276 



FRIENDSHIP OF DON ANTONIO. 



was loaded with the bags and baggage of five men and the same num- 

 ber of women. They all came to bid the commandante good-bye, as 

 he sat with us under the guard-shed. He told them he never expected 

 to see them again : he knew they all intended to desert him. But both 

 men and women declared their intention to return. The passage is 

 made to Matto Grosso in forty days by these mail-carriers ; from thence 

 the despatches are carried through the country by mules to Cuyaba in 

 twenty-two days, from which place there is a regular monthly mail to 

 Rio Janeiro. The canoe is polled and paddled up the Itenez, said to be 

 very shallow at this season of the year, with rocky and sandy bed. It 

 is possible, as the river rises thirty feet in the wet season, that a steam- 

 boat may be able to reach Matto Grosso from the mouth of the Itenez ; 

 but during the dry season it is not navigable for anything larger than a 

 first-class canoe. 



Don Antonio arrived and reported our crew returning. He at once 

 had his boat fitted out and gave us "Pedro" — one of his men, who had 

 passed up the Madeira with him — as our pilot. The commandante de- 

 tailed five soldiers to take us to Borba. The boat was a small Igarite, 

 twenty-three feet long and four feet seven inches beam. Her bottom was 

 of one piece, cut out of a very large tree, with washboards nailed rudely 

 on the sides, calked with oakum, and well pitched outside and in. The 

 bow and stern, or two ends, were fastened up by a solid piece of wood, 

 also made water-proof. She was more the shape of a barrel cut in half 

 lengthwise, than a boat. She was strong, short, and good beam-r— the 

 main objects. She could stand being dragged over rocks, sledded over 

 the land, and worked quickly in a rapid current among rocks and saw- 

 yers. She rode on short waves securely. The soldiers were accustomed 

 to managing boats in the rapids and among rocks by the fort, and were 

 somewhat experienced, but they never had descended the Madeira river. 

 They had not passed from their own native province, Matto Grosso, and 

 were, like most negroes, anxious to travel, and particularly desirous of 

 going away. We had a number of volunteers among the soldiers, but 

 the commandante said some of them wanted to desert, and he gave me 

 those he supposed would be most apt to return. 



There are no roads leading from the fortress except the rivers, so 

 that every man understands something about the management of a boat. 

 Three of the crew were negroes; one an Indian, whose mother was savage 

 and father civilized Indian — what an Englishman would call "half and 

 half." The fifth was of such a mixed composition that we were unable 

 to trace his lineage. He was nearer a white man than a negro, not in 

 very good health, and extremely ill-natured in his expression of face. 



