BRAZIL: Gold Fever

On the beds of Amazon River tributaries in remotest Amapá territory, the glitter of gold has set off periodic rushes since 1893. Early in June a ragged, unshaven prospector stomped into a river village with word of the latest strike. To pay for medicine, food and tools, he had a poke of alluvial nuggets, which he had found in a branch of the Jari River.

Almost 5,000 gold seekers soon converged on the site. From the territorial capital, Macapa, they rode 200 miles up the Amazon in motor launches, another 170 miles up the Jari, paying $75 to travel in dugouts with outboard motors; they portaged around twelve waterfalls and eight long rapids. Eronias Fernandes da Silva, discoverer of the gold and, by custom, proprietor of the field, rented them on a shares basis the right to pan or sluice along 20 to 30 yards of river bank.

Last week, the first of the fortune hunters to come out of the wilderness were back in Macapa. Luckiest was Severino Gomes de Almeida, with $25,000 worth of nuggets. But most had found only misfortune. Some had lost their gear or their gold when canoes overturned. Others suffered from malaria, beriberi and bubonic ulcers. Most disillusioned was a prostitute, who had earned only $94.40. “There is no goodness or kindness up there,” she said. “All those men think about is gold.”

Luckier than all the prospectors were the traders who grubstaked them. Isaac Alcolumbre, a 4O-year-old Macapa merchant, collected 66 Ibs. of gold, worth $54,000, on loans totaling $15,000. Young Florisberto Pimentel resigned his job as a government health officer, invested his $600 savings in medicines and sold them for $3,000. “One more trip and I can set up my own drugstore,” he said.

To Territorial Governor Janary Nunes the gold rush was a disaster. Planters whose workers had deserted them crowded his office to ask who would pick the nuts and collect the rubber. The governor could not help them. He had his own problem: many of his civil servants had turned prospectors. When the fever subsided, the governor said, Amapa would have thousands of men, broke, hungry and stranded in the wilderness.