on the Pacific: one of its legs extends from Cape Horn to Cape St. KopjUe. Here the right angle is formed with the other leg, which extends from Cape St. Roque, in latitude 5 deg. south, to Cabo La Vela, of the Caribbean sea, in latitude 12 deg. north.

The longer leg is that between Capes Horn and St. Roque ; it is 3,500 geographical miles in length. The other leg has only 2,500; but the hypotenuse, which stands on the Andes and rests on the Pacific, is more than 4,000 miles long.

This configuration exercises a powerful influence upon the climates of South America, especially as it regards its hyetcgraphy. The great rivers of that country, the mighty Amazon and the majestic La Plata, are resultants of this configuration. In consequence of having the sea-front which rests upon the short leg in the northern hemisphere, and looking to the northeast ; — and in consequence of having the sea-front which rests upon the long leg in the southern hemisphere, to look southeast, the northeast and the southeast trade winds, as they come across the Atlantic filled with moisture, go full charged into the interior, dropping it in showers as they go until they reach the snow-capped summits of the Andes, where the last drop, which that very low temperature can wring from them, is' deposited to melt and feed the sources of the Amazon and the La Plata with their tributaries.

The northeast trade winds commence to blow about the Tropic of Cancer, and coming from the quarter they do, they blow obliquely across the Atlantic. They evaporate from the sea as they go ; and, impinging at right angles upon the South American shore-line that extends from Cape St. Roque to Cabo La Vela, they carry into the interior the vapor that forms the clouds that give the rain which supplies with water the Magdalena, the Orinoco, and the northern tributaries of the Amazon.

The volume of water discharged by these rivers into the sea is expressive of the quantity which those northeast trade winds take up from the sea, carry in the clouds, and precipitate upon the water-shed that is drained by these streams. They are but pipes and gutters which Nature has placed under the eaves of the great water-shed that has the Andes for a ridge-pole, the Caribbean sea and North Atlantic for a cistern.

The trade-wind region of the North Atlantic affords the watersurface where the evaporation is carried on that supplies with rains, dews, and moisture, New Granada, Venezuela, the three Gruianas, and the Atlantic slopes of the Ecuador.

On the other hand, the southeast trade winds commence to blow about the parallel of 30 deg. or 35 deg. south. They, too, come obliquely across the Atlantic, and strike perpendicularly upon the South American coast-line which extends from Cape St. Roque towards Cape Horn. They pass into the interior with their whole load of moisture, every drop of which is wrung from them before they cross the Andes. The quantity of moisture which is taken up from the sea and rained down upon this wonderfully fruitful country may be seen in what the La Plata and the Amazon discharge back into the ocean.

Now, there is no tropical country in the world which has to windward, and so exactly to windward of it, such an extent of ocean in the trade-wind region. Consequently there is no inter-tropical country in the world that is so finely watered as is this great Amazon country of South America.

Along the Atlantic coast of the United States, along the coast of China and the east coast of New Holland, the land trends along with the direction of the trade winds of those regions. These winds, with their moisture, travel along parallel with the land. They do not blow perpendicularly upon it, nor push their vapors right across it into the interior, as they do in South America. The consequence is, none of those inter-tropical countries can boast of streams and water-courses like those of South America.

The shore line of eastern Africa is arranged like that of the South American water-shed ; but it has not sea enough to windward to supply the vapor to feed springs enough to make large rivers.

The southeast trade winds, when the monsoons of the Indian ocean will permit them to blow, strike perpendicularly upon the east coast of South Africa, as they do upon that of South America. In the American case, they blow perpetually — in the African case, for not half the year. They, therefore, cannot give Africa half as much rain as South America receives.

At Cape Guardafui the right angle of the African coast line is formed, as it is at Cape St. Roque for America ; but the winds which cross this line between Cape St. Roque and the isthmus have traversed the Atlantic ocean and Caribbean sea — hence they reach the land dripping with moisture ; whereas, in Africa, the northeast trades, which cross the coast line from Cape Guardafui to the isthmus of Suez, have sucked up vapors from the Red sea only; — therefore the quantity of moisture which these winds carry into the interior of Africa is not by any means so great as that which those of the Atlantic carry over into South America. The difference is as great as is the difference of the evaporating surface exposed to the northeast trade winds by the Atlantic, on the one hand, and by the Red sea on the other.

