“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 309

and the Madeira well above the giant rapids of the Madeira. Manoel Urbano traced almost the entire
itineraries of many other, later explorations.
Leaving Manaus on January 27 of that year, he arrived after fifty-five days of slow canoe travel at
the mouth of the Ituí, and then arrived thirty-two days later at the Aquirri (the Acre). He inched up
this river for twenty days of arduous travel, stopping finally when the extreme decline in water levels
annulled all the efforts of his Pamari Indian boatmen, who were, at the end, dragging the canoes. He
returned at low water to the main river and for forty days followed on the vagaries of the current to
slightly beyond Rixala (to the rapids of San Juan, as it is known by the Peruvians), arriving close to
the mouth of the Curumãa (Curanjá), having covered about 2,800 kilometers of the Purús, a distance
that had never been traveled before then.
An immediate outcome of this expedition was that the reality of no connection between the two
rivers—thePurúsandtheMadeira—wasdefinitivelyproved,andthatthetributariesbetweentheAcre
and Curinãa (today called Sta. Rosa) became known. Besides this, they discovered a stream that led
to a varadouro to the Juruá (by means of the Jurupavi and the Tarauacá), and as this transit was ac-
complished above the headwaters of the Tefé and Coari, these simple circumstances were enough to
correct the understanding of the latter water courses, whose elements until then had been extremely
overstated.
Manoel Urbano then directed his research along other lines, always in the search for faster con-
nections between watersheds. He entered the Mucuím River, and in a trip of some twenty days, tri-
umphing over successive rapids and falls, and securing the trust of the disdainful Pamanás Indians,
he arrived at the left bank of the Madeira at the Teotónio rapids after following a varadouro of 10
leagues. Returning to the Purús, he followed the Ituxi and surveyed it until the part with the rapids
beyond the inlet of the Punicici.
While carried out by an uneducated man, but one equipped with exceptional acumen, these travels
provided the first reliable data vis-á-vis the Purús, its three main affluents, and the tribes that popu-
lated them. These immense itineraries between the various points and the general orientations of the
different segments of the river soon surprised even William Chandless. 9 The general nature of the
land and the number and character of the tribes were little altered later on.
It is natural that these efforts in many ways influenced the government that would resolve to con-
tinue these endeavors, so brilliantly begun. This is in fact what happened when on February 13 the
governor of Amazonas, Dr. Carneiro da Cunha, gave engineer Silva Coutinho the order for a recon-
naissance of the Purús and its most important tributaries. This was a complex mission. Beyond the
hydrographic survey, the orders were to review the geological structure of the valley, the flora, the
properties of the terrains most given to cultivation, the number and characteristics of the tribes, and
the most efficient means to couple them to civilization, and to top it off, to attempt again the passage
to the Juruá via the varadouro discovered by Manoel Urbano. Urbano accompanied Silva Coutinho
as well as the German botanist Wallis, the first representative of European science to enter the Purús.
Coutinho summarized his findings in a detailed report of March 1, 1863, which, in addition to
a general study of the river, its lakes, tributaries, islands, shoals, rock outcrops, the houses one en-
counteredfromthemouthuptoRixala,includedampleinformationonthenatives,production,nature
of lands, etc. This reconnaissance, in which the hand of Manoel Urbano clearly manifests itself, in-
cludes many notable chapters, except, lamentably, those of Wallis, whose artistic contributions cir-
cumstances did not permit. 10