Up the Amazon and Madeira rivers, through Bolivia and Peru — Text and Context

Engineer’s Eye, Traveller’s Discomfort

Mathews writes with the precision of an engineer, noting the metalliferous potential of the region and the promise of improved navigation, yet his diary entries dwell on the gritty realities of movement. At El Chaco, he describes a landslip so severe that “the riding became very dangerous—so much so that we were forced to dismount and drive the mules on ahead.” The road, softened by heavy rain, forces the party to wait or improvise. This tension between the projected railway—a symbol of progress—and the stubborn, muddy terrain recurs throughout the excerpts. Mathews records the practicalities of travel: tying up mules at night, feeding them a local grass called “saracachi,” and carrying tinned meats when local provisions prove unavailable. His observations are concrete, never abstract, grounding the reader in the physical struggle of the journey.

Customs of Shelter and Silence

At a place called El Chaco, Mathews and his party occupy a corner of a hut without asking permission. He notes that “it seems to be the custom in these parts for travellers to enter any house they please,” but adds a sharp qualification: the custom holds only when the traveller’s appearance suggests ability to pay. This observation reveals a tacit economy of hospitality, where the visible markers of wealth—baggage, animals, servants—determine access. The local Indians, described as “miserable-looking” and silent, say nothing as the travellers appropriate space. Mathews does not embellish; he records the silence and the unspoken transaction. Later, he finds settlers “inhospitable in the extreme,” unable to buy even a fowl or eggs. The contrast between the traveller’s expectation of exchange and the reality of subsistence scarcity is a recurring undercurrent.

Coca, Collas, and the Language of Labour

In the coca plantations, Mathews observes a rigid labour hierarchy: Quichuan peons work in gangs, cleaning between rows, overseen by a Colla “sobre-estante,” or foreman. He notes that the peons earn four reales per day (about 1s. 7d.) and are “found in rations of yucas and plantains.” Their clothing is described as “rags of all colours—that is, if one can apply the word ‘colour’ to the different dingy hues.” The passage is notable for its detached, almost ethnographic tone, yet it also registers the author’s frustration: the people speak little Spanish, using Quichuan, and appear “in the utmost poverty.” Mathews’s role as an engineer—a representative of industrial capital—places him at a remove from the subsistence economy he describes. The coca, coffee, and cotton he notes are potential exports, but the local population seems locked in a cycle of minimal production for their own use.

Mathews’s narrative is neither a romantic travelogue nor a dry engineering report. It is a hybrid: a diary dressed into consecutive form, retaining the immediacy of daily struggle while looking toward the commercial future the railway promises. Readers should attend to the gaps—the silences of the Indians, the inhospitable settlers, the landslips that halt progress—as much as to the details of route and expense. The book offers a view of nineteenth-century travel as a series of negotiations: with terrain, with custom, and with the people who inhabit the spaces the railway would transform.

Reading Mathews’s patient, weary account of that broken terrain, I kept thinking how his quiet observations fit inside an older tradition—The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 04 — Text and Context. Both linger on what a place costs a traveler, not what it promises. That voice stays with me long after closing the book.