The two systems of trade winds — the northeast and the southeast— meet in the interior of South America, somewhere between the equator and the isthmus of Darien. This place of meeting is a place of calms, and where it is, there it is rainy.

This circumstance, and other meteorological agents, divide the seasons in the northern portions of South America, especially the valley of the Orinoco, into the rainy and the dry — six months of constant rain, six months of blighting drought, is the condition here.

Not so in the valley of the Amazon. There the weather is agreeable all the year round ; and though more rain falls there in some months than in others, as it does here with us, still there as here, it may rain, and does rain, any day in the year.

Now, I think that any one who has followed me with a map will perceive why this inter-tropical region of South America, or that part of its water-shed which from Panama to the parallel of 30° or 35° south slopes towards the Atlantic, has, and ought to have, the most remarkable climate in the world. We have seen that Eastern Africa, and Eastern Africa alone, resembles it in configuration of shore line ; but the evaporating surface and the supplies of vapor are wanting, and therefore South Africa cannot be nearly so well supplied with rains, and consequently withrivers, as is South America.

In all the other inter-tropical regions of the world — in India, in Western Africa, New Holland, and Polynesia — the year is divided into the rainy season and the dry ; during the latter of which' little or no water falls, springs go dry, and cattle perish, and dead bodies pollute the air. Then, too, stalks forth in those countries the "pestilence that walketh in darkness."

In the valley of the Amazon no such condition exists. There the fall of water, though copious — the river Amazon is the rainguage — is not compressed within a few months, nor accompanied by the terrible hurricanes and tornadoes which rage at the change of seasons in India. Here, in America, gentle and fruitful showers fall daily, and tornadoes are rare.

Because the Amazon is in a tropical country, the public is disposed to judge of its climates by comparing them with the climates of other tropical countries — as India, for example. But for the reasons stated, and because there are no monsoons or other conditions to cause the valley of the Amazon to be parched with drought at one season, and drenched with rains at another — as India is on one hand, and the Orinoco country on the other — there is no more resemblance between the climates of India and of the Amazon than there is between the climates of Rome and Boston ; and any one who would infer similarity of climate from the fact that Boston and Rome are in the same latitude would not be more out than he who infers similarity of climate between India and Amazonia because they both are tropical countries.

Now, what ought to be the condition of an inter-tropical country whose plains are watered with frequent showers, unaccompanied by a single drought during ages of perpetual summer ? Why, fertility and salubrity ; for in such a climate anything and everything will grow. The rapid production and constant decay of vegetable matter that have been going on there for thousands and thousands of years must have made the soil rich with vegetable mould.

The fact that vegetation there is in perpetual activity — that there, there is no period of vegetable repose — that as fast as one leaf falls and begins to decay, other leaves, just putting forth, absorb its gases — these conditions make the valley of the Amazon one of the most salubrious and delightful of climates.

Having shown that the climate of the La Plata and Amazon country is a climate without droughts, and that it is a moist and warm climate, I have established enough to satisfy any one that the soil there, whatever be the substratum, must have upon it a rich vegetable mould, which the decay of the most rank vegetation during ages must have formed.

Chapter II

The La Plata the Mississippi of the southern hemisphere — River basins compared— Commerce of the La Plata, its value — Productions — A vegetable cow, and a natural distillery — The Diamond Mountains — Canal between the waters of the La Plata and the Amazon.

I proceed now to show the present condition with the future resources and commercial capabilities of the great South American water-sheds. I will confine my attention to the rivers Amazon and La Plata, to their tributaries, and the valleys drained by them. But first let us give our attention to the La Plata, and compare the extent of country drained by it with the extent drained by rivers in the northern hemisphere.

