WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 155 



are quaint, picturesque little cities, without a 

 wheeled vehicle except the water-carts. The 

 one-story houses enclose open courtyards. The 

 walls are thick, and the windows and doors 

 very high, so as to let whatever coolness the 

 night air carries fan the sleepers in their ham 

 mocks. In the bigger houses there are beds 

 in the guest-chambers; but the hammock is 

 really the bed; and in the inns the bedrooms 

 have rings in the walls from which the traveller 

 hangs the hammock he has brought with him. 

 After nightfall the men sit at little tables under 

 the trees in the public squares or outside the 

 taverns, and through the open doors and win 

 dows of the houses, in the mysterious darkness, 

 are the half-seen figures of girls and women; 

 and stringed instruments tinkle in the still 

 tropic night. 



When Portugal still ruled Brazil, the first 

 of these cities was founded, toward the end of 

 the eighteenth century. At that time it could 

 only be reached by a long voyage of peril and 

 hardship up the Amazon and the Madeira, 

 and then by mule back. No place in the world 

 is now so remote from civilization as this little 

 capital of the &quot;Great Wilderness&quot; then was; 

 but its life was fervent under the torrid sky. 

 Governors, generals, priests were there, slave- 



