“Such is the river, such is its history” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 202

Da Cunha's geomorphology was the substrate on which he imagined the dialectic
betweenthegreatriveranditscivilizations.Inthesecondhalfof“GeneralObservations”
he embarks on the formal forays that were meant to turn the Hylea into a Luso-tropical
civilization.Herehebeginstolayeronsomeofthehistoryfortheselands“withoutone.”
He writes within the framework of an environmental determinism that seems at odds
with his later positions, a fact that suggests that this was written earlier than most of his
Purús materials such as Clima caluniado , which largely rejects climatic explanations for
human character. However, as in Os Sertões , he may have been setting up a rhetorical
structure of received ideas only to refute them later.
“At the Threshold of a Marvelous World” 24
The Amazonian wilds have always had a gift for impressing distant civilization. Since the earliest
daysoftheColony,themostimposingexpeditionsandsolemnpastoralvisitswanderedbypreference
on its most unknown terrains. Into the wilderness went the most venerable Bishops, the most elegant
Generals, the most lucid scientists. From this soil they sought to raise the most exotic spices and to
elevate native cultures to the highest of destinies. The distant metropole swooned at the marvels of a
land that more than compensated for the loss of glorious India.
Vain efforts. The demarcation teams, the evangelical missions, with their fleets of hundreds of ca-
noes, their astronomy commissions with their fabulous equipment, 25 their prelates and warriors ar-
rivedintermittentlyatthethoseremotehavensandquicklyestablishedontheriverleveesthesumptu-
ous tents of a traveling civilization. They directed cultivation, disciplined the locals, and thus shaped
a land.
Theypressedontootherfrontiers,orsimplyturnedback,whilethenativelonghouses,the malocas ,
collapsed into dust, returning to their primordial savagery.
Already by the end of the 18th century, Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, carrying out his great philo-
sophical voyage on the main channel of the Amazon, walked among ruins. The town of Barcelos,
an old boundary and fortress town, riveted him with the impression of typically Amazonian pro-
gress—the imposing Palace of Demarcation—ample, monumental, and commanding—and covered
withlianas.Itwassymbolic:everythingfluctuates,everythingisephemeral,everythingisparadoxical
in the strange outposts where even the cities, like men, are nomads, perpetually moving from one
place to the next, just as the land shuns them in the roiling current, or in its collapsing embankments.
From one century to another in unbearable similarity are the same daring, yet abortive efforts. The
impressions of the most lucid observers are perpetually misled by the spectacle of a pitiable present
counterposed to the illusions of a glorious past.
Tenriero Aranha, who in 1852 assumed the governorship of the recently founded Province of
Amazonas, provided a historical review where he resumed the extraordinary progress now lost, refer-
ring to vanished industries:
of cotton, indigo, the cultivation of manioc and coffee enough to satisfy local needs and with
goods left over for export. There were factories of indigo, ropeworks of piaçava palm, industries
of thread, cloth and hammocks of cotton, fiber, or feathers, the brick and tile makers, the civil and
naval construction with able artisans elaborating temples, palaces, and imposing vessels.