Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/192

 1 62 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [February,

even the next day we did not finish it all. The weather was now hot, and brilliantly fine, contrasting much with the con- stant rains of Guia ; and, marvellous to relate, the people here told us they had not had any rain for three months past. The effects were seen in the river, which was very low and still falling, and so full of rocks and shallows as to render it some- times difficult for us to find a passage for our canoes.

After passing the village of Sao Miguel these difficulties increased, till we came to a place where the whole channel, a mile wide, appeared but one bed of rocks, with nowhere water enough for our canoe to pass, though eighteen inches would have sufficed. We went wandering about over this rocky plain in search of some opening, and after much difficulty succeeded in pushing and dragging our boat over the rocks. We passed by two or three " Cahos," or channels leading to the Cassi- quiare, up which many of the inhabitants were now going, to lay in a stock of fish and cabegudos against the " tiempo del faminto " (time of famine), as the wet season is called, when but little fish and game are to be obtained.

On the ioth of February we reached Tdmo, a village at the mouth of a stream of the same name. The inhabitants are all Indians, except one white man, a Portuguese, named Antonio Dias, of whom I had heard much at Barra. I found him in his shirt and trousers, covered with dust and perspiration, having just been assisting his men at their work at some canoes he was building. He received me kindly, with a strange mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, and got the "casa de nacao," or stranger's house, a mere dirty shed, swept out for my accommodation for a few days. Like most of the white men in this neighbourhood, he is occupied entirely in building large canoes and schooners for the Rio Negro and Amazon trade. When finished, the hulls alone are taken down to Barra or to Para, generally with a cargo of piassaba or farinha, and there sold. He had now one on the stocks, of near two hundred tons burden ; but most of them are from thirty to a hundred tons. These large vessels have to be taken down the cataracts of the Rio Negro, which can only be done in the wet season, when the water is deep.

It seems astonishing how such large vessels can be con- structed by persons entirely ignorant of the principles of naval architecture. They are altogether made by the Indians with-