Travel Reference
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This is also suggested in a letter from Antonio Pires de Pontes Leme, an astronomer for the royal
Portuguesedemarcations.Assessingit,onenotesthattheentrancesofthetributariesofthePurúshave
the same configurations today, although one of them, the Parataní, is much longer and stands out as
though it were another river, even noting that the main river follows from latitude 6°30ʹ a course very
similartoitscurrentchannel,butlosesitslinefurthersouthuntilthecartographersgaveit,atrandom,
a deviation to the southwest, parallel to the Madeira. One observes on the same map a large Paraná-
Mirim
*2
(at latitude 5.40) mixing, by way of a tributary of the Capana, the waters of the Madeira and
the Purús. These coordinates practically correspond with the mouth of the Paraná-Pixuna, and even
though this communication between the rivers doesn't exist, this congruence of positions is yet an-
other indication of more complete information than vague deductions of the Indians. More recently,
ManuelAiresdoCasal,inhis
Corografia brasilica
(1817),thoughheconcurswiththeerrorsthatper-
sist to our time, does present, near the headwaters, doubts that place him in the vanguard of modern
geographers:
These rivers, the Tefé and the Purús, are not derived from the mountains of Peru where some
say they begin: this is proved by the existence of a communication between the Ucayali with the
Mamoré via the Rio Exaltacion and the Lake of Rogualgoalo: but whether they derive from these,
as others would have it, or whether the origins are in the north must still be determined.
Lake Rogualgoalo was for a long time considered the inexhaustible source of numerous rivers whose
headwaters wended their way through the Bolivian highlands between the 10th and 15th parallels.
Thus it was that in 1852, Lieutenant Captain Amazonas, referring to the origins of the great river and
considering incorrect “the idea that they form in the mountains of Cuzco via the communication of
the Ucayali with the Mamoré, by means of the Exaltacion River,” inclined toward those who judged
the Purús to be an outlet of this already mentioned lake.
Professor James Orton,
6
in 1868, substituted this error for one even greater and the most surprising
of them all: he presumed that the Purús was the legendary Amarú-Maiu, or River of Serpents of the
Incas, and traced it from the Andes, where it nourished the romantic valley of Paucar-Tambo before
spreading out in the flat plains of Amazonia.
countering the inexplicable blunders of Mariano Paz-Soldan, who in 1862 in his
Geography of Peru
and its atlas presents the Madre de Dios and the Inambari as the tributaries of the Marañon.
With such conflicting assessments, one can understand why the Royal Geographical Society in
London would commission one of its members, William Chandless, to resolve the controversy, or as
one used to say, the “problem” of the Madre de Dios and of the Purús. But before this, Brazil would
also commit itself to the systematic exploration of the River.
Infact,exceptforthefruitlesstravelsofJoãoCametá(1847)uptotheItuxi,andofSerafimdaSilva
Salgado, who went slightly above the Iaco, the Purús was really opened in 1861 by Manoel Urbano
de Encarnação, an inexhaustible source of heroic undertakings. Urbano, a fearless and wise
cafuz
—a
mixed blood of native and black ancestry—matched his resolution and courage with intellectual vi-
brancy (“a great natural intelligence,” in the words of Chandless), which contributed enormously to
thepowerhehadoveralltherivertribes,andsocouldopenuptheregionforoneofthemostremark-
able chapters in our geographic history. His contributions were extraordinary and merit more pages
than this quick sketch.
8
In accordance with his instructions from the provincial government of Amazonas, the first goal of
his extensive travels was to verify what had long been conjectured as a channel between the Purús
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