VOYAGE UP THE RIO NEGRO 277 
when you are told that the islands are all a dead 
level, clad with an unbroken forest, and many of 
them as large as Castle Howard Park, while the 
channels between them are sometimes no wider 
than the Thames at London Bridge, you will justly 
conclude that they offer only a monotonous aspect 
to the voyager. When the river begins to be 
narrower, and its waters to run with a perceptible 
current, then the islands are smaller, and, when 
rocky, often picturesque. 
[Leaving Uanauaca to ascend the falls. Spruce 
stayed the first night at the village of Sao Jose, 
on the left bank, where there was a half-breed 
Inspector of the District, who had been a traveller 
as far as Guiana by way of the Rio Branco. At 
his door was an old blunderbuss fixed on a block 
of wood, used to frighten the Macii Indians, who 
were sometimes troublesome. Here a nocturnal 
disturbance occurred which is described as follows. 
^Ed.] 
In the middle of the night, lying awake in the 
tolda, I was startled by hearing a long scream from 
a woman, followed by a report of a musket, and, 
shortly after, the explosion of the Inspector's 
blunderbuss and of several other firearms. This 
continuing for some minutes and being accom- 
panied by wild shouts, I very naturally fancied it to 
be caused by an attack of Maciis, and called to my 
pilot, who was lying near the cabin door, to ask 
what he thought of it. He was quite nonplussed. 
The shouts, he said, were not those of people 
engaged in combat ; still, the Maciis might have 
shown themselves in the adjacent forest, and the 
