PERNAMBUCO 
the air-ship had passed in the daytime and had quickly 
disappeared, but that it was beautifully lighted with col¬ 
oured lights at night. So that it would be difficult from 
that truthful account to place much reliance on what the 
man said or on what he had seen at all. It is quite possible 
— after discarding all the indisputable embroidery from 
the story — that a balloon actually went over that place, 
and it possibly may have been Wellman’s abandoned bal¬ 
loon, with which he had tried to go across the Atlantic. 
On January third and fourth we had no great excite¬ 
ment. We stopped at numberless places. Nearly all the 
houses in that district were made in three sections, the 
two end rooms enclosed in ho/?a-palm walls, while the cen¬ 
tral and larger room had two open sides. All the houses 
were perched up on piles, owing to the frequent inunda¬ 
tions. Sewing-machines and gramophones were to be 
found in nearly every house. All the women wore, rather 
becomingly over such ugly countenances, the valuable hats 
which generally go under the name of “ Panamas.” The 
river was getting beautiful as we went farther up, im¬ 
mense grassy stretches being visible where the country was 
not inundated, and low shrubs emerging from the water in 
the many channels that were formed everywhere. 
On January fifth we arrived at Terra Blanca, where 
a lakelet had been formed by an outlet of the river on the 
left bank. A place called Pernambuco was situated at 
the entrance of this lake. The water of the lake was beau¬ 
tifully clear and of a wonderful greenish colour. Beau¬ 
tiful white and yellow sand deposits were to be found 
around it. Five hundred people lived at Pernambuco. 
The Rimac did a brisk trade, over a hundred pounds 
sterling worth of goods being sold in an hour at that 
place. 
On January sixth I saw the first hills of importance 
we had seen since leaving the lower Amazon. Those were 
the hills of Petronilla, where a mass of volcanic rocks and 
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