Maps, Texts, and History - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 286

Neither thePeruviannortheBrazilian state hadmuchadministrative ormilitary capa-
city in these regions, 18 and in fact it was only the smoldering conflicts that had spurred
these polities out of their torpor to chart an area that had been previously mapped in the
1860s by Chandless as an emissary from the British Royal Geographical Society. The
seringalistas and caucho barons ran the show and had their own militias in any case.
Peru and Brazil could find in the maps useful elements for larger state strategy, since
the Purús map served as an inventory of land use from which more exact information
onproduction might bederived. Initsnaming ofplaces andestablishments itfunctioned
as a cadastral survey and census. The map showed dense populations and a plethora of
Brazilian toponyms, with its mapped and unmapped varadouros weaving the whole re-
gion together.
Euclidean Geometries: Reading the Maps of da Cunha
The marching orders to the commission were clear about what had to be “on the map.”
These were not simple cartographic questions, although onthe surface they appeared in-
nocuous. There were some geographic questions regarding relatively stable landscape
elements (distances from Manaus, for example), but the concerns over other apparently
unproblematic components carried within them far deeper subtexts implicit in correc-
tions to the 1865 Chandless map, mapping of the varadouros , and “observations of in-
terest.”
The Chandless map, generated with the assistance of Manoel Urbano, was, as noted,
producedfortheRoyal Geographical Society asparttheefforttounderstand the“Madre
deDiosquestion”andcanbeseenaspartofthebroadpushatthetimetomapthetropics
and document its “scientific” and resource natures. The Chandless map, accurately and
scientifically produced, was a useful compendium of people, places, and commodities.
The Peru-Brazil Joint Commission's marching orders required it to review and revise
the Chandless map where necessary, and it was the template for the Buenaño/da Cunha
chart. Chandless's elegant map delineates native territories, trading posts, and historical
landmarks (missions, battlegrounds, etc.). There is the smattering of settlements mostly
named for wetlands, lakes, river features, Indian villages, the mouths of tributaries,
local history (where the Purús Indians had been slaughtered), Manoel Urbano's feitor-
ia —small workshop and processing factory—and the ruins of the missions. It illustrates
a number of anthropogenic landscape elements such as the channel and furos (aquatic
shortcuts) and documents numerous varadouros , including those that led over the next
watershed, the Juruá. It names the rivers as black water or white and indicates or hints
at all the connections and relations within the upland and the riverbanks, mostly through
the naming of native places.