UH 
THE AMAZON AND MADEIRA RIVERS. 
seen this kind of “navigation” with his own eyes. Notwithstanding 
all this, packages of from 500 to 600 lb. are sometimes transiiorted to 
Bolivia in the same covers in which they came from Para ; and I was 
told that even pianos have been thus conveyed, and — wonderful to I'elate 
— have amved entire at Santa Cruz do la Sieiva. 
Great as are these difficulties, they are as nothing compared with 
those of a transport over the Cordillera, with its Soroche,* its bone- 
2 )enetrating cold, and its paths loading along precipices which only sure- 
footed mules can safely pass ; not to speak of the vexatious mounting, 
descending and remounting again, of passes that are nearly 15,000 feet 
above the level of the sea. 
This easily explains the number of Bolivian barques, some sixty or 
seventy, which annually descend the Madeira Avith hides and tallow, and 
take back the products of European and North American industry. The 
merchants evidently are Aidlling to incur rather the risks and dangers of 
the rapids than the difficulties and expenses of the Serra. 
The narroAV forest-^jath at Eibeirao, along which we had to carry 
our cargo for more than 1,000 yards, and to the jrreservation and 
clearing of which every jtassiug caravan contributes, showed a magnificent 
vegetation. Lofty torch-thistles, dense cacao-bushes, sajrpy uranias, 
strclitzias with large banana-like leaves, and a graceful, slender palm 
with bifurcated fans, toAA' er in fanciful clusters above the thorny creepers, 
which fonn part of the tangled underwood, and tlirough which you can 
penetrate only with knife and hatchet in hand. 
A little infiuent on the right margin, of 15 or 20 feet breadth, at 
whose mouth our boats were dragged ashore, to begin their trip on the 
dry, has given its name of Eibeirao (rivulet) to the Avhole rapid. 
Just above its mouth a rocky ridge, clad with pulpy cactaceae, extends 
close to the water’s edge ; and its jn-olongatiou through the Avholo river- 
bed (2,000 yards) can easily be followed by the line of the fall and a 
row of rocky little islets. The fall has a height of 13 feet, and its 
Avholc aspect is quite a peculiar and picturesque one. We there found 
again the round holes in the rocks, called Caldciroes, or kettles, by the 
Brazilians, Avhich we had already noticed on the Parahyba, in the pro- 
* Sorocko tlii'Y rail, in Bolivia and Porn, tlie extremely annoying sensation of 
giddiness, combined with nausea and painful breathing, caused by the extreme rarity 
of the Htmosphere on the CordUlcra. 
