Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tions. Thanks to this change, the speed of our ascent grew, accelerating even more as we reached the
headwaters.
On the second day of June, at one in the afternoon, we arrived at the outpost of Refugio, where
the Peruvian administrative commission of the Neutralized Zone was camped under the command of
Colonel Manuel Bedoya; they were stranded there because their launch, the
Phénix
, had run aground.
The next day after a rapid advance through the trading posts of Triunfo, Velho, Porto Mamoria, and
CassianawearrivedintheeveningatNovoLugar,whereforthesamereasonstheadministrative sec-
tionoftheBrazilianCommission(directedbyBorgesLeitão)wasalsomarooned:the
SantosDumont
,
coming from Manaus, had also foundered.
1
A major halt was in Novo Lugar, where the Brazilian Commission only decamped on the 7th of
June (this delay was necessary because of transfer of thirty trunks of material from the
Phénix
). The
Peruvian Commission advanced two days ahead, traveling slowly, and waited for us en route. At
Novo Lugar there was a raging epidemic of beriberi, a circumstance aggravated by illness of the doc-
tor ofthe Peruvian administrative commission, whodied a few days later.The situation was such that
the Brazilian head of commission, heeding a request from Commander Borges Leitão, agreed to let
the Brazilian doctor stay there.
Our travel settled into the pitiless regime that we imposed on ourselves in order to complete our
mission: our days invariably began at dawn, with short stops for meals, and only ended at sundown.
We generally camped next to each other on the same beach, Brazilian and Peruvians, and thus stim-
ulated by reciprocal example that never degenerated into discord, this had as its only consequence
an exceptional travel speed, which we had not foreseen. In fact, at the end of a few days we broke
camp in the first light in order to read the compass and advanced on until night. Meanwhile, adept
with barge poles, the crews of the canoes defied the river that every day demanded ever greater care
and greater efforts, as the growing dangers of submerged logs and extensive sandbars often required
portage of the canoes. We owed the speed of our travels to the unvarying mutual inspiration of our
crews in spite of the periodic stopovers that the nature of our work imposed.
The commission reunited again on the 9th beyond the hamlet of Funil and then proceeded on to
Sobral,wheretheyarrivedonthe11thafterhavingpassedthesettlementsofCruzeiroand,onthe8th,
Hossanah, an abandoned Peruvian trading post, and onthe 9th an improperly named “Furo de Juruá,”
a stream whereby one passes to the
varadouros
that link the Jurupari, an affluent of the Tarauacá.
After Sobral, the last Brazilian trading post on the Upper Purús, navigation further deteriorated,
withevermorecollisionswithlogsandconstantrunningagroundonsandbanksorshoals.Onthe13th
we arrived at Muronal, the first Peruvian trading post of the Upper Purús.
arduous regimen to which they were subjected, and by the palpable improvements in the climate in
spite of sudden swings in temperature, where days of searing heat would be followed by freezing and
humid nights, which at times made taking the measurements excruciating, in spite of the clear, se-
rene skies. On the 14th of June we had to decamp at three o'clock, breaking with our preestablished
program. The morning broke cold and was followed by a torrential downpour that awoke both camps
and, with tremendous blasts, wrenched apart our shelters. Counter to what one might have expected,
instead of rising temperatures, they plummeted throughout the day. Starting at 24 degrees Celsius at
9:00 a.m., the temperature plunged, so that the next morning the temperature was 13 degrees, abso-
lutely anomalous for those latitudes.
3
On the 16th of June we passed some abandoned Peruvian hamlets (União and Fortaleza) and ar-
rived on the 17th at a
tambo
of Peruvian
caucheiros
, Sta. Rosa, on the confluence of what the Chand-
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