Evening star., 1947-04-27

4IOdH tIae paIlkS Oh tle amazon ana
sparsely settled except for the regi
country, the vast states of Para ands
Amazor,as are commercial frontiers
with definite possibilities for young
Americans. I use the term young
Americans" advisedly, for only youth
is adaptable to a life so completely
removed from what in more tenn
perate lands have come to be con-
sidered necessities.
!. Twenty miles from Belem, chief
port of the Amazon region, with
several good hotels. tramway and
bus service and at least two moving
picture theaters. there begins an
untrammeled wilderness that no
man can describe with any degree
of accuracy. because no man knows
it, There is rickety narrow gauge
railroad that connects Belem with
the little town of Braganca. on the
coast, and few cart tracks wander
off into the scrub; nowhere is there
anything that might be called even
second-class road.
River System Excellent.
AS with all Brazil. poor trans
portation facilities are the chief
stumbling block to development.
But this region has one advantage
over much OF the rest of the coun-
try-its tremendous river systems.
You can take deep-water ship more
than 5000 miles upriver to Iquitos,
in Peru, and vessels OF moderate
tonnage can journey in almost any
direction off the main channel. The
lifeblood of the Amazon country
courses between the illimitable
forests. over blue, black and coffee
hued waterways. Ten-thousand-ton
steamers, squat. stubby little wood
burning river boats, sailing craft
and dugout canoes move down with
the current, bearing rubber, nuts,
timber, rosewood oil, castor beans,
carnauba wax, gums, animal and
reptile skins and vegetable fibers
for the worlds markets, and they
beat their way back upcountry to a
hundred little jungle outposts,
loaded with the produce of more
civilized lands: Kerosene, canned
foods, motors, pumps, firearms,
clothing. medical supplies, bottled
drinks, fishhooks and a hundred
other things.
The Well-Dressed Explorer.
The Amazon country is still an
untamed wilderness and he who
pauses in his journey up one of the
great rivers tributaries to photo
graph group of stolid, square-faced
Indians may not live to have his
pictures developed, but in the, river
towns life is slowly changing.
Not long ago spent several days
in little dot on the map called
Abaetetuba, where the Rio Tocantins
flows into the Amazon. 7 had never
heard of Abaetetuba and when a
Brazilian doctor invited me to ac-
company him on tour of public
health inspection there I was pre-
pared for anything.
I appeared on the morning of our
departure loaded down with mos
quito net, insect repellant and hunt
ing knife-I read a book about the
Amazon once: The bowling jaguars,
boa constructors, crocodiles, man.
eating fish and whining insects
within its stirring pages have chilled
the blood of many an innocent read
er--and the doctor was dumfounded.
He was very tolerant, though, and
after we had finished a good break
fast aboard his cruiser and had
spent the morning lounging in COM
Portable deck chairs under an avn
ing, tucked my jungle gear far
away in corner under bunk and
left it there until we returned to
Belem..
Abaetetuba would scarcely fit a
Hollywood directors notion of what
jungle town ought to be like. But
Hollywood was very much In evi-
dence at Abaetetuba; in a little
building about the size of a village
blacksmith shop, Abbot and Co.'S
tello's slapstick Naughty Nineties"
was being shown to capacity au-
dience night after night. The pro-
jector was wired for a different
cycle from that produced by the
local power plant and Costello's
schoolboy voice was reminiscent of
the late Noah Beery's, but Abaete-
tuba appreciated him nonetheless.
SESP, the joint Brazilian-Amer-