369 



cut down is watery*, and without flavour. In- 

 digo grows wild near the villages of Maroa, 

 Davipe, and Tomo. Under a different system 

 from that which we found in those countries, the 

 Rio Negro will produce indigo, coffee, cacao, 

 maize, and rice in abundance. 



The voyage from the mouth of the Rio Negro 

 to Grand-Para occupying only twenty or twen- 

 ty-five days, it would not have taken us much 

 more time to have gone down the Amazon as 

 far as the coast of Brazil, than to return by the 

 Cassiquiare and the Oroonoko to the northern 

 coast of Caraccas. We were informed at San 

 Carlos, that, on account of political circum- 

 stances, it was difficult at that moment to pass 

 from the Spanish to the Portugueze settlements ; 

 but we did not know till after our return to 

 Europe the extent of the danger, to which we 

 should have been exposed in proceeding as far 

 as Barcellos. It was known at Brazil, perhaps 

 by means of the newspapers, the well-rneant but 

 indiscreet zeal of which has so often proved 

 injurious to travellers, that I was going to visit 

 the missions of the Rio Negro, and examine the 

 natural canal, which unites two great systems of 

 rivers. In those desert forests instruments had 

 been seen only in the hands of the commission- 

 ers of boundaries ; and at that time the subal- 

 tern agents of the Portugueze government could 

 no more conceive than the goad missionary, 



vol. v. 2 b 



