266 
TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 
[April, 
pairing their part of the road, and were returning home, 
SO some of them agreed to go with me in the place of 
the Javitanos. They had found in the forest a number 
of the harlequin beetles {Acrocinus longimanus), which 
they offered me, carefully wrapped up in leaves; I 
bought five for a few fish-hooks each. On arriving at 
Pimichin the little river presented a very different ap- 
pearance from what it had when I last saw it. It was 
now brim-full, and the water almost reached up to our 
shed, which had before been forty yards off, up a steep 
rocky bank. Before my men ran away I had sent two 
of them to Tomo to bring my canoe to Pimichin, the 
river having risen enough to allow it to come up, and I 
now found it here. They had taken a canoe belonging 
to Antonio Dias, who had passed Javita a few days be- 
fore on his way to Sao Periiando, so that when he re- 
turned he had to borrow another to go home in. y 
We descended the little river rapidly, and now saw " 
the extraordinary number of bends in it. I took the 
bearings of thirty with the compass, but then there came ( 
on a tremendous storm of wind and rain right in our 
faces, which rendered it quite impossible to see ahead. 
Before this had cleared off night came on, so that the 
remainder of the bends and doubles of the Pimichin river 
must still remain in obscurity. The country it flows 
through appears to be a flat sandy tract, covered with a 
low scrubby vegetation, very like that of the river Cobati, ■ 
up which I ascended to the Serra to obtain the cocks of 
the rock. 
It was night when we reached Maroa, and we were - 
nearly passing the village without seeing it. We went # 
