200 The Andes and the Amazon. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



Afloat on the Nape. — Down the Kapids. — Santa Rosa and its mulish Al- 

 calde. — Pratt on Discipline. — Forest Music. — Coca. — Our Craft and Crew. 

 — Storm on the Napo. 



We embarked November 20th on om* voyage down the 

 river. It is no easy matter to hire or cajole the Indians 

 for any service. Out of feast-time they are out of town, 

 and during the festival they are loth to leave,,or are so full 

 of chicha they do not know what they want. We first 

 woke up the indolent alcalde by showing him the Presi- 

 dent's order, and then used him to entice or to compel (we 

 know not his motive power) eight Indians, including the 

 governor, to take us to Santa Rosa. We paid them about 

 twenty-four yards of lienzo, the usual currency here. They 

 furnished three canoes, two for baggage and one covered 

 with a palm-leaf awning for ourselves. The canoes were 

 of red cedar, and flat - bottomed ; the paddles had oval 

 blades, to which short, quick strokes were given perpen- 

 dicularly to the water entering and leaving. But there 

 was Httle need of paddling on this trip. 



The Napo starts off in furious haste, for the fall between 

 Napo village and Santa Rosa, a distance of eighty miles, is 

 three hundred and fifty feet. We were about seven hours 

 in the voyage down, and it takes seven days to pole back. 

 The passage of the rapids is dangerous to all but an In- 

 dian. As Wallace says of a spot on the Rio Negro, you 

 are bewildered by the conflicting motions of the water. 

 Whirling and boiling eddies burst as if from some sub- 

 aqueous explosion ; down currents are on one side of the 

 canoe, and an iip current on the other ; now a cross stream 



