The wind is sometimes so strong for days together, that it is difficult to make way against it in walking along the streets, and it enters the open windows and doors of houses, scattering loose clothing and papers in all directions.The place is considered healthy; but at the changes of season, severe colds and ophthalmia are prevalent.I found three Englishmen living here, who had resided many years in the town or its neighbourhood, and who still retained their florid complexions;the plump and fresh appearance of many of the middle-aged Santarem ladies also bore testimony to the healthfulness of the climate.The streets are always clean and dry, even in the height of the wet season; good order is always kept, and the place pretty well supplied with provisions.None but those who have suffered from the difficulty of obtaining the necessities of life at any price in most of the interior settlements of South America, can appreciate the advantages of Santarem in this respect.
Everything, however, except meat, was dear, and becoming every year more so.Sugar, coffee, and rice, which ought to be produced in surplus in the neighbourhood, are imported from other provinces, and are high in price; sugar, indeed, is a little dearer here than in England.There were two or three butchers'
shops, where excellent beef could be had daily at twopence or twopence-halfpenny per pound.The cattle have not to be brought from a long distance as at Para, being bred on the campos, which border the Lago Grande, only one or two days' journey from the town.Fresh fish could be bought in the port on most evenings, but as the supply did not equal the demand, there was always a race amongst purchasers to the waterside when the canoe of a fisherman hove in sight.Very good bread was hawked round the town every morning, with milk, and a great variety of fruits and vegetables.Amongst the fruits, there was a kind called atta, which I did not see in any other part of the country.It belongs to the Anonaceous order, and the tree which produces it grows apparently wild in the neighbourhood of Santarem.It is a little larger than a good-sized orange, and the rind, which encloses a mass of rich custardy pulp, is scaled like the pineapple, but green when ripe, and encrusted on the inside with sugar.To finish this account of the advantages of Santarem, the delicious bathing in the clear waters of the Tapajos may be mentioned.
There is here no fear of alligators; when the cast wind blows, a long swell rolls in on the clean sandy beach, and the bath is most exhilarating.
The country around Santarem is not clothed with dense and lofty forest like the rest of the great humid river plain of the Amazons.It is a campo region; a slightly elevated and undulating tract of land, wooded only in patches, or with single scattered trees.A good deal of the country on the borders of the Tapajos, which flows from the great campo area of interior Brazil, is of this description.It is on this account that I consider the eastern side of the river, towards its mouth,, to be a northern prolongation of the continental land, and not a portion of the alluvial flats of the Amazons.The soil is a coarse gritty sand;the substratum, which is visible in some places, consisting of sandstone conglomerate probably of the same formation as that which underlies the Tabatinga clay in other parts of the river valley.The surface is carpeted with slender hairy grasses, unfit for pasture, growing to a uniform height of about a foot.The patches of wood look like copses in the middle of green meadows;they are called by the natives "ilhas de mato," or islands of jungle; the name being, no doubt, suggested by their compactness of outline, neatly demarcated in insular form from the smooth carpet of grass, around them.They are composed of a great variety of trees loaded with succulent parasites, and lashed together by woody climbers like the forest in other parts.Anarrow belt of dense wood, similar in character to these ilhas, and like them sharply limited along its borders, runs everywhere parallel and close to the river.In crossing the campo, the path from the town ascends a little for a mile or two, passing through this marginal strip of wood; the grassy land then slopes gradually to a broad valley, watered by rivulets, whose banks are clothed with lofty and luxuriant forest.Beyond this, a range of hills extends as far as the eye can reach towards the yet untrodden interior.Some of these hills are long ridges, wooded or bare; others are isolated conical peaks, rising abruptly from the valley.The highest are probably not more than a thousand feet above the level of the river.One remarkable hill, the Serra de Muruaru, about fifteen miles from Santarem, which terminates the prospect to the south, is of the same truncated pyramidal form as the range of hills near Almeyrim.Complete solitude reigns over the whole of this stretch of beautiful country.The inhabitants of Santarem know nothing of the interior, and seem to feel little curiosity concerning it.A few tracks from the town across the campo lead to some small clearings four or five miles off, belonging to the poorer inhabitants of the place; but, excepting these, there are no roads, or signs of the proximity of a civilised settlement.
