Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
plorablerealities:thefadingofthelastenergiesoftheexhaustedexplorers,andtheenforcedslowness
of travel, which should have been rapid in order to safeguard their lives.
From the very first hours of the first day of that journey it became clear that the necessary speed
would be impossible, and so the Brazilian Commission returned, since it was materially impossible
tocontinue ajourney that inthe best hypothesis wouldneed at least at ten days,that is,twice the time
their supplies would last. Given that the Peruvian Commission had left most of its supplies at Curan-
já, it had only those necessary to arrive at the
varadouros
, and based on the assumption of losing part
of these rations in the obviously dangerous navigation, circumstances did not permit offering to share
these with their Brazilian colleagues.
Figure 16.4.
Peruvians with a tapir.
Thus, with everything so impossible, the Brazilian Commission began its return and worked on
its report, and following the instructions that tasks carried out separately would lack official weight,
turnedinthedirectionofManaus,alwayswithobservationsandsurveysthatwouldsupporttheefforts
that had been made on the way up.
Happily, the part that was left unstudied was neither large nor of great importance, as it referred to
the
varadouros
of the Curiujá, recently opened by the
caucheiro
Carlos Scharff. This section was of
no practical consequence, for beyond the difficulties of navigation of that river, there were other im-
pediments: the
varadouros
traversed extremely steep lands with so many obstacles that the best one
can say about it was that it was abandoned.
Wethinkitisnecessarytoexplainwhata
varadouro
is.Thisisthenamethatisappliedtopathways
that are quickly opened and pass from one river to the next in the shortest possible arc, and often
greatly reduce distances by linking segments of the same river. The
varadouro
should offer the ad-
vantage of being relatively flat, at least in the areas we traveled, so that it allows the latex extractor
to transport boats and various types of cargo. This occurred with the Cujar. The traveler who passes
through it moves from the waters of the Ucayali to the Purús, and vice versa, and continues travel-
ing in the same boat that he dragged through the isthmus. However, only with great difficulties could
this occur on the Curiúja, and so it completely lost its importance. It was abandoned in favor of the
varadouro
oftheCujar,somewhatfarthertothesouth,nowthepreferredcrossing.Happily,thatsmall
section that still remained to be explored is subject to the most secure and detailed information, and
had no importance in the larger culmination of our work. The commission returned definitively to
Manaus,wheretheyarrivedthelastdaysofOctober.Theretheydedicatedthemselvestothelaborsof
the assignment, adorning their observations with the results that we will now outline more concisely.
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