are
ignorant, lazy mamelucos. They dress like the majority of the
semi-civilized people on the Amazon: the men content with shirt and
pantaloons, the women wearing cotton or gauze chemises and calico
petticoats. Fonte Boa is a museum for the naturalist, but the
headquarters of musquitoes, small but persistent. Taking in a large
quantity of turtle-oil, the "Icamiaba" turned down the cano, but almost
immediately ran aground, and we were two hours getting off. These yearly
shifting shoals in the Amazon can not be laid down in charts, and the
most experienced pilots often run foul of them. In twelve hours we
entered the Teffe, a tributary from the Bolivian mountains. Just before
reaching the Great River it expands into a beautiful lake, with a white,
sandy beach. On a grassy slope, stretching out into the lake, with a
harbor on each side of it, lies the city of Ega. A hundred palm-thatched
cottages of mud and tiled frame houses, each with an inclosed orchard of
orange, lemon, banana, and guava trees, surround a rude church, marked
by a huge wooden crucifix on the green before it, instead of a steeple.
Cacao, assai, and pupunha palms rise above the town, adding greatly to
its beauty; while back of all, on the summit of the green slope, begins
the picturesque forest, pathless, save here and there a faint hunter's
track leading to the untrodden interior. The sheep and cattle grazing on
the lawn, a rare sight in Alto Amazonas, gives a peaceful and inviting
aspect to the scene. The inhabitants, numbering about twelve hundred,
are made up of pure Indians, half-castes, negroes, mulattoes, and
whites. Ega (also called Teffe) is the largest and most thriving town
between Manaos and Iquitos, a distance of twelve hundred miles. It is
also one of the oldest settlements on the river, having been founded
during the English revolution, or nearly two centuries ago. Tupi is the
common idiom. The productions of the country are cacao, sarsaparilla,
Brazil nuts, bast for caulking vessels, copaiba balsam, India-rubber,
salt fish, turtle-oil, manati, grass hammocks, and tiles. Bates
calculates the value of the annual exports at nearly forty thousand
dollars. The "Icamiaba" calls here twice a month; besides which there
are small schooners which occupy about five months in the round trip
between Ega and Para. "The place is healthy (writes the charming
Naturalist on the Amazon), and almost free from insect pests; perpetual
verdure surrounds it; the