The valley of the Amazon lies in both hemispheres ; it is the largest river-basin in the world, but it belongs exclusively neither to the North nor to the South. Excluding the Amazon, therefore, from the comparison ; the Mississippi, then, it will be perceived, drains the largest river-basin in the northern, and the La Plata the largest in the southern hemisphere. Both these streams run from north to south, each one embracing a great variety of productions, and traversing many diversities of climate ; but one runs towards the equator, the other from it.

The area of the principal river-basins which are drained into seas that are accessible to ocean commerce, may be thus stated : In America. — The Amazon, area 2,048,480* square miles.

North America. — The Mississippi, area 982,000 square mileSo South America. — The La Plata, area 886,000 square miles. Europe. — The Danube, area, 234,000 square miles. Africa.-;— The Nile, area 520,000 square miles.

Asia (China). — The Yang-tse-Keang, area 547,000 sq. miles. India. — The Ganges, area 432,000 square miles.

It will thus be observed that the valley of the La Plata in area is the third in the world ; that it is twice as large as the valley of the Ganges, and more than three times as large as the largest river-basin in Europe.

The basin of the La Plata embraces all the latitudes, and more too, that are to be found in the valleys of the Indus, the Ganges, and the Irawaddy — 'the great river-basins of India. It consequently has all the agricultural capacities, and more, that are to be found in the climates of India. These great resources of the La Plata for the most part lie dormant. They are hidden in the

* Including tlio Orinoco.

bosom of the earth, or concealed in the recesses of the mountains. The waters of the La Plata flow through climates that are favorable to the growth of sugar, of tea and coffee, of rice, hemp, and tobacco, of cotton and corn, of drugs, woods, dyes, and spices, and of almost all the agricultural staples of the earth.

The Bio de la Plata lies wholly within the southern hemisphere, and it is the greatest river that does so lie ; consequently it has opposite seasons with those of the northern. When the husbandman is sowing in the North, then he who tills the earth in this beautiful river-basin will be gathering his crop ; and consequently the planter, and the farmer, and the merchant of the La Plata will have control of the northern markets for six months of every year, without a competitor.

The Eio de la Plata, properly speaking, is that arm of the sea which lies between the parallels of 33° and 36° of south latitude. Its breadth is a hundred miles or more, according to the place of measurement, and it is formed by the junction of the Parana and the Uruguay. I treat of all the country drained by these rivers and their tributaries as the valley of the La Plata.

The Uruguay is a beautiful stream. It takes its rise in the Brazilian province of Santa Catarina, on the western slopes of the " Serra do Mar," or the sea range of mountains. Its course is first westwardly and then southwardly ; it is about seven hundred miles long ; drains a rich, fertile, and tolerably well-settled country. For part of the way it is the boundary between Brazil, with the Banda Oriental on one side, and the Argentine Confederation on the other.

The Parana is a majestic river. It is formed by the junction of the two Brazilian streams, the Rio Grande and the Paranahiba. The former takes its rise near the parallel of 20° south, not far from the sea-shore, and in the wealthy province of Minas Geraes. The valley in which the head-waters of this- river are gathered into the main stream is most magnificent. It is about two hundred miles broad in the widest part, by four hundred miles long. The course of the Rio Grande through it is due west ; it maintains this course for about five hundred miles, until it meets the Paranahiba coming from the northward, where its sources interlapped, and almost mingled with those of the Amazon.

The population of the two interior provinces of Minas Geraes and Goiaz, in which these two tributaries of the Parana take their rise, and in which they lie, is for the former one million, for the latter one hundred and fifty thousand.

The Japanese-like policy which has been observed with regard to scientific explorations of the La Plata and its tributaries has kept the world in the dark as to many parts of that valley.

Dr. Francia established in Paraguay, many years ago, a government founded upon the Japanese system. Rosas attempted an imitation of this policy so long as he was in power ; and Brazil has always practised it. So that geographers really know very little as to the Brazilian tributaries of the La Plata, their navigability, and the commercial resources of the countries which they drain.

