116 
VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. 
Chap. 11. 
Here we spent the night and part of the next day ; doing 
in the morning a good five hours' work in the forest, ac- 
companied by the owner of the place. In the afternoon 
of the 7th we were again under way : the river makes a 
bend to the east-north-east for a short distance above 
Paulo Christo's establishment, it then turns abruptly to 
the south-west, running from that direction about four 
miles. The hilly country of the interior then com- 
mences: the first token of it being a magnificently- 
wooded bluff rising nearly straight from the water to 
a height of about 250 feet. The breadth of the stream 
hereabout was not more than sixty yards, and the forest 
assumed a new appearance from the abundance of the 
Urucuri palm, a species which has a noble crown of 
broad fronds with symmetrical rigid leaflets. 
On the road, we passed a little shady inlet, at the 
mouth of which a white-haired, wrinkle-faced old man 
was housed in a temporary shed, washing the soil for 
gold. He was quite alone : no one knew anything of 
him in these parts, except that he was a Cuyabano, or 
pative of Cuyaba in the mining districts, and his little 
boat was moored close to his rude shelter. Whatever 
success he might have had remained a secret, for he 
went away, after a three weeks' stay in the place, with- 
out communicating with any one. 
We reached, in the evening, the house of the last 
civilised settler on the river, Senhor Joao Aracti, a wiry, 
active fellow and capital hunter, whom I wished to 
make a friend of and persuade to accompany me to 
the Mundurucu village and the falls of the Cupari, some 
forty miles farther up the river. 
