Notes of a New-England Blacksmith-Towns-Population, &c. 565 ounces of wax a day and found, "with chicha at discretion." head of uninterrupted navigation on that river. This is the most important town in the It is to this place that Brazil, by treaprovince of Mainas, on account of its ty with Peru, has just contracted for a proximity to navigable waters, and its line of steamers, under the Brazilian connection with such a large extent of flag, from Para, at the mouth of the territory that is not liable to overflow. Amazon. This line is to have a monopFrom Tarapoto to Chasuta you pass oly of steamboat navigation on the the villages of Juan Guerra and Shapaya. Amazon for thirty years, with a bonus Chasuta is at the head of uninterrupted of 100,000 per annum for the first fifnavigation on the Huallaga. Lieutenant teen. Herndon, coming down at low water, It therefore becomes a place of immet between this place and the mouth portance; and, as I shall have occasion of the Amazon with nowhere less than to allude to it again in connection with five feet of water. The high-water this steamboat line, under the Brazilian mark is forty feet above the stage in flag, we will here take no more notice which the river was when he was there. of it. From Chasuta to the mouth of the Amazon the distance by water is upwards of 3,000 miles; and for half the year the Pennsylvania, seventy-four, would find water enough to reach that village from the sea. Population of Chasuta 1,031; distance to Tarapoto by land six leagues; cost of transportation, one pound of wax the Indian load, one pound of wax being equivalent to four yards of cotton.Cows, sheep, horses and hogs thrive well. Productions those of Tarapoto. Yunimaguas, twenty-four leagues below Chasuta; population 319; country fertile. A good road can be cut from this place almost in a straight line to Moyabamba, distance thirty leagues. Santa Cruz is thirty-five leagues below Chasuta. Here white wax is worth one and a third yards cotton, and five pounds wax are sold for one white-handled knife. Population 300. Chamicuros, thirty-nine leagues below Chasuta, with a population of 331. Valuable resins and gums abound in the woods. Laguna, forty-four leagues below Chasuta, and four above the mouth of the Huallaga, has a population of 742, and a fertile soil. Urarinas, on the Amazon, five leagues below the mouth of the Huallaga-population forty-three. This is an important place on account of the immense quantities in its vicinity of the tree which produces the gum-copal. Passing by the villages of Paranari and San Regis, we come to Nauta, the capital of the district. It is situated on the right bank of the Amazon, fortysix leagues below the mouth of the Huallaga, and ninety-four below the Nauta is also only half a league above the mouth of the Ucayali, another tributary of the Amazon, and larger than the Huallaga-population 810. Here one yard of English or American cotton is worth two and two-thirds yards of the cotton cloth of the country; and thirty-four pounds of sarsaparilla are given for eight yards of the latter; a full-grown hen is worth six needles; a chicken three; and fifty or sixty pounds of yucas six. A Portuguese merchant has established a house here. Amaguas, seven miles below Nauta, is an important point, (though at present it has but 240 inhabitants,) on account of its great extent of fertile lands. Passing Amaguas with its 240 inhabitants, Iquitos with its 127, and Arau with its 80, we arrive, twenty-seven leagues below the mouth of the Ucayali, which comes from the south, at the mouth of the Rio Napo, a tributary from Ecuador. There is here a settlement consisting of one family of Mitos Indians and one fugitive slave from Brazil— total thirty-one. This river is two hundred yards broad at its mouth, and is navigable for three hundred miles. It is rich in gold; its banks are inhabited by hostile tribes of Indians, and covered with sarsaparilla and other valuable products of the forests. These Indians make the finest and most beautiful hammocks that are found in the Pampa del Sacramento; price of a hammock two yards of cotton. The trade in poisons makes this an important place. Pebas is thirteen leagues below the mouth of the Napo; has a population of 387, and a fine country round about.-Its productions are white and black wax, sarsaparilla, vanilla, poisons, storax, "chambira," hammocks, pitch, copal, incense, India rubber, milk of the cowtree, and many curiosities, which the Indians, who, though wild and savage, are friendly to the white man, usually bring in exchange for beads, trinkets, &c., White wax is worth two yards of cotton; black, one and a half; thirty-four pounds sarsaparilla, twenty-four yards; hammock, two yards; a little pot of poison, four yards; one pound vanilla, eight yards. Thence to Loreto, the frontier town of Peru, we have five small villages. Loreto is 160 leagues below the head of uninterrupted navigation of the Huallaga: population, 122. In this village you find a preparation from the wild yuca, which is very palatable, wholesome, and nutricious. It is a good sub stitute for bread. Sarayacu, situated on the