Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/140

 day hear things commonly talked of, about the most respectable families in the place, which would hardly be credited of the inhabitants of the worst parts of St. Giles’s.

The wet season had now set in, and we soon found there was little to be done in collecting birds or insects at Barra. I had been informed that this was the time to find the celebrated umbrella chatterers in plumage, and that they were plentiful in the islands about three days’ voyage up the Rio Negro. On communicating to Senhor Henrique my wish to go there, he applied to some of the authorities to furnish me with Indians to make the voyage. When they came, which was after three or four days, I started in my own canoe, leaving my brother H. to pay a visit to an estate in another direction. My voyage occupied three days, and I had a good opportunity of observing the striking difference between this river and the Amazon. Here were no islands of floating grass, no logs and uprooted trees, with their cargoes of gulls, scarcely any stream, and few signs of life in the black and sluggish waters. Yet when there is a storm, there are greater and more dangerous waves than on the Amazon. When the dark clouds above cause the water to appear of a yet more inky blackness, and the rising waves break in white foam over the vast expanse, the scene is gloomy in the extreme.

At Barra the river is about a mile and a half wide. A few miles up it widens considerably, in many places forming deep bays eight or ten miles across. Further on, again, it separates into several channels, divided by innumerable islands, and the total width is probably not less than twenty miles. We crossed where it is four or five miles wide, and then keeping up the left bank we entered among the islands, when the opposite shore was no more seen. We passed many sandy and pebbly beaches, with occasional masses of sandstone and volcanic rock, and a long extent of high and steep gravelly  banks, everywhere, except in the most precipitous places,  covered with a luxuriant vegetation of shrubs and forest-trees. We saw several cottages, and a village prettily situated on a high, grassy slope, and at length reached Castanheiro, the residence of Senhor Balbino, to whom I brought a letter. After reading it he asked me my intentions, and then promised to get me a good hunter to kill birds and any other animals I wanted.

The house of Senhor Balbino is generally known as the