PORTO DO CASTANHO 
crossed the Araguaya River. It was the gloomiest of 
gloomy places, even in glorious weather. Imagine it on a 
wet, windy day. The few tiny, one-storied cabins — 
they could hardly be called houses — were soaked with the 
storm and looked miserable. The inhabitants were busy 
haling water from inside their dwellings. Many tiles of 
the roofs had been blown away, and those that remained 
had grown extra dark with the moisture, with merely a 
bluish tinge from the reflected light of the grey sky upon 
their shiny surfaces. The solitary palm tree at the end of 
the oblong square looked pitiful, with its long, bladed 
leaves split and broken by the wind, while the dense foliage 
along the river banks was now several tones darker and 
richer than we had seen it before. 
Under usual circumstances the plaza, or square, was 
so high above the river that one could not see the water at 
all, until one went to the edge of the stream, but during 
flood the river rose as much as 20 feet and occasionally 
overflowed the greater portion of the square. 
The grass of the square — a mere field— alone 
seemed happy in the damp. Half dried and anaemic from 
the hot sun, it seemed to have quickly come back to life 
and vigour in those few hours which had rendered us all 
miserable. My poor horses and mules, worn and sore, 
stood dripping and wretched, with quivering knees, in the 
middle of the square, too miserable to feed, only now and 
then slashing their long, wet tails to right or left to drive 
away impertinent flies. 
With the storm the temperature had suddenly 
descended to 75°, and everybody was shivering with cold 
after the oppressive heat. 
Upon the half-rotted wooden cross which stood in 
front of the church was perched a vulture, so thin and 
shaggy and soaked and motionless that you might easily 
have mistaken it for a stuffed bird. It was the very 
picture of misery. But everybody was miserable; one 
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