PAMPAS MASI GUARD-HOUSE. 



221 



of obstructions, and fear we are not going fast enough to see the glad 

 waters of the Atlantic. 



In the dead of night the owl calls, as though surprised at our daring, 

 and a fish, by mistake, jumped into the boat. As it flapped its tail in 

 the water, on the bottom of the canoe, every Indian was roused from 

 his sleep. After joking awhile, they dipped their paddles into the 

 ^stream, and away* we went again. 



Midnight passed ; the watch was called, and while Richards fought 

 musquitoes, the first watch slept. The sounding line was kept going by 

 night and. by day ; the turns of the river mapped by the points of the 

 compass ; the distance made marked down at the end of each day, and 

 all the streams entering the one we navigate carefully drawn in. 



May 31. — At sunrise we ran alongside of a perpendicular bank of 

 red and blue clay, eighteen feet high ; by steps we ascend to see a great 

 pampa stretching out before us, or an ocean of grasses, herd-grass from 

 five to seven feet high, gently waving to and fro by the morning breeze, 

 which came from the east. As we stood upon the bank the sun got up 

 behind us ; we looked towards the west over the bottom of the Madeira 

 Plate, which is shallow and extensive. 



A shed stands upon the bank, and as there was nothing under it, we 

 took a well-beaten path leading from the river, and walked over a level, 

 among ant houses built five feet high and three feet in diameter at the 

 base, made of clay and shaped like sugar loaves. 



The ants ascend to the tops of their houses when the pampa becomes 

 overflowed, and there await the falling of the waters. This pampa, 

 however, is not flooded every year, and we have pretty certain informa- 

 tion from the ants that the rise is never as much as five feet. Every 

 house is exactly the same height, though they may differ a little in 

 thickness. 



We came to a large wooden two-story buildiDg, the "Masi" guard 

 and custom-house, at which all traders and travellers must show their 

 passports and papers. We walked up the wooden steps to the second 

 floor, to call upon the commander "of the station. In the lower story 

 was a sugar mill, and we found the commander of the guard in bed 

 groaning with stomach-ache under his musquito net. He seemed glad 

 tolsee us, and while he sat up in his night-cap reading our papers, we 

 walked out on the balcony to look round. 



To the north was a row of small trees which gave the pampas the 

 appearance of cleared lands, but the commander came out and explained 

 to us that those trees grew immediately on the bank of the Secure river, 

 and that they marked out for me the true course of that stream as far 



