Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 29
Venezuela the only books in the Spanish language
existing there were " El Sepulcro, por Anna Radcliffe,"
and a translation of one of the Duchesse
d' Abrantes' novels. They are scarcely more
numerous at Tarapoto, where one of the most
famous books is " Waverley d ahora sesenta anos,
por Sir Gualterio Scott." In short, so far as I can
judge of South America from having seen only
the most thinly-inhabited portions of it, I can truly
say that Mrs. Radcliffe, Walter Scott, and Alexandre
Dumas are far more popular there than
Cervantes and Camoens. To the credit of the
Brazilians, they are far more familiar with the
Liisiads than the Spanish Americans are with Don
Quixote.
. . .
Well, we reached Nauta, beyond
which the
Brazilian steamers do not proceed. Nauta is an
Indian village established about twenty years ago
just above the mouth of the Ucayali. It is a good
way within the frontier of Peru, but is at present
the seat of the frontier garrison (of twenty-five
men) and also of the government of a department
with provisional
limits and a provisional name
(Dept. del Literal do Loreto), nearly conterminous
with the ancient province of Maynas. Two steamers
were got out here two years ago from the United
States where they had been purchased for two or
three times their value. They were intended to
navigate the Huallaga and Ucayali; but provec
such trashy things slightly
built of pine wood,
and containing large, coarsely-made, high-pres
engines that were continually shaking the
leaky that the Peruvians could make nothing of
them, and they are at this moment lying rotting in