98 



THE TOCANTINS 



In the broader parts of the Amazons, from its mouth 

 to a distance of fifteen hundred miles in the interior, 

 one or other of the three kinds here mentioned are always 

 heard rolling, blowing, and snorting, especially at night, 

 and these noises contribute much to the impression of 

 sea- wide vastness and desolation which haunts the 

 traveller. Besides dolphins in the water, frigate birds 

 in the air are characteristic of this lower part of the 

 Tocantins. Flocks of them were seen the last two or 

 three da3^s of our journey, hovering above at an im- 

 mense height. Towards night we were obliged to cast 

 anchor over a shoal in the middle of the river to await 

 the ebb tide. The wind blew very strongly, and this, 

 together with the incoming flow, caused such a heavy 

 sea that it was impossible to sleep. The vessel rolled 

 and pitched until every bone in our bodies ached with 

 the bumps we received, and we were all more or less 

 sea-sick. On the following day we entered the Anapu, 

 and on the 30th September, after threading again the 

 labyrinth of channels communicating between the To- 

 cantins and the Moju, arrived at Para. 



I will now give a short account of Cameta, the principal 

 town on the banks of the Tocantins, which I visited for 

 the second time, in June, 1849 ; Mr. Wallace, in the same 

 month, departing from Para to explore the rivers Guama 

 and Capim. I embarked as passenger in a Cameta trading 

 vessel, the St. John, a small schooner of thirty tons 

 burthen. I had learnt by this time that the only way to 

 attain the objects for which I had come to this country 

 was to accustom myself to the ways of life of the humbler 

 classes of the inhabitants. A traveller on the Amazons 

 gains little by being furnished with letters of recom- 

 mendation to persons of note, for in the great interior 

 wildernesses of forest and river the canoe-men have 

 pretty much their own way ; the authorities cannot 

 force them to grant passages or to hire themselves to 

 travellers, and therefore a stranger is obliged to ingratiate 

 himself with them in order to get conveyed from place 

 to place. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey to Cameta ; 

 the weather was again beautiful in the extreme. We 

 started from Para at sunrise on the 8th of June, and on 

 the loth emerged from the narrow channels of the Anapu 

 into the broad Tocantins. The vessel was so full of cargo. 