right bank of the Ucayali, 300 miles above its junction with the Amazon, has a population of 1,270. This is an important point in the midst of a fertile region. Eight or ten miles above this town the Ucayali receives the Ahuaytia, which takes its rise almost on the banks of the Huallaga. A few miles up this tributary bring you to a great sarsaparilla country. This drug costs here eight yards of the cotton cloth of the country the one hundred pounds; which one hundred pounds are worth $25 in Para, and from $40 to $60 in Europe, according to the markets. These eight yards of cotton for the one hundred pounds of sarsaparilla, according to the statement of this clever blacksmith, are worth four yards only of our coarse cotton. Let us, therefore, for the sake of illustration, trace this trade through its entire course. The American or English peddler to the Amazon-for trader he is not-buys in New-York or Liverpool, as the case may be, four yards of cotton, for which he pays twenty-five cents. He ships it thence around Cape Horn to Callao.Here it pays duty at the Peruvian custom-house, and is sent thence to Lima by mule. By this time, what with freight, transportation, and commissions, it has cost the purchaser fifty cents. It is then packed on mules, carried across the Andes, and in about twelve months from the time of its leaving New-York or Liverpool it arrives at the mouth of the Ucayali, where it is sent up by boat, which occupies three hundred working hours in going up three hundred miles to Sarayacu and the sarsaparilla country. Here this piece of four yards is exchang ed in barter, according to Hacket, the New-England mechanic, from whom we have been quoting, for one hundred pounds of that drug. A shipment of the return cargo is then made in the rude river raft of the country, and this one hundred pounds of sarsaparilla, bought with four yards of "fi'-penny-bit" cotton, when it reaches the Amazon, is worth $9 in Nauta, $10.50 in Tabatinga, $25 at Para, and $50 at New-York or Liverpool. The voyage has been a long and a tedious and a roundabout one, but the profits are enormous. Now, if Peru and Brazil, instead of forcing commerce with their interior provinces to go around "Robin Hood's barn" to get there, would open ports of entry to all nations and permit them to use the navigation of the Amazon, the citizens and subjects of Peru and Brazil, instead of getting four yards of cotton for their one hundred pounds of sarsaparilla, would get three or four hundred yards for it. It would be difficult to quote any example more strikingly illustrative of the advantages to Peru of that "policy of commerce" which calls for the establishments of ports of entry at the head of navigation on the Maranon, as the main trunk of the Amazon is here called; at Chasuta, the head of navigation on the Huallaga; at the head of navigation on the Ucayali; and at Nautau, which is at the junction of this last with the Ama zon. So Ecuador might establish ports of entry on her side of the Amazon, at Borja, if the navigation be uninterrupted that far, and if Borja belong to her; and at the head of navigation at each one of her Amazonian tributaries, as the Pastaza, the Napo, the Putomayo, and the Japura; though the head of navigation of the last is perhaps in New Granada. Now, if one of these republics should declare such places free ports to all the world, or ports of entry to the commerce of all nations at peace with her, surely Brazil would not in this enlightened day, if an American or an Englishman should wish to wear his own flag and go up in his own bottom under it on a trading voy L Ports of Entry-Uninterrupted Navigation-Amazon River. 567 age to those ports-surely, we say, Brazil would not at this day attempt to play the part of Japan, and hinder those vessels from passing by her doors to other parts of the world. The Pastaza, we are informed on the authority of our old friend, Gen. Villamil, the Secretary of State of Ecuador, is navigable nearly up to Quito; and, it is well known that the sands of most of those streams are auriferous. "Though the river was not at its full, it reminded me of our Mississippi at its topmost floods. The waters are quite as muddy and quite as turbid, but the Amazon lacked the charm and the fascination which the plantation upon the bank, the city upon the bluff, and the steamboat upon the water, lend to its fellow of the north; nevertheless, I felt pleasure at its sight. I had already traveled seven hundred miles by water, and fancied that Tabantinga is the frontier post of Bra- this powerful stream would soon carry me zil on the Amazon. Thence ascending, to the ocean. But the water travel was we have an uninterrupted navigation comparatively just begun; many a weary along the main trunk of the Amazon, month was to elapse ere I should again which here courses through the northern look upon the familiar face of the sea, and parts of Peru, and not far from the south- many a time, when worn and wearied ern boundary of Ecuador, for the distance with the canoe life, did I exclaim, 'This of 500 or 600 miles. Thus a steamboat river seems interminable.' may reach the foot