208 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [October, 
Below, the water boils up in great rolling breakers, and, 
a little further down, forms dangerous eddies and whirl- 
pools. Here we could only pass by unloading the canoe 
almost entirely, and then pulling it up amidst the foam- 
ing water as near as possible to the shore. This done, 
Senhor L. and myself dressed, and proceeded up the hill ^ 
to the house of the Commandante, who must give per- ; f 
mission before any one can pass above the fort. He was ! 
a friend of Senhor L., and I brought him a letter of in- 1! 
troduction ; so he was pretty civil, gave us some coffee, t | 
chatted of the news of the river and the city for an hour ' 
or two, and invited us to breakfast with him before we ' 
left the next morning. We then went to the house of ^ I 
an old Portuguese trader, whom I had met in Barra, | | 
with whom we supped and spent the evening. " 
The next morning, after breakfasting with the Com- i 
mandante, we proceeded on our way. Above Sao « 
Gabriel the rapids are perhaps more numerous than | 
below. We twisted about the river, round islands and J ' 
I 
from rock to rock, in a most complicated manner. On | | 
a point where we staid for the night I saw the first ^ 
tree-fern I had yet met with, and looked on it with r ; 
much pleasure, as an introduction to a new and inter- ! 
esting district t it was a small, thin-stemmed, elegant 
species, about eight or ten feet high. At night, on the 
22nd, we passed the last rapid, and now had smooth 
water before us for the rest of our journey. We had 
thus been four days ascending these rapids, which are 
about thirty miles in 'length. The next morning we 
entered the great and unknown river Uaup&,’' from 
which there is another branch into the Rio Negro, form- 
