SURVEYOR TELLS OF THE CITY THAT LIVES ON THE JUNGLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19237, 26 November 1930, Page 8

SURVEYOR TELLS OF THE CITY THAT LIVES ON THE JUNGLE.

To-Day’s Signed Article

Specially Written For The “Star”

By

Frederick Simpich.

** From the air, we saw how close primeval forests crowd Para. Its streets end in the jungle.” Flying from "Washington to Buenos Aires, the American Geographic Society’s aerial survey party stopped at Para five days to overhaul the ’plane. Mr Frederick Simpich, a member of the survey party, writes of the greatest city on the Amazon as follows: “ When we got ashore, we felt how utterly the vast forests of Brazil dominate the life of this greatest city on the Amazon.

<<l PARA lives on the jungle. The big woods give it Brazil nuts, rubber, hardwoods, fruits, waxes, oils and jungle-bred animals, on which its sea trade is based. Animals Forage In Picnic Grounds. “In equatorial dawn and dusk Para smells of jungle. Its beautiful Bosque Park is but a bit of natural jungle, cut with paths and set with man’s kiosks, swings, benches and bandstands—where, after nightfall, big jungle bats dart about, and smaller jungle animals forage for food in the wake of daytime picnics. “Giant mango trees, pelted with rocks by small boys when in fruit, shade the wide, cobble-stoned streets of its better quarters. On its waterfront streets you smell smoked crude rubber, the half-tanned skins of jaguars and snakes, pineapples, piles of Brazil nuts ready for ships to New York or Liverpool, bags of cacao, piles of squared logs with their ends painted, and you smell the fresh-cut firewood half-breed Indians are stacking for use of wood-burning river boats. Monkeys, Macaws and Jaguars. “You smell also the shop of the wild animal dealer, its front gaudily painted with a Noah's Ark group of jungle creatures. He shows you bright, shrill macaws, grotesque monkeys, and snarling jaguars. Then there are ant-eaters, living now, not on ants, but on fresh eggs broken into a dish; and cunning little capivaris, or ‘river pigs;’ and the pink ibis, the stork, a white 'pwl in a black mask, rare parrots, multi-coloured wild ducks; also an ‘electric eel’ which gives you a distinct shock, allegedly 40 volts or more, when you stick a wire into his water barrel and touch him. . “Para is no mean city. It is the capital of a State that runs into 15 degrees of lati-tude-huge enough to hold a dozen small European countries. At the zenith of Brazil’s historic rubber boom, before the Far East ruined her monopoly, Para grew fabulously rich on ‘black gold.’ Abundant survivals of the wild, oil-field-like extravagance of the rubber boom period are seen in sumptuous government palaces and paintings, luxurious clubs and rows of private mansions built a generation ago. Now Para watches keenly the work of Henry Ford at Boa Vista, on the Tapajos, in the broad Amazon valley. ‘Fordlandia,’ local papers have renamed the spot where American engineers have built a model camp, and are clearing jungle to grow plantation rubber. Forests Yield 400 Useful Woods. “Meantime, 300-year-old Portuguese Para

sits by the Tocantins, and lives on the jungle. Long-horned ox-teams haul crated motor-cars from the docks—docks with their cranes, chains, anchors, tankers, naked men shovelling Brazil nuts, and big wharf rats nimbly crawling up gripping hawsers—while a mail ’plane takes off for Rio. You sense progress here when you recall that slavery was not abolished until 1888, and that the Amazon itself, like the Tocantins, Tapajos and other rivers was not open to world trade until after the American Civil War. "Forests yield over 400 useful woods. Rubber, cacao, vanilla, sarsaparilla, many nuts, copaiba, quinine—these and many other good things grow wild. Any crops from cane, coffee and cereals to canary bird seed will grow here, if only you can clear the choking, obstinate jungle. “Para merely built its zoo, figuratively left the gate open and the wild animals walked ini Three-toed pigs, sloths, tapirs, monkeys with heads the size of golf balls, snakes that can swallow calves, a river frog with fingers, in which it holds live minnows to eat them, as men hold corn on the cob. A local turtle is called ‘the ox of the Amazon.’ and its oil is made into ‘turtle butter.’ “English bank clerks, German hardware agents, American oil men and seaplane mechanics, Japanese colonising on Amazon lands and foreign sailors haunt the zoo. The tapir is the popular animal. Brazilians are fewer among zoo visitors. The jungle and its inmates are too familiar. Para’s Day. "Para is industrious. It rises soon after dawn; its offices open early. It is cool then along the Equator. When not about its daily duties, this city rests. It rests quietly, utterly. From eleven to three in the afternoon nobody stirs. Not even the buzzards that ride in flocks on open garbage wagons. . “Towards sunset, it takes the air, mostly by looking out of its windows. Many families have specially built little kiosks in the front yards, where they can sit and watch the streets. Movies there are, and a few motor-cars, a semblance of outdoor sports among boys, and a few short promenades. But looking out the window seems Para s favourite diversion. More women lean out of windows here, I am sure, and look at other women leaning out of other windows, than in any other city anywhere. Sometimes they lean out and look at the men, pretending to enjoy only the cool evening zephyrs from the embattled jungles. (Anglo-American N.S.—Copyright.)