of the Andes. Lieut. Herndon entered the Amazon four hundred and sixty miles above the Brazilian boundary, and he thus describes the river there: "The Amazon, where it receives the Huallaga, is five hundred yards broad. The march of this great river in its silent grandeur was sublime; but, in the untamed might of its turbid waters, as they cut away its banks, tore down the gigantic denizens of the forests and built up islands, it was awful. It rolled through the wilderness with a stately and solemn air; its waters looked angry, sullen, and relentless, and the whole scene, as the noise of the falling trees came booming at distant intervals across the forest, awoke emotions of awe and dread, such as are caused by the funeral solemnities, the minute-gun, the howl of the wind, and the angry tossings of the waves, when all hands are called 'to bury the dead' in a troubled sea. "Its capacities for trade and commerce are inconceivably great. Its industrial future is the most dazzling; and to the touch of steam, settlement, and cultivation, this rolling stream and its magnificent water-shed would start up into a display of industrial results that would make the valley of the Amazon one of the most enchanting regions on the face of the earth." "From its mountains you may dig silver, iron, coal, copper, quicksilver, zinc, and tin; from the sands of its tributaries you may wash gold, diamonds, and precious stones; from its forests you may gather drugs of virtues the most rare, spices of aroma the most exquisite, gums and resins of the most useful properties, dyes of hues the most brilliant, with cabinet and building woods of the finest polish and most enduring texture. Its climate is an everlasting summer, and its harvest perennial." ART. IV.-CONNECTION OF THE ATLANTIC WITH THE MONTGOMERY AND PENSACOLA RAIL-ROAD. FEW subjects are more interesting than the richest soil, the best harbors, and the to trace the developments of different most valuable agricultural productions, sections of the country when connected not only of the Union, but of the whole by means of rail-roads, and the other world. It has been aptly said that various systems of internal communica- "Cotton is King," since every thing of tions. The commercial independence commercial importance depends upon it of the South has become no longer prob- in the way of exchange. The cotton lematical. We possess the finest rivers, planter has, until very recently, conti nued blind to his own interests, by, depending upon expensive, uncertain, and circuitous routes in the transportation of his productions to either domestic or foreign markets. "Direct trade" is the natural channel of communication between nations, and no fact is of more importance for the cotton planter to understand than this simple axiom.The intervention of third parties, the rates of commission, insurance, lighterage, steamboat transportation, wharfage drayage, and various other expenses levied upon a bale of cotton before it can be shipped in a safe vessel to a foreign market, has rendered the ports of New-Orleans and Mobile a dread to the majority of planters of Alabama and Mississippi. Atlantic with the Gulf of Mexico, at the Bay of Pensacola. 4th. The superiority of the harbor of Pensacola over all others on the Gulf of Mexico; and its national defenses. 5th. The probable expense of construction, connected with steamboats to New-Orleans, and the income derived. There is no interior town that we know of in the State of Alabama, in a more enviable position than Montgomery-possessing a large, thriving and energetic population-free from debt, and having a vast extent of rich agricultural country dependent upon her trade, by means of rail and plank roads that are being built, and all converging towards her as a common centre. It is To promote the mercantile and agri- not, therefore, surprising that the city of cultural prosperity of central Alabama, Pensacola should feel desirous to cona most important rail-road was under- nect and afford Montgomery that which taken, a few years since, to connect she most requires, to wit, a safe and Montgomery with the city of Pensacola. The causes that led to a suspension of this road are too well known to the citizens of these cities, to render any explanation at this time necessary; suffice it to say, it was simply owing to the monetary revulsion of 1836 and 1838, that paralyzed the prosperity of the entire country, and which rendered abortive the various attempts undertaken at that time, to open the avenues of trade with interior sections of the country. The Montgomery and Pensacola railroad has now assumed an importance its most sanguine and earliest advocates in no way anticipated. It will be the object of this communication to point out, as briefly as possible, the most prominent inducements that are now presented to the citizens of Montgomery and Pensacola, in favour of an immediate construction of this road. 1st.-The certain, cheap, and expeditious facilities of communicating with a commercial harbor of the first class; and the consequent concentration of mercantile and agricultural trade at Montgomery from the surrounding coun ties. 2nd. The saving of time, in favor of this road, over all others, in connecting the northern cities with New-Orleans, Texas, Chagres, the Tehuantepec route, on to the bay of San Francisco. 