Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/161

 1 85a] AYRAO AND PEDREIRO. 135

soon have some small but delicious -fish to broil. Senhor L. was an old hand at canoe-travelling, and was always well provided with hooks and lines. Bait was generally carefully prepared during the day, and at night the lines would be thrown in ; and we were often rewarded with a fine pirahfba of twenty or thirty pounds weight, which made us a breakfast and supper for the next day.

A little above Barra the river spreads out into great bays on each side, so as to be from six to ten miles wide ; and here, when there is much wind, a heavy sea rises, which is very dangerous for small canoes. Above this the river again narrows to about a mile and a half, and soon afterwards branches out into diverging channels, with islands of every size between them. For several hundred miles after this the two banks of the river can never be seen at once : they are probably from ten to twenty-five miles apart. Some of the islands are of great size, reaching to thirty or forty miles in length, and with others often intervening between them and the shore.

On the second and third day after we left Barra, there were high, picturesque, gravelly banks to the river. A little further on, a few isolated rocks appear, and at the little village of Ayrao, which we reached in a week, there were broken ledges of sandstone rock of rather a crystalline texture. A little lower we had passed points of a soft sandstone, worn into caves and fantastic hollows by the action of the water. Further on, at Pedreiro, the rock was perfectly crystalline; while a little further still, at the mouth of the Rio Branco, a real granitic rock appears.

At Pedreiro we stayed for the night with a friend of Senhor L.'s, where the news of the city was discussed, and the prices of fish, salsaparilha, piassaba, etc., communicated. The next day we passed some picturesque granite rocks opposite the mouth of the Rio Branco, where again the two shores of the river are seen at one view. On a little island there are some curious Indian picture-writings, being representations of numerous animals and men, roughly picked out of the hard granite. I made careful drawings of these at the time, and took specimens of the rock.

The next day we reached Carvoeiro, a village desolate and half deserted, as are all those on the Rio Negro. We found