i85o.] AYRAO AND PEDREIRO. 135 



soon have some small but delicious fish to broil. Senhor L. 

 was an old hand at canoe-travelling, and was always well 

 provided with hooks and lines. Bait was generally carefully 

 prepared during the day, and at night the lines would be 

 thrown in ; and we were often rewarded with a fine pirahfba 

 of twenty or thirty pounds weight, which made us a breakfast 

 and supper for the next day. 



A little above Barra the river spreads out into great bays on 

 each side, so as to be from six to ten miles wide ; and here, 

 when there is much wind, a heavy sea rises, which is very 

 dangerous for small canoes. Above this the river again 

 narrows to about a mile and a half, and soon afterwards 

 branches out into diverging channels, with islands of every 

 size between them. For several hundred miles after this the 

 two banks of the river can never be seen at once : they are 

 probably from ten to twenty-five miles apart. Some of the 

 islands are of great size, reaching to thirty or forty miles in 

 length, and with others often intervening between them and 

 the shore. 



On the second and third day after we left Barra, there were 

 high, picturesque, gravelly banks to the river. A little further 

 on, a few isolated rocks appear, and at the little village of 

 Ayrao, which we reached in a week, there were broken ledges 

 of sandstone rock of rather a crystalline texture. A little 

 lower we had passed points of a soft sandstone, worn into 

 caves and fantastic hollows by the action of the water. 

 Further on, at Pedreiro, the rock was perfectly crystalline; 

 while a little further still, at the mouth of the Rio Branco, a 

 real granitic rock appears. 



At Pedreiro we stayed for the night with a friend of Senhor 

 L.'s, where the news of the city was discussed, and the prices 

 of fish, salsaparilha, piassaba, etc., communicated. The next 

 day we passed some picturesque granite rocks opposite the 

 mouth of the Rio Branco, where again the two shores of the 

 river are seen at one view. On a little island there are some 

 curious Indian picture-writings, being representations of 

 numerous animals and men, roughly picked out of the hard 

 granite. I made careful drawings of these at the time, and 

 took specimens of the rock. 



The next day we reached Carvoeiro, a village desolate and 

 half deserted, as are all those on the Rio Negro. We found 



10 



