28G CANOE-VOYAGE DOWN THE lilO NAPO. 



of tlio wild Indians ujion the right "bank of the river. 

 Having completed all much to our satisfaction, we placed 

 our baggage on board, and early in the morning of the 

 2Sth of November — Thanksgiving — we cut loose our craft, 

 and once more started for the Maranon. 



After the confluence of the Coca and Napo, the latter 

 spreads out beautifully ; and, as there are no mountains to 

 wall it in and confine it to a single channel, it has cut 

 numberless paths through the forest, embracing with its 

 broad arms many beautiful islands, rendering a view up 

 or down the stream extremely picturesque. Tlie banks 

 are uniformly low, and torn by the action of the water, 

 which gradually undermines them until a long strip of 

 the forest falls with a tremendous crash into the river, 

 strewing the shore with long lines of its ruins. As we 

 drifted down we never wearied noting the varied grouji- 

 ing of the pendant masses of vegetation which fringed 

 the islands and river-banks. Yet there was one thing we 

 missed. The hills were gone. How lonesome one feels 

 without the mountains ! AYe know not what part of the 

 education of our feelings we owe to the hills. Should they 

 be levelled, we would soon find that they were raised for 

 purposes other than irrigation, or those which the so-called 

 utilitarian discovers. 



We only realized this after having travelled for weeks 

 beneath dense forests, where only now and then we could 

 catch a glimpse of the sky above, and upon a river where 

 the tall, prison-like walls of the forest shut us in day after 

 day, until we longed for just one look upon the world out- 

 side — longed for some elevated position, that our eyes 

 might range over the tops of the forest, and rest satisfied 

 with seeing the blue lines of distant hills. But no moun- 

 tains break the uniformity of that forest-level, which bears 

 away thousands of miles to the Atlantic, relieved only by 

 some slight elevations toward the mouth of the Am a- 



