Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/202

 172 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [February,

The next morning I called on the Commissario, for the old man I had seen the evening before was only a capitao. I found him in his house : he was an Indian who could read and write, but not differing in any other respect from the Indians of the place. He had on a shirt and a pair of short- legged trousers, but neither shoes nor stockings. I informed him why I had come there, showed him my Brazilian passport, and requested the use of the Convento (a house formerly occupied by the priests, but now kept for travellers) to live in. After a little demur, he gave me the key of the house, and so I said good-morning, and proceeded to take possession.

About the middle of the day, the Indians who had started with me the day before arrived ; they had been afraid to come on in the dark, so had encamped in the road. I now got the house swept out, and my things taken into it. It consisted of two small rooms, and a little verandah at the back ; the larger room contained a table, chair, and bench, and in the smaller I hung up my hammock. My porters then came to be paid for bringing over my goods. All wanted salt, and I gave them a basinful each and a few fish-hooks, for carrying a heavy load ten miles : this is about their regular payment.

I had now reached the furthest point in this direction that I had wished to attain. I had passed the boundary of the mighty Amazon valley, and was among the streams that go to swell another of the world's great waters — the Orinooko. A deficiency in all other parts of the Upper Amazon district was here supplied, — a road through the virgin forest, by which I could readily reach its recesses, and where I was more sure of obtaining the curious insects of so distant a region, as well as the birds and other animals which inhabit it ; so I determined to remain here at least a month, steadily at work. Every day I went myself along the road, and sent my Indians, some to fish in the little black river Temi, others with their gravatanas to seek for the splendid trogons, monkeys, and other curious birds and animals in the forest.

Unfortunately, however, for me, on the very night I reached the village it began to rain, and day after day cloudy and showery weather continued. For three months Javfta had enjoyed the most splendid summer weather, with a clear sky and hardly a shower. I had been wasting all this time in the rainy district of the cataracts of the Rio Negro, No one there