480 EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA 



requiring one, as without it existence would be scarcely 

 possible. My tent was about eight feet long and five 

 feet broad, and was made of coarse calico in an oblong 

 shape, with sleeves at each end through which to pass 

 the cords of a hammock. Under this shelter, which is 

 fixed up every evening before sundown, one can read and 

 write, or swing in one's hammock during the long hours 

 which intervene before bed- time, and feel one's sense of 

 comfort increased by having cheated the thirsty swarms 

 of mosquitoes which fill the chamber. --^ 

 We were four days on the road. The pilot, a mame- 

 luco of Ega, whom I knew very well, exhibited a know- 

 ledge of the river and powers of endurance which were 

 quite remarkable. He stood all this time at his post, 

 with the exception of three or four hours in the middle 

 of each day, when he was relieved by a young man who 

 served as apprentice, and he knew the breadth and 

 windings of the channel, and the extent of all the yearly- 

 shifting shoals from the Rio Negro to Loreto, a distance 

 of more than a thousand miles. There was no slackening 

 of speed at night, except during the brief but violent 

 storms which occasionally broke upon us, and then the 

 engines were stopped by the command of Lieutenant 

 Nunes, sometimes against the wish of the pilot. The 

 nights were often so dark that we passengers on the poop 

 deck could not discern the hardy fellow on the bridge, 

 but the steamer drove on at full speed, men being stationed 

 on the look-out at the prow, to watch for floating logs, 

 and one man placed to pass orders to the helmsman ; the 

 keel scraped against a sand-bank only once during the 

 passage. 



The passengers were chiefly Peruvians, mostly thin, 

 anxious, Yankee-looking men, who were returning home 

 to the cities of Moyobamba and Chachapoyas, on the 

 Andes, after a trading trip to the Brazilian towns on 

 the Atlantic sea-board, whither they had gone six months 

 previously, with cargoes of Panama hats to exchange for 

 European wares. These hats are made of the young 

 leaflets of a palm-tree, by the Indians and half-caste 

 people who inhabit the eastern parts of Peru. They 

 form almost the only article of export from Peru by way 

 of the Amazons, but the money value is very great com- 

 pared with the bulk of the goods, as the hats are generally 

 of very fine quality, and cost from twelve shillings to six 



