204: The Andes and the Amazon. 



lays, we put our baggage into one canoe, and ourselves into 

 the other, and pushed olf into the rapid current of the Napo. 

 We had three styles of valediction on leaving. Our Indian 

 quartet, after several last drinks of chicha, bade their friends 

 farewell by clasping hands, one kissing the joined hands, 

 and then the other. Sandoval muttered adios in reply to 

 ours, meaning, no doubt, good riddance, while we shouted 

 a hearty good-bye to Edwards as he pushed his way up 

 stream to continue his lonely but chosen Indian life on the 

 banks of the Yusupino. 



The Napo at Santa Eosa runs at least live miles an hour, 

 and we were soon picking our way — now drifting, now pad- 

 dling — through a labyrinth of islands and snags. The In- 

 dians, so accustomed to brutal violence from the hands of 

 the whites, had begged of us, before our departure, that we 

 would not beat them. But shortly after we left, one of 

 them, who was literally filled with chicha, dropped his 

 paddle and tumbled into a heap at the bottom of the 

 canoe, dead drunk. Pratt, our gigantic Mississippi boat- 

 man, whom we had engaged at Quito as captain and cook 

 down the river, and who was an awful Goliath in the eyes 

 of the red-skins, seized the fellow and gave him a terrible 

 shaking, the like of which was never seen or heard of in 

 all Napo. At once the liquor left the muddled brain of 

 the astonished culprit, and, taking his paddle, he became 

 from that hour the best of the crew. This was the only 

 case of discipline on the voyage. Always obsequious, they 

 obeyed us with fear and trembling. None of them could 

 speak Spanish, so we had provided ourselves with a vocab- 

 ulary of Quichua. But some English words, like the im- 

 perative paddle ! were more effective than the tongue of 

 the Incas. Indeed, when we mixed up our Quichua with 

 a little Anglo-Saxon, they evidently thought the latter was 

 a terrible anathema, for they sprang to their places without 

 delay. 



