THE JOURNEY TO THE AMAZON 283 



and that when I happened to be at home afterwards he was 

 often away at school, I really knew very little of him till he 

 came to me at Para. Until I left school he had been taught 

 at home by my father, and afterwards went for a year or two 

 to a cheap boarding school in Essex. As it was necessary 

 for him to learn something, he was placed with a portmanteau 

 and bag-maker in Regent Street, where he was at first a mere 

 shop-boy, and as he showed little aptitude for learning the 

 trade, and was not treated very kindly by his master, he was 

 rather miserable, and was taken away after a year. My 

 brother William then got him into the pattern-shop at the 

 Neath Abbey Iron Works soon after I had gone to Leicester. 

 There he remained, lodging near the works, and when we 

 went to live at Neath, spending his Sundays with us. At this 

 time he took to writing verses, and especially enigmas in the 

 style of W. Mackworth Praed, and these appeared almost 

 weekly in some of the local papers. But he evidently had no 

 inclination or taste for mechanical work, and though he 

 spent, I think, about four years in the pattern-shops he never 

 became a good workman ; and as he saw no prospect of ever 

 earning more than a bare subsistence as a mechanic, and 

 perhaps not even that, he gladly came out to me, when he 

 had just completed his twentieth year. His misfortune was 

 that he had no thorough school training, no faculty for or 

 love of mechanical work, and was not possessed of sufficient 

 energy to overcome these deficiencies of nature and nurture. 



The remainder of my South American travels consisted of 

 two voyages up the Rio Negro. On the first I went beyond 

 the boundaries of Brazil, and crossed by a road in the forest 

 to one of the tributaries of the Orinoko. Returning thence 

 I visited a village up a small branch of the Rio Negro, where 

 there is an isolated rocky mountain, the haunt of the beautiful 

 Cock of the Rock; afterwards going up the Uaupes as far as 

 the second cataract at Juaurite. I then returned with my 

 collections to Barra, having determined to go much farther 

 up the Uaupes in order to obtain, if possible, the white 

 umbrella bird which I had been positively assured was 



