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Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 05
Page 04
By 8.30 in the morning of December 5th we entered the mouth of the Madeira River. I was surprised at the sudden change in the appearance of the two rivers. We saw in the Madeira high, gently sloping banks, covered with verdant grass and neat trees and palms along the top of them; whereas along the Amazon the trees stood almost in the water on the recently formed islands and banks. The left bank of the Madeira was of grey and reddish clay (grey below, red above), cut vertically, sometimes actually in steps. Blocks of a rectangular shape, in getting dried up, split and fell over, leaving the banks vertical. The right bank, on the contrary, was gently sloping, descending with a beautiful carpet of green grass into the stream. The islands were charming, with lovely lawns all round. Blackish and deep red rock, vertical and fluted, and with innumerable perforations, could be seen here and there, covered over with a padding of earth from ten to twenty feet deep.
On January 14th we went over the whirlpool of Marques, a most picturesque sight. On the banks of the river was plenty of rubber, _hevea_, but not of quite such good quality as that found in Brazil. Some of the trees exuded white and some yellow latex, the coloration being probably due to the quality of the soil. There were few habitations along the banks of the Pachitea River. There were tribes of the Campas (or Antis) and Cashibos Indians, the members of both races having marked Malay characteristics. Occasionally one met extraordinary people in those out-of-the-way regions. When we halted for wood, which we used instead of coal for our engine, a man some six feet four inches in height came on board--quite an extraordinary-looking person. To my amazement, when I spoke to him, he turned out to be a man of refined taste and quite highly educated. He was a Hungarian count and an officer in the Austrian army, who, having got into trouble in his own country, had gone to settle there.
On January 7th we arrived at the large settlement of Condamano, a sub-Prefecture in the big province of Loreto. There were two parallel streets, clean and well kept, with others intersecting at right angles. On the main street along the water front were many large commercial houses, handsome buildings of _cana_ walls and zinc roofs. The place had been built on a flat high land about 30 ft. above the river, and had some 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants. One of the peculiarities of Condamano was that during the rubber-collecting season the population consisted almost entirely of women, as the men were in the forest collecting the latex.
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