TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. {February, 



even the next day we did not finish it all. The weather was 

 now hot, and brilliantly fine, contrasting much with the con- 

 stant rains of Guia ; and, marvellous to relate, the people here 

 told us they had not had any rain for three months past. The 

 effects were seen in the river, which was very low and still 

 falling, and so full of rocks and shallows as to render it some- 

 times difficult for us to find a passage for our canoes. 



After passing the village of Sao Miguel these difficulties 

 increased, till we came to a place where the whole channel, a 

 mile wide, appeared but one bed of rocks, with nowhere water 

 enough for our canoe to pass, though eighteen inches would 

 have sufficed. We went wandering about over this rocky plain 

 in search of some opening, and after much difficulty succeeded 

 in pushing and dragging our boat over the rocks. We passed 

 by two or three Canos,'' or channels leading to the Cassi- 

 quiare, up which many of the inhabitants were now going, to 

 lay in a stock of fish and cabegudos against the *^ tiempo del 

 faminto (time of famine), as the wet season is called, when 

 but little fish and game are to be obtained. 



On the loth of February we reached Tomo, a village at the 

 mouth of a stream of the same name. The inhabitants are all 

 Indians, except one white man, a Portuguese, named Antonio 

 Dias, of whom I had heard much at Barra. I found him in 

 his shirt and trousers, covered with dust and perspiration, 

 having just been assisting his men at their work at some canoes 

 he was building. He received me kindly, with a strange 

 mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and got the *^casa de 

 nagao," or stranger's house, a mere dirty shed, swept out for 

 my accommodation for a few days. Like most of the white 

 men in this neighbourhood, he is occupied entirely in building 

 large canoes and schooners for the Rio Negro and Amazon 

 trade. When finished, the hulls alone are taken down to Barra 

 or to Para, generally with a cargo of piassaba or farinha, and 

 there sold. He had now one on the stocks, of near two 

 hundred tons burden ; but most of them are from thirty to a 

 hundred tons. These large vessels have to be taken down the 

 cataracts of the Rio Negro, which can only be done in the wet 

 season, when the water is deep. 



It seems astonishing how such large vessels can be con- 

 structed by persons entirely ignorant of the principles of naval 

 architecture. They are altogether made by the Indians with- 



