SANTAREM
Situation of Santarem--Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants--Climate--Grassy Campos and Woods--Excursions to Mapiri, Mahica, and Irura, with Sketches of their Natural History-- Palms, Wild Fruit Trees, Mining Wasps, Mason Wasps, Bees, and Sloths I have already given a short account of the size, situation, and general appearance of Santarem.Although containing not more than 2500 inhabitants, it is the most civilised and important settlement on the banks of the main river from Peru to the Atlantic.The pretty little town, or city as it is called, with its rows of tolerably uniform, white-washed and red-tiled houses surrounded by green gardens and woods, stands on gently sloping ground on the eastern side of the Tapajos, close to its point of junction with the Amazons.A small eminence on which a fort has been erected, but which is now in a dilapidated condition, overlooks the streets, and forms the eastern limit of the mouth of the tributary.The Tapajos at Santarem is contracted to a breadth of about a mile and a half by an accretion of low alluvial land, which forms a kind of delta on the western side;fifteen miles further up the river is seen at its full width of from ten to a dozen miles, and the magnificent hilly country, through which it flows from the south, is then visible on both shores.This high land, which appears to be a continuation of the central table-lands of Brazil, stretches almost without interruption on the eastern side of the river down to its mouth at Santarem.The scenery as well as the soil, vegetation, and animal tenants of this region, are widely different from those of the flat and uniform country which borders the Amazons along most part of its course.After travelling week after week on the main river, the aspect of Santarem with its broad white sandy beach, limpid dark-green waters, and line of picturesque hills rising behind over the fringe of green forest, affords an agreeable surprise.On the main Amazons, the prospect is monotonous unless the vessel runs near the shore, when the wonderful diversity and beauty of the vegetation afford constant entertainment.
Otherwise, the unvaried, broad yellow stream, and the long low line of forest, which dwindles away in a broken line of trees on the sea-like horizon and is renewed, reach after reach, as the voyages advances, weary by their uniformity.
I arrived at Santarem on my second journey into the interior, in November, 1851, and made it my headquarters for a period, as it turned out, of three years and a half.During this time I made, in pursuance of the plan I had framed, many excursions up the Tapajos, and to other places of interest in the surrounding region.On landing, I found no difficulty in hiring a suitable house on the outskirts of the place.It was pleasantly situated near the beach, going towards the aldeia or Indian part of the town.The ground sloped from the back premises down to the waterside and my little raised veranda overlooked a beautiful flower garden, a great rarity in this country, which belonged to the neighbours.The house contained only three rooms, one with brick and two with boarded floors.It was substantially built, like all the better sort of houses in Santarem, and had a stuccoed front.The kitchen, as is usual, formed an outhouse placed a few yards distant from the other rooms.The rent was 12,000 reis, or about twenty-seven shillings a month.In this country, a tenant has no extra payments to make; the owners of house property pay a dizimo or tithe, to the "collectoria general," or general treasury, but with this the occupier of course has nothing to do.In engaging servants, I had the good fortune to meet with a free mulatto, an industrious and trustworthy young fellow, named Jose, willing to arrange with me;the people of his family cooked for us, while he assisted me in collecting; he proved of the greatest service in the different excursions we subsequently made.Servants of any kind were almost impossible to be obtained at Santarem, free people being too proud to hire themselves, and slaves too few and valuable to their masters to be let out to others.These matters arranged, the house put in order, and a rude table, with a few chairs, bought or borrowed to furnish the house with, I was ready in three or four days to commence my Natural History explorations in the neighbourhood.
I found Santarem quite a different sort of place from the other settlements on the Amazons.At Cameta, the lively, good-humoured, and plain-living Mamelucos formed the bulk of the population, the white immigrants there, as on the RioNegro and Upper Amazons, seeming to have fraternised well with the aborigines.In the neighbourhood of Santarem the Indians, I believe, were originally hostile to the Portuguese; at any rate, the blending of the two races has not been here on a large scale.I did not find the inhabitants the pleasant, easygoing, and blunt-spoken country folk that are met with in other small towns of the interior.The whites, Portuguese and Brazilians, are a relatively more numerous class here than in other settlements, and make great pretensions to civilisation; they are the merchants and shopkeepers of the place; owners of slaves, cattle estates, and cacao plantations.
