THE SOLIMOES RIVER 
eighty passengers, fifty of them forming part of a Spanish 
theatrical company which was on its way to Iquitos. The 
deck of the ship had been turned into a kind of theatre, 
where rehearsals went on day and night. When the re¬ 
hearsals were not going on, the men and women, follow¬ 
ing the usual habits of theatrical people, sang and prac¬ 
tised flights of notes — which was a little trying after the 
dead silence of the forest. 
However, thanks to the great civility of the managers 
of the Booth Line at Manaos, and to the extreme thought¬ 
fulness of the captain of the Atahualpa, I was made quite 
comfortable in the chart-room of the ship, which was as 
far away as possible from the noise. We were most of the 
time in mid-stream. The river was so wide that we could 
not see anything on either side. We steamed up day after 
day, occasionally passing islands of some beauty rising 
above the muddy waters of the Solimoes. Navigation of 
that river was difficult, as the navigable channels were 
constantly changing, islands disappearing and new islands 
forming all the time. Elich Island, in the Timbuctuba 
group, was fast disappearing, while another island was 
forming just below it. 
We passed the mouth of the Putumayo River at sun¬ 
set one day, a most wonderful effect of clouds being pro¬ 
duced over a brilliant cadmium yellow and vermilion sky, 
shining with great brightness above the dark green trees 
upon a high reddish cliff. 
In a drenching morning, at five o’clock, we reached 
Esperan^a, the Brazilian frontier post, which consisted of 
half a dozen one-storied houses with red-tiled roofs, situ¬ 
ated on a grassy expanse. Grassy hills of no great height 
rose at the mouth of the Javari River, a southern tributary 
of the Solimoes River, forming there the boundary be¬ 
tween Brazil and Peru. Dark green foliage perched high 
up on asparagus-like stems of trees formed a background 
to that wretchedly miserable place. 
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