CHAPTER X - THE UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA

Summary

I must now take the reader from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters, to the boundless wooded plains, and yellow turbid current of the Upper Amazons or Solimoens. I will resume the narrative of my first voyage up the river, which was interrupted at the Barra of the Rio Negro, in the seventh chapter, to make way for the description of Santarem and its neighbourhood.

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. The owner, an-old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega, named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra, attending the assizes as juryman, a public duty performed without remuneration, which took him six: weeks away from his business. He was about to leave Barra himself, in a small boat, and recommended me to send forward my heavy baggage in the cuberta and make the journey with him. He would reach Ega, 370 miles distant from Barra, in twelve or fourteen days! whilst the large vessel would be thirty or forty days on the road.