Santarem

Santarem, a city of Brazil in the state of Path, on the right bank of the Tapajos, near its entrance into the Amazon. Pop. (1890) of the town and municipio, 12,062. It is one of the most important towns of the Amazon between Para and Manaos, and is a port of call for all river steamers, and a station on the Amazon cable line. The national government has made it a station in its system of wireless telegraphy in the Amazon valley. Seen from the river the town is attractive in appearance, and consists of a European (white) and an Indian quarter, the latter of palmthatched huts. Ruins remain of a fort built in colonial times to protect the population against hostile Indians. Its principal public buildings are a municipal hall and tribunal, a large municipal warehouse, a market (1897), theatre and two churches. The 'productions of the neighbourhood are cacao, Brazil nuts, rubber, tobacco, sugar-cane and cattle; and the rivers furnish an abundance of fish, which are cured here at the season of low-water, when turtle eggs are gathered up stream for the manufacture of oil and butter. The Tapajos is navigable for steamers to the rapids, 170 m. above Santarem, and for small boats nearly to Diamantino, Matto Grosso, and a considerable trade comes from Matto Grosso and the settlements along its banks. After the American Civil War a colony of Americans settled in the vicinity, but were unsuccessful in founding a permanent colony. Santarem was founded by a Jesuit missionary in 1661 as an Indian aldeia, and became a city in 1848.