THE AMAZON QUEEN

EEP WITHIN the forest of the Amazon, near Pucallpa in Peru, oil derricks rise to challenge the jungle's giant trees. The steady sound of pumping is heard above the screaming of rainbow-colored macaws and the chattering of playful monkeys.

Up tiny tributaries of the Amazon, bearded geologists paddle in dugout canoes. They map the unmapped, marking the rock outcroppings, they chip off samples, and then they move on.

"This is no oil boom," explained Mr. Hermann Augustin, a naturalized Peruvian of German origin in charge of Ganso Azul field operations. This U.S.-owned company is the only one actually bringing commercial quantities of oil out of the ground in the Amazon region -- 262,413 barrels in 1955. "In fact, the Amazon needs more oil than is now being produced here. There are enough refineries, though. Ganzo Azul has a small one at Pucallpa, the Peruvian Govenment has one in Iquitos, and Brazil has a large one in Manaus."

Steel cables lash four oil barges to the Reina del Amazonas

Fuel, I learned, is even more important for the river craft that ply both the Amazon and its countless tributaries than for the cars, trucks, and industries of Amazonian cities It seems that the outboard motor has revolutionized life along the river. Everyone who can afford one has one. But before oil was discovered in the Amazon Valley and refineries were built, transportation costs made gasoline prohibitively expensive for many.

Mr. Augustin continued, "Unfortunately for Brazil, much of the crude oil for the Manaus refinery has to come by tanker all the way around the coast from Venezuela and up the Amazon. The Brazilian Govenment is exploring the Manaus area and has hit oil, but not in commercial volume."

As Mr. Augustin spoke, he offered me a glass of cold beer from behind the bar of La Reina del Amazonas (The Amazon Queen), the most beautiful ship on the river today.

Through them one occassionally saw a hut in a clearing on the bank. Here there were the broad emerald-green leaves of banana plants and the narrow ones of corn, several half-naked children, and a cow or two. Looking through the binoculars at the settlers, I felt as if I were there with them. I thought of their isolation. Then I thought of the early settlers in my own country, the United States. I knew that these modern pioneers on the bank experienced many of the same feelings of loneliness, of carrying on a personal battle against the wilderness, as the pioneers of my country so long ago.

Mr. Augustin must have been thinking about the United States, too, because he resumed, "This isn't a bit like the Mississippi River. They have everything there -- bouys, night markers, dredges, repair facilities. You can phone the army engineers on shore and they´ll guarantee you say, nine feet of water. That's the word they use: guarantee. Here on the Amazon there is no one to phone, no bouys, no markers, not a single dredge, and only one floating drydock west of Manaus. On our last run we were held up three weeks waiting for that drydock. All we needed was to replace a broken propeller -- a six-hour job. And just one dredge betwen Pucallpa and Iquitos would be enough to insure safe navigaion ten months of the year on that half of our run."

Navigation, I later learned, was indeed a big problem in the transport operation. The Amazon, which takes its name from the female warriors of Greek mythology, has more in common with a bellicose woman than just the name. She is beautiful, but wild. Her curves are treacherous, her moods depend upon whims -- stormy ones break when least expected. On my trip I witnessed many blinding rain squalls that appeared out of nowhere and just as suddenly disappeared. Losing our bearings during one of these periods when visibility is practically zero could have been disastrous. Our river pilots, though, seemed to "feel" even when they could not see. Watching them work at night reinforced this impression.

In the wheelhouse all was dark except for the slight ruddy glow of the compass light. No moon shone over the Amazon that night, yet we churned along at our normal speed of ten knots. The pilot peered out into the darkness toward the neerer bank. A few minutes went by. Then he flicked a switch that turned on a searchlight on top of the cabin. Its powerful beam cut through the darkness ahead. The pilot reached up and played the light on the bank, sweeping it from side to side. Then the beam rested on the bank for an instant. He had found his checkpoint. He glanced at the clock and snapped off the light. All was darkness again. We changed our course slightly and the light was not turned on agian for ten or fifteen minutes. Then the process was repeated. All through the black night the pilot accurately guided his ship. How does he see? How does a cat see?

The Amazon pilots have no printed maps or charts. The course of the river changes so frequently that a permanent map would be useless. So they make their own, in pencil, on numerous sheets of paper. On each trip they erase some of the lines and add new ones. The river never rests, nor does the pilot.

Basically, the pilot's problem is to keep his ship in the deepest part of the river at all times. Many factors help him divine where the channel is. One of the Reina's three pilots explained some of them to me one sunny afternoon just before he went on duty. "The thing that helps us the most," he said, "is that the Amazon is always twisting. The straight parts are the dangerous ones. You'll notice that the curves always present the same configuration. On the outside of the curve is a high vertical bank cut by the river. On the inside of the curve where the flow is much slower, the mud from the river has formed a gradual slope." Just then the ship changed her course and we headed toward the other side. The pilot said, "Since the curve of the river has altered now, we have to change over, too, always staying near the outside of the curve where the flow is swiftest and the water, therefore, the deepest."

