of the Upper Amazons. 3591 



water mark ; and the whole breadth of the river was one vast roaring 

 torrent, carrying along on its surface tracts of grass and aquatic vege- 

 tation, and trunks of vast trees. To travel slowly for thirty-five days 

 along a monotonous country, in the midst of tropical rains, you may 

 imagine to have been very tedious. The vessel was a small one, be- 

 longing to Ega, manned by eight stout Indians of the Cucaina nation, 

 a people dwelling within the Peruvian frontiers. The master was a 

 young Bahian, and besides him was a rough specimen of a Portuguese 

 on his way to Ega to trade. The Indians were a quiet, rather apathe- 

 tic, but hard-working set of men, speaking only the Lingoa Geral, or 

 general language of the aborigines, a euphonious idiom, compounded 

 by the early Jesuits from the most generally used languages of the ori- 

 ginal tribes, and spoken now by all the half-civilized Indians. Our 

 mode of progress was almost solely by warping along by the tree-trunks 

 on the river-banks. The trade winds of the lower Amazons are neu- 

 tralized before reaching the mouth of the Rio Negro, and this is 

 almost the only mode of progress for the larger vessels on the upper 

 river. From sunrise until long after sunset it was the laborious daily 

 work of our Indians, to carry the cable incessantly ahead to some con- 

 venient tree-trunk, and haul up the vessel to the spot, only for the 

 same process to be repeated. 



I reached Ega on the 1st of May. The situation of the town is 

 exceedingly pretty, on a sloping grassy meadow, on a point of land 

 formed by the junction of a small creek with the TefFe. The entrance 

 to the Teffe is very striking. Leaving the white rapid current of the 

 main river, with its monotonous scenery, you enter a narrow channel, 

 about 100 paces in breadth, of quiet black-dyed waters, its banks 

 clothed with a more sombre forest. Moving along about two leagues, 

 it opens abruptly on a vast expanse of water, 5 or 6 miles broad, and 

 of immense length. Here the little town appears quietly reposing 

 on its green sward, encircled by a white sandy beach, on which the 

 swell from the lake, as it is called, rolls with a pleasant dreamy mur- 

 mur, and a line of sombre virgin forest forming the back ground. In 

 Ega I remained until the month of August, making only a few short 

 excursions in the neighbourhood. In that month I visited a little vil- 

 lage called Caigara, about 30 miles further westward; here I remained 

 three weeks. Caigara is situated at the mouth of a small affluent of 

 the Amazons, which also expands into a wide sheet of water a short 

 distance from its embouchure. The months of October and Novem- 

 ber I spent in constant rambles on the waters and through the forests 

 of the main river ; it being then the height of the dry season, when 



