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 Path 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 palm-thatched 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 .