258 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



there was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth of 

 coarse grass. Other parts were bare and had been worn 

 by the weather into fantastic shapes — one projection 

 looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside down. In 

 this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the pro- 

 jection of the ledge through which the river had cut its 

 course, the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and 

 extremely narrow channel. At one point it was less 

 than two yards across, and for quite a distance not more 

 than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two above the 

 rapids the deep, placid river was at least a hundred yards 

 wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost impossible, that 

 so broad a river could in so short a space of time contract 

 its dimensions to the width of the strangled channel 

 through which it now poured its entire volume. 



This has for long been a station where the Nhambi- 

 quaras at intervals built their ephemeral villages and tilled 

 the soil with the rude and destructive cultivation of sav- 

 ages. There were several abandoned old fields, where 

 the dense growth of rank fern hid the tangle of burnt 

 and fallen logs. Nor had the Nhambiquaras been long 

 absent. In one trail we found* what gypsies would have 

 called a "pateran," a couple of branches arranged cross- 

 wise, eight leaves to a branch; it had some special sig- 

 nificance, belonging to that class of signals, each with 

 some peculiar and often complicated meaning, which are 

 commonly used by many wild peoples. The Indians had 

 thrown a simple bridge, consisting of four long poles, 

 without a hand-rail, across one of the narrowest parts 

 of the rock gorge through which the river foamed in its 

 rapid descent. This sub-tribe of Indians was called the 



