I 
TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 
286 
crossed among boiling foam and whirling eddies, and 
entered into a small igaripe, where the canoe was en- 
tirely unloaded, all the cargo carried along a rugged 
path through the forest, and the canoe taken round a 
projecting point, where the violence of the current and 
the heaving waves of the fall render it impossible for 
anything but a small empty oba to pass, and even that 
with great difficulty. 
The path terminated at a narrow channel, through 
which a part of the river in the wet season flows, but 
which in the summer is completely dry. Were it not 
for this stream, the passage of the rapids in the wet 
season would be quite impossible ; for though the actual 
fall of the water is trifling, its violence is inconceivable. 
The average width of the river may be stated at near 
three times that of the Thames at London ; and it is in 
the wet season very deep and rapid. At the fall it is 
enclosed in a narrow sloping rocky gorge, about the 
width of the middle arch of London Bridge, or even less, 
I need say no more to prove the impossibility of as- 
cending such a channel. There are immense whirlpools 
which engulf large canoes. The waters roll like ocean 
waves, and leap up at intervals, forty or fifty feet into 
the air, as if great subaqueous explosions were taking 
place. 
Presently the Indians appeared with our canoe, and, ^ 
assisted by a dozen more who came to help us, pulled it ^ 
up through the shallows, where the water was less vio- 
lent. Then came another difficult point ; and we plunged I 
again into the forest with half the Indians carrying our 
cargo, while the remainder went with the canoe. There 
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