“Impressions completely new to me” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 183

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“Impressions completely new to me”
First Encounters and Old Conflicts
The trip north was relatively uneventful, although it was punctuated with bleary seasick-
ness. Da Cunha sent postcards at his various ports of call and was extremely relieved
to finally find himself in Belém, the gorgeous tropical capital of the Amazon. He was
delighted by its gracious, mango-lined avenues, its sumptuous mansions, its public gar-
dens and plazas, and its residents of “European habits.” 1 His own fame and publicity sur-
rounding the boundary commission preceded him. He met with various dignitaries and
soon found himself at the Natural History Museum of Pará, where he met with its dir-
ector, Swiss naturalist Emilio Goeldi, who had played such an interesting role in negoti-
ations over the boundaries of Amapá. Da Cunha dropped off a letter from Veríssimo, and
perhaps he consulted with Goeldi on boundary strategies in the comfort of the beautiful
buildings that can still be seen today.
What most moved him was his meeting with the great tropical botanist Jacques Huber,
and his first real encounter with the Amazon as he sailed around the estuary in a touristic
afternoon outing. He later described it this way in a much-celebrated presentation at his
induction into the Brazilian Academy of Letters: 2
It'sbeentwoyearsnowsinceIfirstenteredtheestuaryinParáatthatalmostindefinablepointinthe
Amazon delta where the river becomes ocean. Against my expectations, I wasn't overwhelmed. What
I'd imagined as monumental was flattened in perspective, a stretch of water with neither the pictur-
esque effects of waves nor the mysteries of depth. The liquid surfaces, muddy and smooth, stretched
without definition north and south between two strands of eroded land, equally undefined and without
even the slightest undulation to relieve the view. In the midst of these indecisive shoals, like badly
drawn islands or, better, caricatures of islands half flooded by tides and heavy with swamps, there was
a sort of shipwreck of land. It was as though, half drowned, a castaway had crawled up and grasped
convulsively at the twisted mangrove roots. Above these narrow strips of water and land was only the
sky, empty and bending down to the perfect arc of the horizon, as in the midst of the Atlantic.
I quelled my disappointment. With the obstinate intention of finding everything prodigious, of feel-
ing the masculine lyricism of a Frederico Hartt or the “glorious” impressions of Henry Walter Bates, I
retired to a corner and filled pages of my notebook with the most elaborate adjectives, stirring nouns,
and glittering verbs that I could muster. But I ended by ripping up those pointless scribblings, ulti-
mately inexpressive and empty. . . .
. . .
Later, I stepped into the launch, and into Belém. I soon found myself at the Pará Museum, within
whose walls all the marvels of Amazonia are condensed. There I met two men: Emilio Goeldi, who