236 
TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 
\Fehniary, 
wet season is called, wlien but little fisli and game are to 
be obtained. 
On tlie lOtli of Eebmary we readied Toino, a village 
at tlie mouth of a stream of the same name. The in- 
habitants are all Indians, except one white man, a Por- 
tuguese, named Antonio Dias, of whom I had heard 
much at Barra. I found him in his shirt and trowsers, 
covered with dust and perspiration, having just been 
assisting his men at their work at some canoes he 
was building. He received me kindly, with a strange 
mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and got the casa 
de nagao,’’ or stranger’s house, a mere dirty shed, 
swept out for my accommodation for a few days. Like 
most of the white men in this neighbourhood, he is oc- 
cupied entirely in building large canoes and schooners 
for the Bio Negro and Amazon trade. When finished,' 
the hulls alone are taken down to Barra or to Para, ge- 
nerally with a cargo of piassaba or farinha, and there 
sold. He had now one on the stocks, of near two hun- 
dred tons burden ; but most of them are from thirty to a 
hundred tons. These large vessels have to be taken 
down the cataracts of the Bio Negro, which can only be 
done in the wet season, when the water is deep. 
It seems astonishing how such large vessels can be at 
all constructed by persons entirely ignorant of the princi- 
ples of naval architecture. They are altogether made by 
the Indians without dfawiiig or design. During the time 
when Brazil and Venezuela were under the Portuguese 
and Spanish governments, building- yards were established 
in several places where good timber was to be found, 
and the Indians were employed, under naval architects 
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