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page 69 ----Camapuao----navigation---

The Parana rolls its immense mass of waters slowly and majestically along in a broad bed, and is said to be even here half a league across. The navigation on it is agreeable, but dangerous when a high wind arises, by which tremendously high waves are dashed against the shallow boats. The eastern bank is generally high and the western low, and both are of white sand covered with woods. The latter cease when the travellers leave this main stream and proceed up the river Pardo, which descends through a country covered with grass, with great impetuousity and considerable fall, interrupted by two and thirty cataracts. The navigation on this river is extremely difficult, so that it often requires two months to pass the eighty leagues [480 miles] of its course. In the harbor of Sanguexuga, the boats are unloaded and conveyed on four-wheeled carts drawn by oxen, two miles and a half to the harbor of Camapuao.

View from Serra do Camapuao to the valley of the river Pardo

Here the travellers meet with the first settlement of inhabitants in this wilderness, where they may purchase what provisions they want, such as maize, bacon, beans, and dried salt meat. The fazenda at Camapuao lies exactly halfway on this fatiguing route, and is often a place of refuge for the crew, who are frequently all attacked with malignant fevers, caused by incessant hardships, and the damp foggy climate they have travelled through. The government has placed a detachment of soldiers here, whose business it is to protect the fazenda against the attacks of neighboring Cujapos, and to assist travellers in conveying their effects over the isthmus.

Portuguese soldiers fighting Brazilian indians

page 70 ---rivers of the interior---navigation---

From this fazenda, the boats proceed down the shallow little river Camapuao with only half their cargo, till they reach the deeper river Cochim. On this river, which winds between steep cliffs and rocks, they have again to pass two and twenty rapids and falls, some of which make it necessary to entirely unload the boat; others, to take out half the cargo. From the Cochim they come into the Tacoary, a considerable river, which is generally about seventy fathoms broad, and has only two falls, the second of which, Belliago, is the last of the hundred and thirteen which the boats have to pass from Porto Feliz to Cuyaba. This river comes down with numerous windings through pleasant grassy plains into the lowlands, towards the Paraguay, and empties itself by many mouths into the main stream. In former times, it was frequently visited by the Payagoas Indians who came from the lower Paraguay to attack travellers. In order to be able to make an effectual defense, all the canoes which undertake the journey at the same time, usually assemble in the harbor of Pouzo Alegre, from which they proceed under the direction of an admiral, chosen from their own body. All travellers agree in the praise of these countries, where they say that the stranger is constantly surprised by the abundance of new and remarkable things.