VOYAGE TO THE RIO NEGRO 199 
day he was blacksmith ; another, carpenter ; an- 
other, he would be working with his spade and 
wheelbarrow at the embankment, harder than any 
of the niggers. At daybreak on the 3rd I found 
him occupied with a lot of wild Indians (Muras) of 
all sorts and sizes, who had come to work for the 
day. There were several small colonies of those 
people on the neighbouring lakes, and whenever 
they took it into their heads to work for M'Culloch 
they would come to him in the morning, as I now 
saw them, and he, well knowing the sort of pay 
they preferred, received them each with a pinga de 
cachaca (drop of rum). Then those who were so 
rich as to possess a palm-leaf hat — and, if not, they 
were provided with a fragment of cloth of some 
kind — held it out, and M'CuUoch dispensed into it 
a cuya-full of farinha, and as much dried fish as 
would serve for the day. 
M'Culloch had fixed a gauge at the mouth of his 
mill-stream, by means of which he had ascertained 
the annual rise of the Amazon at that point to be 
42 feet. Long before the water could rise to that 
height his dam and breakwater would be laid under 
water ; and in effect he did not calculate on work- 
ing his mill more than six months in the year, 
which was as much as he had been able to do at 
the Barra. 
After leaving M'Culloch's, we had heavy rains, 
but very little wind in the right direction, so that 
we advanced barely ten miles a day ; and it was 
not until 3 p.m. of the 6th that we reached a sitio 
belonging to a Captain Maquine, where Mr. 
Gouzennes had given Gustavo rendezvous. He 
