172 



TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 



[Februaryf 



The next morning I called on the Commissario, for the old 

 man I had seen the evening before was only a capitao. I 

 found him in his house : he was an Indian who could read 

 and write, but not differing in any other respect from the 

 Indians of the place. He had on a shirt and a pair of short- 

 legged trousers, but neither shoes nor stockings. I informed 

 him why I had come there, showed him my Brazilian passport, 

 and requested the use of the Convento (a house formerly 

 occupied by the priests, but now kept for travellers) to live in. 

 After a little demur, he gave me the key of the house, and so 

 I said good-morning, and proceeded to take possession. 



About the middle of the day, the Indians who had started 

 with me the day before arrived ; they had been afraid to come 

 on in the dark, so had encamped in the road. I now got the 

 house swept out, and my things taken into it. It consisted of 

 two small rooms, and a little verandah at the back ; the larger 

 room contained a table, chair, and bench, and in the smaller I 

 hung up my hammock. My porters then came to be paid for 

 bringing over my goods. All wanted salt, and I gave them a 

 basinful each and a few fish-hooks, for carrying a heavy load 

 ten miles : this is about their regular payment, 



I had now reached the furthest point in this direction that I 

 had wished to attain. I had passed the boundary of the mighty 

 Amazon valley, and was among the streams that go to swell 

 another of the world's great waters — the Orinooko. A deficiency 

 in all other parts of the Upper Amazon district was here 

 supplied, — a road through the virgin forest, by which I could 

 readily reach its recesses, and where I was more sure of 

 obtaining the curious insects of so distant a region, as well as the 

 birds and other animals which inhabit it ; so I determined to 

 remain here at least a month, steadily at work. Every day I 

 went myself along the road, and sent my Indians, some to fish 

 in the little black river Temi, others with their gravatanas to 

 seek for the splendid trogons, monkeys, and other curious birds 

 and animals in the forest. 



Unfortunately, however, for me, on the very night I reached 

 the village it began to rain, and day after day cloudy and 

 showery weather continued. For three months Javita had 

 enjoyed the most splendid summer weather, with a clear sky 

 and hardly a shower. I had been wasting all this time in the 

 rainy district of the cataracts of the Rio Negro. No one there 