Luxurious vessel, humble job

The next afternoon at about five o'clock, I had occasion to remember that phrase: "The straight parts are the dangerous ones." As I sat in the lounge reading, I looked up from my book and saw that the banks were not drifting by as usual. We had come to a complete stop, so gently that I had scarcely noticed it. Then I felt the engines reverse and the ship shudder with their full power. We did not move. We were stuck fast. I went out on deck to watch, but there was nothing to see: just the current rushing past us. Then I noticed that we were on a straight stretch of the river.

Though the reversed engines were tugging with all their deisel power, we remained stationary. By now one of the crew members was taking soundings along the outer edge of the barges. The barges needed ten feet of water: the one farthest out on the left had ahead of it only six. The deck crew came forward, called by three blasts from the Reina's horn, leaving naps, card games or conversation behind. Their first task was to unleash the Reina del Amazonas from her barges. Hawser reels spun with a clicking noise and wire cables were drawn across steel decks by gloved hands and powerful arms. Once untied, the Reina made for the trouble spot at the front end of the barges. Easing up to it, she came to a halt and then churned her propellers, stirring up the mud as if in a giant electric mixer. The water convulsed and foamed, but the barges did not move. The Reina shifted position and tried again, but to no avail. Back to her original location she went and the deck crew made her fast again. Then the two nearer barges were unleased from their companions. The Reina reversed her engines and the two barges were free. Then she pushed them over to the bank. Mr. Augustin, who was also observing all this, optimistically remarked, "One thing the Amazon has more than the Mississippi is mooring posts. Here we have millions of trees to choose from."

As he spoke, one of the crewmen at the far end of the barges was jumping ashore. A rope was tossed to him and he plodded up the bank pulling it. Others came to his aid and together they pulled a steel cable up the bank and made it fast to a tree. This left two barges in mid-river, so back we went for them. Another was detached and moored in the same manner as the first ones. "That's the advantage of barges over a tanker," said Mr. Augustin. "On a tanker all of you would be stuck, but this way only part of you is."

Despite the manifold efforts of the deck crew and all the power of the Reina, the last barge proved impossible to move. It stood immobile in mid-river; 225 feet long, 38 feet wide, and carrying twelve thousand barrels of oil. For nine arduous hours he crew had labored without respite. Over and over again they had made the Reina fast to a likely spot on the barge, only to have to untie her when the barge refused to budge. Finally, at 2:00 A.M., it was decided to abandon the struggle until morning.

While the crew slept an exhausted sleep, the warrior-woman-of-a-river that had defeated them heaved her mighty bosom and released her prisoner. Perhaps it had rained heavily in some tributary.

Fortunately, the rest of the trip was made without similar mishap. We did have to moor the barges to the bank again, however. This occured during the rather complicated machinery of crossing the Peruvian-Brazilian border. First, though, we had to stop at Ramón Castilla to clear our cargo with the local Peruvian authorities. Captain Bruner, the ship's master, took ashore a briefcase full of papers to be stamped and signed. I myself received another passport stamp besides the one I had got when I borded the Reina at Iquitos. From Ramón Castilla one could see parts of three countries: across the river from Peruvian territory stood the Colombian towns of Leticia, with a white marker separating it from Brazil.

Leaving Ramón Castilla, we traveled a few more miles from the Amazon to the mouth of the Javari River. There the Reina left her brood of barges and charged up the Javari alone to the Brazilian frontier town of Benjamin Constant. Night had fallen as we tied up at Benjamin Constant, and above the steady put-puting of the town's generator we could hear a loud-speaker blaring music for a public dance. While the Captain again took his briefcase ashore, this time for stamps and signatures of the Brazilian authorities, some of the crew members, freshly showered and in stiff, newly ironed cottons, attended the dance. Other crewmen busied themselves with the unloading of some furniture, brought from Iquitos for the new Peruvian Consul at Benjamin Constant. No one seemed to be around to accept it, and when we left at two o'clock in the morning it was still there on the bank: a table surrounded by four wicker chairs, as if waiting for four lovely ladies and a silver tea service.

A new passanger came aboard at Benjamin Constant: a Brazilian customs agent. His job, I learned was to prevent any illegal trading between Benjamin Constant and Manaus. Although the Amazon is an international waterway, if a ship intends to stop at some Brazilian port on the way down river she must have an agent aboard.

The days between Benjamin Constant and Manaus passed rapidly. I was sorry to think of such a pleasant trip coming to an end. I spent the days reading books about the Amazon in the ship's library. Then, early one morning, the brown, muddy water of the Amazon gave way to the inky water of the Rio Negro as the Reina turned off for Manaus.

The gleaming silver storage tanks and cracking towers of the refinery soon came into view high up on the river bank. On the Reina's bridge the Captain, pajama-clad, took over. He eased the barges gracefully alongside the refinery's floating dock and the two-week trip from Pucallpa came to an end.

Helmeted Brazilian refinery workers hopped aboard the barges. Immediately they began to connect the huge hoses that would suck up our precious black cargo: oil for the Amazon. I know that both the present economy and the future progress of the Amazon region depend in large measure upon such pioneering operations as the Reina's long voyage on the tortuous, treacheros Amazon.

Journey's end: oil is fed to pipe running up river bank

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