“Such is the river, such is its history” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 201

The same is true of the riverbanks. The shores of the Amazon's unmeasured channel can hardly be
specified. They are banks that evade the river. Normally they remain above the waters. Far beyond,
thevastplainswiththeirthescatteredlakesofthe Terra Firma lessentheviolenceofthecurrentsand
buffer the floods. There on a vast scale sometimes unfolds what appears as the immense construction
ofearth.Theriver,swolleninitsgreatfloods,punishesthebanksandunburdensitselfontheundefen-
ded flats. It uproots entire forests, heaping trunks and branches in the numerous depressions of the
varzea , and in the backwaters of the flooded plains it decants the waters choked with detritus into a
completely generalized thatch. As the waters drain, one notes that the land has grown and gets higher
and higher with each flood, building upterraces, silting upswamps and flooded forests, sketching the
outline of a rolling upland about to be invaded by a triumphant flora, until in one assault this entire
lateral delta is undone. In one night (the 29th of July, 1866) the left margin of the river collapsed in a
continuous line for 50 leagues.
This is an ancient and continuous process and still persists into the dim rays of our own time. The
banks, ancient bluffs of Peru, where the legendary Amazons appeared to Orellana's expedition, are
today reduced to degraded shoals visible only at extremely low water levels.
The erratic turmoil of the river is revealed in its unending curves, hopelessly entangled, reminding
one in its uncertain itinerary of a lost traveler, who at fading horizons returns to all its old paths,
or propels itself onto sudden shortcuts. The river thus surged through the suffocating narrows of
Obidos 23 in complete abandonment of its ancient bed which one can still discern in the enormous
tidalplainofVilaFranca.Orinotherpointsitstreamsfromunexpectedsidetroughsintoitsowntrib-
utaries, thus becoming, illogically, a tributary of its own tributaries. It is always disordered, always
insurgent,erratic,destroying,constructing—devastating inonehourwhatitbuiltoverdecades—with
the dread, the torment, and the exasperation of a monstrous, dissatisfied artist retouching, redoing,
and perpetually restarting an obscure painting.
A metaphysician might imagine the singular carelessness of a nature that, after constructing the in-
finite modalities of the natural history, begins rather late to hastily complete her task, correcting, in
forgotten retreats, the errors . . .
. . .
Such is the river, such is its history: always insurgent, always incomplete.
. . .
The dynamic geology is not deduced: you can see it, and history writes itself every day before the
enthralled eyes ofthose whoknowhowtoread it. Fromthis come surprises. Everywhere wesomuch
fetishize the equilibrium of natural forms that now we appeal to a tumultuous hypothesis of cata-
clysms, so that these can explain sudden changes; in Amazonia, the most extraordinary and visible
changes are the outcome of the simple play of the most common physical forces. It is a young earth,
an infant earth, a nascent earth, and a land that is growing . . . every six months, each flood passes
like a wet sponge over a poorly drawn painting, it erases or transforms the most salient and obvious
landmarks, as though in the framework of its vast plains moved the restless brush of an capricious,
prodigious artist. In Amazonia, in fact, this cruel contradiction prevails: in a bounteous land, in the
midst of the cheerful plenitude of its diverse life, unfolds a moribund society.
. . .