WCP6721

[1] [p. 264]

SITIO DE UANAUACÁ,

BELOW THE FALLS OF SAÕ GABRIEL,

RIO NEGRO, Dec. 28, 1851.

"Thus far have I advanced into the bowels of the land without impediment"¹; and before adventuring the falls¹ (where I may possibly get a ducking) I seize an opportunity of sending you the seeds of a beautiful Lythraceous tree which I collected on my way up. It grows on a sandy shore about 20 miles above the Barra², and I had gathered flowers of it on the 1st of October. Its habit is almost that of Lagerstroemia indica, but the flowers are still more showy; and as I saw no tree above 25 feet high, and all were clad with flowers almost to the ground, I have no doubt you will be able to flower it at 4 or 5 feet high. It [2] [p. 265] seems to be a Physocalymma, a genus (if I may trust to Paxton³) not in cultivation. My specimens give no idea of the beauty of the plant, as I was taken ill after gathering them, and they were nearly spoiled before I could get them into paper.

I left the Barra on November 14 and reached here on December 18 — a good voyage considering that I worked all the way and consequently made frequent stoppages. I have dried some 3000 specimens on the voyage—a much greater number than I ever dried on any previous voyage — and I am now occupied in arranging them for packing into a case which I shall leave here to be forwarded to Pará⁴. It was the owner of this sitio⁵ (Senhor Manoel Jacinto de Souza⁶, a lieutenant of police) who sent me five out of the six men that composed my crew. They were under no obligation to ascend higher than Uanauacá⁷, but they have agreed to accompany me to Saõ Gabriel⁸, if I will only let them have a fortnight to work in their roças [Portuguese: a piece of arable land]. It was no slight trouble to have to send 1000 miles for men, to wait three months for them, and then to have to pay them for the voyage down and for the time they were waiting for me in the Barra (for they came on me quite unexpectedly), as well as for the voyage up. Yet even on these terms I was glad to get them. So immense is the difficulty of procuring men here to do anything, that I think of removing altogether to Venezuela.…

I should like to ascend the Rio Negro again, because I was obliged to leave so many fine things on its banks. After passing Barcellos⁹ almost everything was new, and so many things were in flower, that I was obliged to confine myself to [3] [p. 266] those which presented the greatest novelty of structure. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I was obliged, for instance, to shut my eyes to Myrtles, Laurels, Ingas, and several others. Between the Barra and Uanauacá I counted no fewer than fourteen species of Lecythis¹⁰.in flower, and all but one new to me! Yet of these I got a stock of only four or five; for, to say nothing of the difficulty of preserving so many things, I found my Indians very hard to set agoing again when stopped in the middle of their work. And when you consider the time that is lost in collecting trees — for your tree is rarely on the very river's brink, but you have to cut your way to its base with cutlasses, and it has then to be climbed or cut down — you will understand why I generally contrived to make my collections when we stopped to cook our meals.

I enclose you two flowers of a Leguminous tree which was in flower all the way up the river and formed a great ornament to its banks. It is a Heterostemon (a most remarkable genus), but whether a described species I cannot say. The petals are a fine blue slightly tinged with purple, and the column of stamens is red. There are no pods ripe yet, but I will try to send you some. As it often flowers at 10 feet high, it is very suitable for cultivation. But the glory of the Rio Negro is a Bignoniaceous tree (apparently an undescribed genus) with whorled leaves and a profusion of pink flowers the size of those of the foxglove. It grows 90 feet high!

In Cryptogamia¹¹ alone am I disappointed in the [4] [p. 267] Rio Negro, though I always had my eyes open for them. The following is my Cryptogamic summary thus far: Ferns, 0; Mosses, 0; Hepaticae, 1; Lichens, 3 or 4 epiphyllous species! Would you have expected this of the Rio Negro? I certainly hoped something better of it. In place of these tribes there are, however, plenty of Podostemons on the granite rocks which peep out of the river (and, by the by, make the navigation very dangerous), but all, all dead and burned up. It is here, as I remarked at Santarem¹², the Podostemons all flower just as the water leaves them, that is, early in the dry season; and my ascent of the Rio Negro was made towards the close of the dry season; but if I live, these little fellows shall not escape me. As their fruit is exposed to a burning sun six months or more in the year, I do not see why they should not travel safely to England in a letter, and I accordingly enclose capsules of one of the largest specimens. They ought to vegetate on stones (especially granite) barely emersed¹³ from the water of a tank; though here they never grow in still water-always in rapids or cataracts¹⁴. where the water rushes over them.

I had sad news two days ago from my friend Wallace. He is at Saõ Joaquim¹⁵, at the mouth of the Uaupés¹⁶, a little above Saõ Gabriel, and he writes me by another hand that he is almost at the point of death from a malignant fever, which has reduced him to such a state of weakness that he cannot rise from his hammock or even feed himself. The person who brought me the letter told me that he had taken no nourishment for some days except the juice of oranges and cashews. [5] [p. 268] Since I came to Pará the fevers of the Rio Negro have proved fatal to two of the persons mentioned in Edwards's Voyage¹⁷ — Bradley¹⁸ and Berchenbrinck¹⁹, very fine young men both. Wallace's younger brother²⁰, who came out from Liverpool along with me, died last May. He had gone there, poor fellow, to embark for England, took the yellow fever, and died in a few days.

The Rio Negro might be called the Dead River — I never saw such a deserted region. In Sta. Isabel²¹ and Castanheiro²² there was not a soul as I came up, and three towns, marked on the most modern map I have, have altogether disappeared from the face of the earth. We had beautiful weather in coming up, and to this may be attributed that I and all my people arrived here in good health.…²³

Mr. Wallace came up from the Barra more than a month before me, escaped the fever on his way, but the day he set foot in Saõ Joaquim was attacked.

What a beautiful little palm is the Mauritia carinata of Humboldt²⁴! It is remarkable for growing in tufts, and as I sit writing I can distinguish a cluster of perhaps fifty stems on the opposite shore of the river. It is abundant on all the Upper Rio Negro. It would fruit beautifully with you.