Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
derstandings of the origins of these rivers are interconnected and complementary. The explorations
carried out on the Madre de Dios were in a short time complemented by those of the Purús.
Setting aside for the moment the notable expedition of the Inca Inpangui, who descended with
ten thousand warriors to the fabled Maru-Maiu (today's Madre de Dios) from the Rio Tono to the
provinces of the Moxos, one can date the first formal exploration of the Madre de Dios to 1860-61,
exactly the same time that surveys began on the Purús.
At the same time that Manoel Urbano was embarking on his great tasks, Faustino Maldonado left
Nauta,traversedthevalleyofPaucartambo,traveledtheTonotothefallsofPitama,whichhecrossed,
movingtowardthemouthofthePinipini. Then,withhelpfromonlytheConiboIndians,heconstruc-
ted a raft and sailed the currents until the confluence with the Beni, where via the Mamoré he arrived
at the Madeira River,and there continued his descent. Unfortunately,the daring enterprise had a cata-
strophic conclusion in “Hell's Cauldron” when the brilliant pioneer was shipwrecked and perished
with most of his crew. But the results he obtained were admirable, and it is difficult to understand
why the Madre de Dios was confused with the Purús for so long, except for the influence of the dis-
tinguished Peruvian geographer who was the greatest exponent of this absurd proposition.
*3
Those shores were not subject to continuous attempts at exploration that prevailed on the Brazilian
side. In twenty years there is little to cite: the unfortunate expedition of Colonel LaTorre, who suc-
cumbed in an attack by
chunchos
—wild Indians—not far from Cuzco (1873). In 1880-81, Dr. Edwin
confluence oftheBeni-Madre deDios.Atlast therewasadefinitive verdict onthosetwogreatrivers
that had long inspired the inventiveness of cartographers.
Research continued. In 1890 a Peruvian
caucheiro
, Carlos Fitzcarraldo, overcoming extraordinary
difficulties, discovered the
varadouro
from the Misauau (the last, easternmost branch of the
Urubamba) to the Caspaljani (last of the northernmost tributaries of the Madre de Dios) and hauled
the launch
Contanama
, in which he had ascended the first river, thanks to the robust Piro Indians,
through it to the second. Thus he would transit from the waters of the Ucayali to those of the Madre
de Dios—now known as the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald—and so revealed the narrow strip of land that
separated these two immense basins. Thus, by 1891, the origins and general directions of the rivers
that flowed through those banks was well known. There remained only, to the north, the Purús.
OnePeruvianversion,veryopentoquestion,suggeststhatagentlemanfromLoreto,oneLeopoldo
Collazos,wasthediscovererofthepassagebetweenthePurúsandtheUcayali.Leavinginabout1899
from an outpost on the Urubamba, the explorer, accompanied by thirty infidels, set forth on the Up-
per Sepauá and slipped through the last tributaries until the Machete creek, where in the last days of
Augustheappeared, traversing aslight undulation intheterrain, onthePucani andtheCavaljani, and
at the headwaters of the Purús.
Others, perhaps more reliable, affirm that this honor falls alone to the distinguished brother of
Fitzcarraldo, Dr. Delfim Fitzcarraldo, who established himself in 1892 on the Urubamba with a
Brazilian associate, Lieutenant Colonel José Cardoso da Rosa. Whichever it was, in 1900 the great
questionwassettled:thethreeriverswerecompletelyindependent,buttheirheadwatersweresoclose
together that
the passage from one to the other could be effected not just in the light
ubás
of the Indi-
ans but in the same launches of explorers
.
Da Cunha had shown the headwaters to be utterly permeable. The next section of
the report pertains to the
varadouros
. Euclides describes the last parts of the passage
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