3rd. The advantages this road posBesses over the Savannah and Brunswick routes now in progress, to connect the magnificent harbor, to increase her com- The his It is well known that the business of Montgomery is perplexed, and brought to a pause several months in the course of the year, by the shallowness of the Alabama River; and this frequently occurs in the most busy periods, when the Montgomery and Pensacola Rail-road-Expeditious Route. 569 travelling community is most anxious phia, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, either to go, or return from the northern Charleston and Savannah, with New cities. This annoyance compels thou- Orleans, Texas, Chagres, the Tehuantesands to take the more tedious route of pec route, on to the Bay of San Franthe Mississippi River, who would other- cisco, is easily demonstrated by an wise select the more agreeable and examination of the maps, together with expeditious way through Montgomery, the numerous enterprises nearly comthence on to Wilmington, Charleston, pleted to shorten the distance between or Savannah. The stockholders of the these important commercial points. Montgomery and West Point Rail-road Now, it is important for us to examine are losing millions from this cause; and the merits of the Pensacola and MontI see no way of avoiding the loss but by gomery road, and to sustain by facts lending their aid and influence towards the priority it possesses over all other the construction of the Pensacola and routes. The roads through Georgia and Montgomery Rail-road. It is hardly pos- South Carolina are rapidly approaching sible to arrive at a correct data as to their completion, and in a few months the number of passengers that would a direct communication will be had by pass over the route, in the event of its rail road, from the city of Montgomery connection with the Alabama, Georgia to Wilmington, North Carolina, thence and South Carolina Rail-roads at Mont- to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, gomery. Especially, after the Chagres New-York, and, in fact, to every comand Tehuantepec Rail-roads are com- mercial city upon the Atlantic coast. pleted, and connections established by Montgomery, then, is distinctly the terthem with some point on the gulf coast, minating point of all the roads converg being the terminus of the long chain of ing from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf roads leading to the northern cities. It of Mexico. Is it compatible with sound may be safely relied upon, however, that 200 is a small daily average of passengers, since 100 is the present number passing through Montgomery, notwithstanding all obstacles by the river, and rail-roads not yet completed. The cotton trade is well worthy the consideration of the citizens of Montgomery, and a strict inquiry should be made as to the probable increase of this important branch of business in the event of this road being constructed. Whether the obstacles to be encountered upon the river-heavy steamboat freight, insurance, and the various expenses incidental, at Mobile-to wit, commissions, drayage, wharfage, lighterage, are not sufficient to draw off a vast amount of the cotton from the river, to be repacked at Montgomery, and thence forwarded to Pensacola, as opportunities present for shipment; thereby saving all those minor expenses which, taken together, detract so much from a bale of cotton in the Mobile market. It is not false prediction to say that cotton presses will line the river front of Montgomery, in less than a year after the construction of this road, and thus open a new avenue for employment and wealth to her enterprising citizens. Secondly. The saving of time in favor of this road, over all others, in connecting the northern cities, New-York, Philadel judgment, or, the progress of the times, that the property-holders of Montgomery should continue apathetic to their own permanent prosperity, and allow other cities to circumscribe and secure the elements of wealth, now within the control of her own citizens, by extending a rail-road to the Bay of Pensacola; and thus possessing the most magnificent harbor to be found either upon the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico? The saving of time in making a journey from New-York to New-Orleans, is superior to any other route proposed, or yet undertaken. It can be made in the short space of "Four Days," a rapidity greater than is even pretended to be claimed by the numerous improvements now in contemplation to connect the great commercial emporiums of the North and South. This time is calculated as follows; a good steamer can make the trip from New-Orleans to Pensacola in 16 hours, distance 200 miles; thence by rail-road to Montgomery, 160. miles in 8 hours: New-Orleans to Montgomery, via Pen- Montgomery to Wilmington, via S. Ca- Wilmington to Washington, R. R.... 24 hours. 30" 30 " 12" 96 hours. The most gigantic efforts are making |