ing of Bolivia and her enlightened says that the richest cocoa and coffee President, that friend says: "Since I last wrote to you, I have made the acquaintance of Don a grow almost wild, and that the greater part of the former is consumed by the monkeys and birds, for the want of native of Chile, and whom Gibbon saw means of transporting it to a market. at Cochabamba, in Bolivia. This Don Sugar-cane, of gigantic dimensions, is He found everywhere; white and yellow is undoubtedly a clever man. says he has come to Lima to make cotton, of a staple equal to Sea Island. also sarsaparilla and some arrangement concerning the mono- Several kinds of cascarilla grow in poly of Peruvian bark. *** How- abundance, as ever that may be, he pretends that gums, ornamental and other woods, and Belzu, the President of Bolivia, is favor- honey and wax, in immense quantities. ably disposed towards us, and would Crossing the Marmoré from Exaltacion is a grant privileges to a steam navigation to the southwest, you arrive at the river company were application made to him Machuno, which, according to in due form. As I know of no other in- small Pactolus: and he assures me that dividual in Bolivia with whom I could the whole country between the Marmoré communicate on the subject of Ama- and the Itenez, from latitude 14 deg, to the zonian navigation, I did not hesitate to north, is a gold district as rich as Calimake use of him; for, in my opinion, fornia. My opinion decidedly is, that there is no time to be lost if the United the whole country traversed by the rivers States intend to secure the interior trade opening from the slope of the eastern of South America for its citizens. Don Cordillera, from Santa Cruz de la Tierra, declares that the Marmoré is in Bolivia, to the mouth of the Ucayali, navigable for steamers from a point near in Peru, is one immense gold and silver Cochabamba to its confluence with the region-gold being found in the flats Guapuré or Itenez; and so onward to near the rivers, and silver in the mounthe junction of the latter with the Bené, tains. I will venture to predict that the forming together the Rio Madeira; that same region contains diamonds and the Cachuelas, or falls of the Madeira, other precious stones, and probably some are neither impassable nor formidable, unknown to the lapidary at present. and may be easily ascended by steamers, as there is plenty of water and no rocks. To prove this, he asserts that a Brazilian schooner ascended the Marmoré to Trinidad, and fired a salute at that place, about two years ago. After passing the falls, the river is of course navigable to the Amazon. Admitting this statement to be true, (and I am inclined to believe it, as the Brazilians constantly ascend the Itenez to Matto Grosso,) there is open navigation from Para to within a few leagues of Cochabamba, at least 2,000 miles; and this is not so incredible when we consider the length of navigation on the Missouri river. The accessibility of the Bolivian rivers will, however, be ascertained with greater certainty after Gibbon has passed through the Cachuelas of the Madeira, as it is to be hoped that he will sound, or otherwise minutely examine, the different rapids of that river, and correct the says are in the chart errors which made by Palacios, a copy of which I sent you by Mr. O'Brian, for Herndon. "The account gives of the products of the country lying on the banks of the Marmoré is very glowing. He "The silver mines of Carabaya were immensely productive when worked by Salcedo; so much so, that the vice-regal government trumped up an accusation against him, tried, and ordered his execution, to obtain possession of the mines by confiscation. The attempt failed, as the Indians, who were devoted to Salcedo, refused to give any information to the government respecting the mines, and they have remained unworked up to the present time. Gold is known to exist in considerable quantities at Carabaya, and in the Pampa del Sacramento. I have seen specimens from the former place. But gold is the last attraction for emigration to Bolivia. The soil and its products are the source from which the wanderers from foreign lands are to find plenty and happiness. The climate is said to be good, and the Indians, except upon the lower part of the Bené, peacethe east of able and well disposed to the whites. In short, according to Bolivia affords the greatest sphere for trade and colonization. Without, however, placing implicit states, I detercredence in what mined to avail myself of the influence President Belzu-Bolivia-Communication with the Atlantic. 