Oregon and Eldorado; or, Romance of the RiversBulfinch, Thomas
History
Oregon and Eldorado; or, Romance of the Rivers
Bulfinch, Thomas
Amazon River; Columbia River; El Dorado; Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806); Oregon -- Discovery and exploration
Our party returned to the Amazon; and we find occurring in their
narrative names which are familiar to us in the history of our previous
adventurers. They touched at Omaguas, the port where Madame Godin found
kind friends in the good missionary and the governor, and where she
embarked on her way to the galiot at Loreto; and they passed the mouth
of the Napo, which enters the Amazon from the north,--the river down
which Orellana passed in the first adventure. The lieutenant says, "We
spoke two canoes that had come from near Quito by the Napo. There are
few Christianized towns on the Napo; and the rowers of the boats were a
more savage-looking set than I had seen,"--so slow has been the progress
of civilization in three hundred years.
The Amazon seems to be the land of monkeys. Our traveller says, "I
bought a young monkey of an Indian woman to-day. It had coarse gray and
white hair; and that on the top of its head was stiff, like the quills
of the porcupine, and smoothed down in front as if it had been combed. I
offered the little fellow some plantain; but, finding he would not eat,
the woman took him, and put him to her breast, when he sucked away
manfully and with great gusto. She weaned him in a week, so that he
would eat plantain mashed up, and put into his mouth in small bits; but
the little beast died of mortification because I would not let him sleep
with his arms around my neck."
They got from the Indians some of the milk from the cow-tree. This the
Indians drink, when fresh; and, brought in a calabash, it had a foamy
appearance, as if just drawn from the cow. It, however, coagulates very
soon, and becomes as hard and tenacious as glue. It does not appear to
be as important an article of subsistence as one would expect from the
name.
Dec. 2.--They arrived at Loreto, the frontier town of the Peruvian
territory, and which reminds us again of Madame Godin, who there joined
the Portuguese galiot. Loreto is situated on an eminence on the left
bank of the river, which is here three-fourths of a mile wide, and one
hundred feet deep. There are three mercantile houses in Loreto, which do
a business of about ten thousand dollars a year. The houses at Loreto
are better built and better furnished than those of the towns on the
river above. The population of the place is two hundred and fifty, made
up of Brazilians, mulattoes, negroes, and a few Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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