210 



TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 



the young Brazilian before mentioned, who had returned from 

 Jauarite before us, with upwards of a hundred alqueires of 

 farinha. About midday a tremendous storm of wind and rain 

 came on, and in the afternoon Senhor L. arrived with the 

 canoe, thoroughly soaked ; and informed me that they had had 

 a most dangerous passage, a portion of the path where the 

 cargo had to be carried through the forest being breast-deep in 

 water ; and at some of the points, the violence of the current 

 was so great that they narrowly escaped being carried down to 

 the great fall, and dashed to pieces on the rocks. 



Here was a good house for travellers, (though without 

 doors,) and we took possession and settled ourselves for a 

 week or ten days' stay. We nearly filled the house with 

 farinha, pitch, baskets, stools, earthen pots and pans, maqueiras, 

 etc. ; we had also near a hundred fowls, which had been 

 brought crammed into two huge square baskets, and were now 

 much pleased to be set at liberty, — as well as a large collection 

 of tame birds, parrots, macaws, paroquets, etc., which kept up a 

 continual cawing and crying, not always very agreeable. All 

 these birds were loose, flying about the village, but returning 

 generally to be fed. The trumpeters and curassow-birds 

 wandered about the houses of the Indians, and sometimes did 

 not make their appearance for several days ; but being brought 

 up from the nest, or even sometimes from the egg, there was 

 little danger of their escaping to the forest. We had nine 

 pretty little black-headed parrots, which every night would go 

 of their own accord into a basket prepared for them to sleep 

 in. 



From what I had seen on this river, there is no place equal 

 to it for procuring a fine collection of live birds and animals ; 

 and this, together with the desire to see more of a country so 

 interesting and so completely unknown, induced me, after 

 mature deliberation, to give up for the present my intended 

 journey to the Andes, and to substitute another voyage up the 

 river Uaupes, at least to the Jurupari (Devil) cataract, the 

 " ultima Thule of most of the traders, and about a month's 

 voyage up from its mouth. Several traders who had arrived at 

 Sao Jeronymo on the way up, as well as the more intelligent 

 Indians, assured me that in the upper districts there are many 

 birds and animals not met with below. But what above all 

 attracted me, was the information that a white species of the 



