Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from severe neuropathy that still persists, which disheartened me: my affliction made it impossible
for me to carry out the decisive action that the moment required.
Our colleague, however, had posed the question in a way that was utterly unacceptable. The return
would require that we sign a new memorandum in which the conditions of the two commissions
would be revealed and it would be explicitly stated that the Joint Commission could not complete its
obligations entirely because of Brazilian failings. Thus he had his vengeance on the abortive docu-
ment of Manaus. . . . And, he argued, they had the proper craft for the ascent—the
ubás
—they had
provisions for a long time, their group was three times the size of mine: they could pass through
the
varadouros
, they were ready to pass, while we, ill-equipped, we could not. He was still captiv-
ated by that memo of Manaus where he had predicted the retreat and believed that ____ miles dis-
tant from that city, almost without resources and buried in the wilderness, I would be forced to com-
pose—alone—that which I refused to do in company
.
He was fooling himself. I refused the proposal.
I declared to him that I was still in pursuit of the “possible impossibilities,” whose existence I did not
doubt, but which I had yet to see face to face. I prepared myself for departure from the Cujar on the
24th of July, upriver in search of the
varadouros
of Ucayali.
I do not exaggerate when I say that we went at half-rations. We commanded an immense region,
entirely uninhabited, and the provisions we had—to last at the maximum for twenty-five days—was
reduced basically to jerky and manioc meal, which we finished at the end of twelve days, a bit of
sugar,whichlasted onlythreedays,halfabarrelofrice,andtheleftovers ofsomecrackers purchased
in Curanja. I give you this list intentionally. It is revealing. You can judge from it, if not our good
faith in carrying out our mission, at least the bravery of an advance that was more than anything else
a vigorous response to an impertinent challenge.
We left on the 24th of July and quickly reached the limits of knowledge we had about the region.
At the lower reaches of the river, prior to the first rapids, the Cujar stretched out in a straight channel,
sometimesfloodingitsriverbedinawaydisproportionatetoitstreacherouswaters.Itwasdammedby
continuoussandbars,whichspannedtheriverfromonebanktotheotherwithoutthenarrowestbreach
so that we might avoid the arduous work of hauling the canoes across them. This task was so pun-
ishing that I often had to jump out and assist. A new hindrance, apparently underrated by the locals,
appearedintheformofthecharacteristic vegetation oftherivermargins,drapedin“buchitas” [
Calli-
andra trinerva
],anadmirablyelegantmemberoftheLeguminosaefamilywhosebranchesspreadout
horizontally, resting on the water, and choked large tracts of the sloughs of best access. In this way,
evenbeforewadingthroughtherapids,werepeatedtheinterminable battlethatbeganatthemouthof
the Chandless and was aggravated by the inappropriateness of our heavy canoes, very different from
the sprightly
ubás
, the only vessels that could really navigate that river. Unfortunately, at Forquilha,
where I had tried to buy some at any price—and where there was a great number of them—my ef-
forts proved useless. We arrived at the first rapids and saw at once, in addition to the large series of
their own obstacles inhibiting passage, another problem that would force further delay: the portage of
our instruments on the banks of the river. These were already badly damaged by our earlier careening
navigation. From there forward, in an inflexible cadence, where we proceeded degree by degree, we
confrontedbarrierafterbarrier,whichwenotinfrequentlyconqueredbyshoving,slowlydraggingthe
canoes over the rocks when they didn't require the use of cables and pulleys to haul them along the
banks against the fury of the waters.
After Forquilha, the nature of the geology changed dramatically. While there were no traces of
primitive formations, everything indicated that we trod on layers much older than the lower basins
and characterized by intense metamorphic action. Boulders jutted out everywhere, almost covering
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