310 



BORBA. 



stowed under our seats. The air is 96° Fahrenheit; the heat is very- 

 oppressive. Under us there are twenty-four feet water ; in some places 

 no bottom at one hundred and fifty-six feet. As the river rolls along 

 straighter, we find more irregularity in the channel, and width, in some 

 places, full one mile. On both banks we see small houses, with a few 

 plantain and orange trees about them. These are the settlements of the 

 descendants of the Portuguese. A canoe or two lay by the bank oppo- 

 site each house. As we swiftly passed along, by the force of paddles — 

 for the current was only one mile per hour — the bright moon rose up 

 over the sea of foliage and lit our way to the town of Borba, on the 14th 

 of October, 1852. 



With a bundle of letters, I crawled up the steep bank to the house of 

 Capitan Diogo, father of my friend Don Antonio. He ran his fingers 

 through grey locks of hair, and laughed at the idea of a man's getting 

 sick on such a voyage ; gave me a horrible cup of tea made from the 

 leaves of a bush found in the woods, which put me to sleep, as he was 

 boasting of his extraordinary long travels up and down the rivers, and 

 how he used to doctor himself. He was very cheerful until he counted 

 the money brought from his son and partner, when he wanted to know 

 " if that was all Antonio had made on his trip to Bolivia." 



In the morning our baggage was brought up, and the soldiers turned 

 over to the commander of police. Borba is a small town of three hun- 

 dred inhabitants. Two rows of miserable wooden huts stand parallel 

 with a most distressingly dilapidated church ; bells, old and cracked, are 

 hung under a small shed near the door. On the soil, whence the forest 

 trees had been cleared, was a thick sod of small bladed grass, on which 

 a few poor, slim-looking cows were pasturing. Large and fat hogs came 

 grunting at the door. The hot sun had deadened the wool on the backs 

 of a few sheep, and in its place, a fleece of stright, grey hair came out 

 as a substitute. When man forces the animal intended by God for a 

 cold climate into a hot one, a new nature comes to the poor, panting 

 creature's relief, and puts upon it a coat of cool hair, instead of the hot 

 woollen one. 



The Spaniards have forced the hog so high up on the Andes that he 

 suffers every time he raises his bristles, and dies out of place ; while the 

 Portuguese find it impossible to produce good mutton or wool on the 

 hot plains of the Amazon. Indians, in a warm climate, grease or oil 

 their naked skins as a protection from the sun, or that the rains may 

 slide off the more easy ; while those we saw on the frozen mountain 

 tops, clothed themselves in wool, and greased their insides with mutton. 