561 he undoubtedly possesses with President Belzu to forward as far as possible our plan of opening the navigation of the Amazon, and to prevent, as much as I could, the success of the Brazilian policy of exclusion. Having ascertained from that Guarayos, a village of four hundred inhabitants, situated at the junction of the Marmoré with the Itenez, on the Bolivian side, and Exaltacion, a town of four thousand inhabitants, were the principal places on the Marmoré below the town of Trinidad, I proposed to him to write to Belzu, and induce him to declare those places ports of entry for foreign commerce. He caught at the idea at once, and said it was muy luminosa,' and wrote to the President by the last post upon the subject. He says that Belzu has declared that he will. make no concessions to the Brazilleros; that the Norte Americanos are the people for him, as they will bring wealth, force and civilization to Bolivia. "I cannot doubt that the Bolivian government will declare the places mentioned above-viz: Guarayos and Exaltacion-ports of entry to foreign commerce. In that event, there will be one great point gained. It will show that Bolivia wishes to open commercial relations with us; therefore we can insist that Brazil shall not throw any impediment in the way of our trade with that republic. Unfortunately, we, as individuals, have neither the power nor the means of carrying out this gigantic, this magnificent plan of opening the finest and most extensive region of the globe to population and civilization. We have gone on so far unaided by the counsel, or even the countenance, of the general government, with the exception of "To return to the question of internal navigation in South America. Enclosed you will find a slip from the Commercio' newspaper, published in this city, containing an account of the departure of a small expedition from Paucartambo to explore the river Madre de Dios. "The Cuzcanians are alive to the importance of communicating through their rivers to the Amazon and the Atlantic Ocean, and whenever the question shall be fairly brought before the Peruvian government, and it is ascertained that the United States intend to force open the way through the Brazils, I can count upon the assistance and influence of the whole department of Cuzco, and probably of the whole number of senators and deputies from the eastern provinces of the republic. Until some action shall be taken by the government of the United States, little can be done here. "However, en attendant, it would be well if you were to attempt to organize a company for the navigation of the South American rivers generally, because, whilst we look at the Amazon, we should not lose sight of the La Plata. The country lying upon the head-waters of that river is better populated than that on the confluence of the Amazon, and, from all I can learn, the commerce with Paraguay alone would amply repay the outlay necessary to establish a steam company for the waters of the La Plata. Possibly, if steamers were actually plying upon the Paraguay and Parana, the Brazilian government might be better disposed towards us, and the question of Amazonian navigation be amicably settled. You may rest assured that if the United States do not move shortly in the matter, some other nation will. For myself, I feel full of this vast subject; for I know that within less than one hundred leagues of me is the margin "Even the Bolivians themselves are of those great solitudes, replete with beginning to wake up to the importance riches, and occupying the wild space of opening a communication with the where millions of the human race might Atlantic. The subject is touched upon dwell in plenty and happiness, where in the enclosed articles from the Comnature annually wastes more than would mercio,' published in this city. The support the population of China in com- Bahia Negra is not put down on the map fort, and where the most luscious fruits I have, nor are Guturriz, the lake Izozos, and fairest flowers grow and bloom un- the river Otuquis, nor the Lativegnique; known and unnoticed. When I reflect but it appears to me that a better or more on this, and on the miles of rivers rolling direct route to the Paraguay from on in silence and neglect, I feel doubly the Chuquisaca (Sucre) would be down the want of power and money to accomplish Pilcomayo, which passes within a few their introduction to the civilized world. leagues of the town. I am not aware whether that river is navigable, nor it is shipped, and, after doubling Cape whether the country it flows through is "We must, on our side, do all we can, and by dint of perseverance may succeed at last in accomplishing our object. Should we do so, it will be a proud satisfaction to ourselves, though the public may, and probably will, leave us to exclaim: Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores. "I shall continue working on, and writing to you whenever I have anything of the least interest to communi cate." We think that from this showing we are entitled to say that commerce up and down the Amazon now with Bolivia is not an abstraction. Horn and sailing eight or ten thousand A question, therefore, of the greatest importance to these republics is the free navigation of that river. The introduction of the steamboat upon their tributaries of it would be followed by the immigrant up the Amazon, who would soon make a perfect garden-spot of the splendid provinces that are on its banks. The distance between the sources of the Amazon, in Peru, and her Pacific coast is, at the nearest point, not more than sixty or seventy miles. The province of Caxamarca, which is upon the Amazonian water-shed in Peru, has a population of 70,000. It is said to be the healthiest part of the world. In 1792 (according to M. Martin) there were eight persons in it whose respective ages were 114, 117, 121, 131, 132, 141, and 147; and one person died there at the age of 144 years, seven months, and five days, leaving 800 living descendants. The city of Caxamarca is in 7° south. There are upon this water-shed, in BoJust as we are concluding this chapter, livia, the cities of Chuquisaca, Cochawe receive a communication