According to the map "Do Imperio do Brazil," published in 1846, under the auspices of the Geographical Society, at Rio de Janeiro, and which is now before me, the Parana, for the first five hundred miles below the junction of the Rio Grande and the Paranahiba, runs through uninhabited parts of the provinces of Goiaz, Matto Grosso, and Sao Paulo. Passing these uninhabited parts, it then runs through and among the Spanish republics of that region for about twelve hundred miles to its entrance into the Plata. Along this part of its route the country is pretty well settled, and, according to Montgomery Martin,* whose authority is more recent than that of the map of the Geographical Society of Brazil, must be in a high state of cultivation. Writing last year upon this river, he says :

"During the sis or eight months that the Parana, or Plate river, was recently opened to European commerce, upwards of sixteen millions dollars' worth of goods were exchanged for produce, and this without any previously organized mercantile establishments or system. Two convoys of merchant ships, one of 110, and the other of 76 vessels, came down the river with full cargoes. It is true that this extent of trade was partly attributable to the accumulation of property owing to the previous interdiction of commerce by General Rosas, whose exclusive policy is an imitation of that of Dr. Francia, as he has himself boasted. He is therefore entirely hostile to mercantile, or indeed to any intercourse, especially with Europeans. Were Rosas to succeed, he would form a State such as Japan has been for the last two centuries."

The commerce of this river, I know, is valuable ; but whether it be so very valuable at this time as the above extract from Martin would make it, I doubt.

But, suppose it were one million instead of sixteen that was brought down through this unexpected free navigation for six or eight months, what would it not be under regular steam and free navigation at the end of six or eight years, when the steamboat and commerce shall have stimulated the productions of the country up to the capacity of its industrial capital ?

Leaving the Parana, and traveling still further west, we come next to the Paraguay, the most magnificent tributary in this water-shed. Following it in its windings, it is navigable to the distance of about two thousand miles from the sea. It is the Missouri of the La Plata valley.

A*friend|who has been residing in the capital of the Republic

* See his^Geographical and Statistical Atlas.

of Paraguay for several years returned thence a few months ago. I shall, therefore, draw upon him for information touching this interesting river and region of country : also, Francis del Castelnau, who traveled through that country in 1848-9, is quite full.

He also will afford me many details.

According to Hopkins, Paraguay is but another paradise.* Of this country and its commercial resources, says he :

"I can speak with the greatest certainty, from my own personal knowledge. Almost divided by the Tropic of Capricorn, its surface is like a chess-board, checkered here and there with beautiful pastures and magnificent forests. Unlike all other lands with which I am acquainted, it seems destined especially for the habitation of man. Here, in the eastern portion of our own land, the first settlers found the whole country covered with woods ; west of the Mississippi the other extreme exists, in the vast extent of prairie, destitute of timber. On the north of Brazil, in a similar manner, are unbroken forests; in its southern parts, and throughout the Bancla-Oriental, Entre-Rios, Corrientes, and the Argentine Republic, we find continuous pampas, like our prairies, in many instances without bearing the necessary fuel even for household purposes. Not so in Paraguay, where, added to a sufficiency for building fleets of a thousand steamers, its forests teem with every description of ornamental and useful woods.

" Beginning with the head-waters of the river Paraguay, we find the productions upon the Brazilian side to be gold and precious stones, sugar, molasses, hides of extraordinary size, hair, tallow, wax, deer and tiger skins, with rice, corn, and the different manufactures of the mandioca root ; in Bolivia, gold and precious stones, silver, coffee — considered by good judges to be equal to Mocha — and Peruvian bark.

"Though undoubtedly we could draw from these two countries many other productions of tropical America, yet it is in Paraguay that we find the greatest wealth of all these valleys."

