The canoes of
Cuyaba tradesmen which descend annually to Santarem are obliged
to be unloaded at each of these, and the cargoes carried by land
on the backs of Indians, while the empty vessels are dragged by
ropes over the obstruction. The Cupari was described to me as
flowing through a rich, moist clayey valley covered with forests
and abounding in game; while the banks of the Tapajos beyond
Aveyros were barren sandy campos, with ranges of naked or
scantily-wooded hills, forming a kind of country which I had
always found very unproductive in Natural History objects in the
dry season, which had now set in.
We entered the mouth of the Cupari on the evening of the
following day (August 3rd). It was not more than a hundred yards
wide, but very deep: we found no bottom in the middle with a line
of eight fathoms. The banks were gloriously wooded, the familiar
foliage of the cacao growing abundantly amongst the mass of other
trees, reminding me of the forests of the main Amazons. We rowed
for five or six miles, generally in a south-easterly direction,
although the river had many abrupt bends, and stopped for the
night at a settler's house, situated on a high bank, accessible
only by a flight of rude wooden steps fixed in the clayey slope.
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