from South bamba, and Santa Cruz; in Peru, the America, stating that in all probability famous city of Cuzco, Huancavelica, Bolivia will make, in the month of (celebrated for the richest quicksilver December, 1852, Exaltacion, on the mines in the world,) Tarma, Caxamarca, Madeira, and Reyes, on the Beni-both and Moyabamba; and in Ecuador, the belonging to the Amazonian water-shed celebrated city of Quito, besides numeand to the tributaries of the Madeira- rous other towns, villages, and hamlets free ports to the commerce of the world; in them all. and that the sum of $10,000 will be offered as a reward to the first steamer that shall arrive at either one of these places. The results of Lieutenant Gibbon's exploration of these water-courses are, moreover, looked for, it is said, with exceeding interest by the Bolivians. About one-half of Bolivia, two-thirds of Peru, three-fourths of Ecuador, and one-half of New-Granada are drained by the Amazon and its tributaries. For the want of steamboat navigation on these water-courses, the trade of all these parts of those countries goes west by caravans of mules to the Pacific. There, The revolution which the discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good“ Hope made in the trade of the East was not greater than that which the free navigation of the Amazon would make in the trade in these four republics. It would make of them new countries and a new people. Total population at present estimated between seven and eight millions. In May, 1851, Lieut. Herndon set out from Lima, on his way to explore the Amazon; and it is through him that we derive most of the following information concerning the Peruvian water-shed of that river, Peruvian Water-shed-Trade to the Pacific-Herndon's Report. 563 We therefore introduce the reader upon that water-shed by an extract from his journal, which he has kindly permitted us to make. Standing in view of three beautiful lakes-one of them, Morococha, or "Painted Lake," being that from which the head waters of the Amazon flow-he remarks: meeting in the Florida Pass, and speaking through a trumpet louder than the tempest, with sprites sent down by the naiads of Lake Itaska with greetings to Morococha. "I was now for the first time fairly in the field of my operations. "Before us lay this immense field, dressed in the robes of everlasting summer, and embracing an area of thousands upon thousands of square miles, on which the foot-fall of civilized man had never been heard. Behind us towered, in forbidding grandeur, the crests and peaked summits of the Andes, clad in the garb of eternal winter. "I had been sent to explore the val"Though not yet sixty miles from the ley of the Amazon, to sound its streams, sea, we had crossed the great divide' and to report as to their navigability. I which separates the waters of the Paci- was commanded to examine its fields, fic from the waters of the Atlantic. The its forests, and its rivers, that I might last steps of our mules had made a stri- guage their capabilities, active and dorking change in our geographical rela- mant, for trade and commerce with the tions so suddenly and so quickly had states of Christendom, and make known we been cut off from all connection with to the spirit and enterprise of the age the Pacific, and placed upon waters that the resources which lie in concealment rippled and sparkled joyously as they there, waiting for the touch of civilizadanced by our feet on their way to join tion and the breath of the steam-engine the glad waves of the dark blue ocean to give them animation, life, and palthat washes the shores of our own dear pable existence. land. They whispered to me of home, and my heart went along with them. I thought of Maury, with his researches concerning the currents of the sea; and recollecting the close physical connection pointed out by him as existing between these the waters of the Amazon and those of our own majestic Mississippi, I musingly dropped a bit of green moss, plucked from the hill-side, upon the bo som of the placid Morococha, and as it floated along I followed it, in imagination, down through the luxurious climes, the beautiful skies, and enchanting scenery of the tropics, to the mouth of the great river that this little lake was feeding; thence across the Caribbean Sea, through the Yucatan pass into the Gulf of Mexico; thence along the gulf stream, and so out upon the ocean off the shores of our own land of flowers.' Here I fancied it might have met with silent little messengers cast by the hands of sympathizing friends and countrymen high up on the head-waters of the Mississippi, or away in the Far West, upon the distant fountains of the Missouri. "It was indeed but a bit of moss that was floating upon the water while I mused. But fancy, awakened and stimulated by surrounding circumstances, had already converted it into a skiff manned by fairies, and bound upon a mission of high import, bearing messages of peace and good-will, and telling of commerce and navigation, of settlement and civilization, of religious and political liberty, from the King of Rivers' to the 'Father of Waters,' and possibly "The contrast was striking and the field inviting. But who were the labourers? Gibbon and I. We were all. The rest were not even gleaners. But it was well. The expedition had been planned and arranged at home with admirable judgment and