Here, too, are found dye-stuffs of the most exquisite tints. Among these includes cochineal, two kinds of indigo, a " vegetable vermilion, saffron, golden-rod, with other plants, producing all the tints of dark red, black, and green. "f

In the forests are found sixty varieties of wood, valuable for ship-building, or as timber, or for cabinet work. Among them are the " Seibo tree," which, "when green, is spongy and soft as cork, and can" be cut like an apple, but when dry is so hard as almost to defy the action of steel ; the Palo de vivora, or snaketree, whose leaves are an infallible cure for the poisonous bite of serpents ; Palo de leche, or milk tree, may be called a vegetable cow ; and the Palo de borracho, or drunken tree, a vegetable distillery. The icica resin is found at the roots of trees under ground, and is a natural pitch, ready prepared to pay the seams of vessels. "f

* See Bulletin of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, vol. 1. Memoir on Paraguay, by E. A. Hopkins, esq., United States Consul in Paraguay. t Hopkins.

Many of them are said to yield gums and drugs of the rarest virtues, and of the most exquisite perfume. Though, coming from a far country, which commerce, in her loftiest flights has not yet been able to reach, many of these productions are not yet known to pharmacy or the mechanic arts. " They comprise," says Hopkins, "some of the most delicious perfumes and incense that can be imagined. Others again are like amber, hard, brittle, and insoluble in water. Some cedars yield a gum equal to gum arabic ; others a natural glue, which, when once dried, is unaffected by wet or dampness."

Here, too, in these wilds flourish side by side the India-rubber tree, the vanilla, with its sweet-scented bean, and the Palo-santo> from which the gum guaiacum of our commerce is gathered.

Wild, too, in those wonderful forests grow, mature, and decay annually and in large quantities, two or three kinds of hemp, the nux seponica, or soap-nut, the coca, yerba, mattd of superior quality, two kinds of cotton with vegetable oils, and wax in vast quantities.

The pampas are grazed by immense herds of cattle and horses ; and great quantities of " hides, hair, horns, bones, tallow, &c, are lost for want of transportation."

"Upon the fertile alluvial banks of so many large streams, sugar-cane, cotton, tobacco of a superior quality, rice, mandioca, Indian corn, and a thousand other productions vegetate with profusion ; whilst seven varieties of the bamboo line the river banks and dot the frequent lakes with islets of touching beauty."*

In short, this traveler thus sums up his account of this glorious valley :

" We have found the forests spontaneously producing everything necessary for the comfort and luxury of mankind, from the beautiful cotton-tree that affords him clothing, to the colors which suit his fancy as a dye ; and from the woods that furnish his ship and house, or ornament his escritoire, to the herb that cures his sickness, or the incense that delights his olfactories. It is only necessary to add, that the climate is favorable to all the useful grains and table vegetables, with delicious fruits to support the frame and gratify the palate."

But from the Republic of Paraguay, where Hopkins was, to the mouth of the La Plata, there were only some 1,500 miles of river navigation. Let us, therefore, ascend higher up the beautiful Paraguay, cross over into Brazil, ascend this river through the district "Dos Diamantes" to the city of " Diamantino" and thence trace its sources, up over their beds of bright jewels and golden sands, to their very fountain-head as they leap spangled and sparkling from the " Diamond mountains."

Standing on these, we may contemplate the great "Divide," which separates the waters — if they be separated — of the Rio de la Plata from the waters of the Amazon.

This ridge extends from east to west over the distance in a straight line of more than 2,000 statute miles. On one side the streams run south; on the other, they flow north; and on both sides they wash down from this ridge, gold, diamonds, and other precious stones. This auriferous and rich mineral region embraces many degrees of latitude, and extends through 30° of longitude. I propose to speak more of it at another time.

It is a question whether the waters of the La Plata and the Amazon do not unite through a natural canal, as do those of the Amazon and the Orinoco through the Casiqueare, and thus afford an inland navigation from Buenos Ayres, in 35° south, to the mouth of the Orinoco, where it empties in 11° north into the Caribbean sea. Truly such a navigation would be bringing the commercial drainage of the Atlantic slopes of South America not only at our feet, but it would be emptying their treasures into the very lap into which our own Mississippi pours its waters, its surplus produce, and its wealth.