Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/156

 130 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [August,

solely from a desire for information. The idea had not entered his mind that it was all inspired, so he made objections to any parts which he thought incredible, or which appeared to him to be capable of a simple explanation; and, as might have been expected, he found of his own accord confirmation of the doctrines of the religion in which he had been brought up from childhood.

On arriving at Barra, the expected canoe had not arrived, and many weeks passed wearily away. The weather was fine, but Barra is a very poor locality for making collections. Insects were remarkably scarce and uninteresting, and I looked forward anxiously to the time when I could start for some distant and more promising district. The season was very dry and hot : the thermometer, at two, every afternoon, reaching 94° and 95 in the shade, and not often sinking below 75 during the night. The lowest which I observed, just before sunrise, was 70, and the highest in the afternoon, 96. There was scarcely any rain during the months of July and August, so the grass about the city was completely burnt up. The river was now falling rapidly, and the sandbanks in the Amazon were, some of them, just rising above the water.

One day, Senhor Henrique made a party to go fishing, with a large drag-net, in the Solimoes. We started in the afternoon in a good canoe, with a party of about a dozen, and eight or ten Indian rowers ; and just before sunset, reached the mouth of the Rio Negro, and turned up into the strong and turbid waters of the Solimoes. There was a bright moon, and we kept on talking and singing, while passing the narrow channels and green islands on the north side of the river which looked most picturesquely wild and solitary by the pale silvery moon- light, and amid the solemn silence of the forest. By about midnight, we reached a large sandbank, just rising out of the water. Most of the party turned up their trousers, and waded though the shallows, till they reached the bank, where they began searching for small turtles' eggs, and those of gulls and other water-birds, which lay them in little hollows scraped in the sand. Gulls, divers, ducks, and sandpipers flew screaming about as we landed, and the splash of fish in the shallow water told us that there was abundance of sport for us. Senhor Henrique soon ordered the Indians to get out the net, and commenced dragging. Every time the net was drawn on