consummate sagacity; for had it been on a grand scale, commensurate with its importance, or even larger than it was, it would have broken down with its own weight. "Though the waters where I stood were bound on their way to meet the streams of our northern hemisphere, and to bring, for all the practical purposes of commerce and navigation, the mouth of the Amazon and the mouth of the Mississippi into one, and place it before our own doors; yet from the head of navigation on one stream to the head of navigation on the other, the distance to be sailed could not be less than ten thousand miles. "Vast, many, and great, doubtless, are the varieties of climates, soils, and productions within such a range. The importance to the world of settlement, cultivation and commerce in the valley of the Amazon cannot be over-estimated. With the climates of India, and of all the habitable portions of the earth, piled one tion from the sea, is one hundred and above the other in quick succession, tillage and good husbandry here would transfer the productions of the East to this magnificent river-basin, and place them within a few days' easy sail of Europe and the United States. thirty leagues from the city of Huanuco, and twenty-four from Moyabamba. Climate very healthy, and free from all annoying insects. It is situated on a beautiful plain of from twenty to twenty-five leagues in "Only a few miles back we had first circumference, which is intersected by entered the famous mining districts of many rivulets. The soil is fertile, proPeru. A large portion of the silver which ducing in great abundance cotton, cofconstitutes the circulation of the world, fee, sugar, indigo, and cocoa, as well as was dug from the range of mountains everything else to which the climate is upon which we were standing, and most adapted. Here the plantain continues, of it came from that slope of them which without any other care than that reis drained off into the Amazon. Is it quired to remove the noxious weeds, to possible for commerce and navigation produce in full vigor from fifty to sixty up and down this majestic water-course years. Cotton gives a crop in six months and its beautiful tributaries, to turn back from the seed; rice in five months; and this stream of silver from its western indigo grows wild. Neat cattle and course to the Pacific, and conduct it with sheep thrive here and multiply most rasteamers, down the Amazon, to the United States, there to balance the stream of gold with which we are likely to be flooded from California and Australia. "Questions which I could not answer, and reflections which I could not keep back, crowded upon me. Oppressed with their weight and the magnitude of the task before me, I turned slowly and sadly away, secretly lamenting my own want of ability for this great undertaking, and sincerely regretting that the duty before me had not been assigned to abler and better hands." The Amazon, in Peru, is called the Maranon. It takes its rise in about 11 deg. south, and flows N. N. W. for about five hundred miles; thence turning east, and constituting, according to the maps, (but the maps are wrong,) the boundary line between Peru and Ecuador for about eight hundred miles by its windings.Crossing in Peru the head-waters of the main stream, Lieut. Herndon reached the banks of the Huallaga, a noble tributary, and embarked upon it at TingaMaria. He descended it to its junction with the main stream, and thence to the mouth of the latter by a river navigation of not less than three thousand five hundred miles. At Tarapoto he fell in with a clever New-England blacksmith, who had been in that country for many years, and from whose valuable notes concerning the commercial resources of the places visited by him, we derive the following: Tarapoto, situated on the left bank of the Huallaga, six leagues above Chasuta, the head of uninterrupted naviga pidly. Population of the town and its two ports in 1848, 5,350; annual births about 235; deaths, 40. Principal branch of industry, cotton cloth, of which they manufacture between thirty-five and forty thousand yards. It is made by hand, and one yard of our common coarse cotton is worth there two of that. The currency is white wax and this coarse cotton stuff of the country, which in Chachapoyas is worth twelve cents the yard. One pound of white wax is worth four yards of cotton; a good-sized bull one hundred yards; a well-grown fat hog, sixty yards; a big sheep, twelve yards; twenty-five pounds of coffee, six yards; twenty-five gallons of rum, twelve yards; a laying hen, four ounces of wax; a chicken, two ounces; twenty-five pounds of rice in the husk, a half pound of wax; twenty-five pounds of corn, two ounces; twenty-five pounds beans, four ounces; a basket of yucas, weighing from fifty to sixty pounds, two ounces; twenty-five pounds seed cotton, eight ounces; a bunch of plantains, weighing from forty to fifty pounds, three needles. Storax, cinnamon, milk of trees, gums, and other products of the forests have no fixed value; but they may be had in quantity from the Indians at merely nominal prices. The land transportation from Tarapoto to Moyabamba, with its population of 15,000, is done on the backs of Indians. Seventy-five pounds make a load, and the freight is six yards of cotton, valued at three yards of our common "fi'penny bit" stuff. The pay of a common labourer is four |