ABSTRACT
Samuel Fritz throughout the whole of the thirty-seven years of his missionary work in the Amazon was engaged in continuous controversy with the Portuguese authorities at Para concerning the boundary line between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the Amazonian region, and refer ence is repeatedly made2, in his Journal and in his letters of protest against the Portuguese pretensions, to the Act of Possession taken by Pedro Teixeira upon his return voyage from Quito to Para (1637 -9), and to the memorial or boundary mark he set up. To quote his words:
This memorial then is the cause now of the whole dispute; and as already there is no one who has an exact remembrance of the spot where the said memorial was placed, it is now pretended that it was farther up than the province of the Omaguas.
