Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/213

 1851.] LOCALITY FOR A NATURALIST. 1S3

arranged to go up the unexplored Uaupe's with Senhor L., and even the prospect of his conversation was agreeable after the weary solitude I was exposed to here.

I would, however, strongly recommend Javita to any natural- ist wishing for a good unexplored locality in South America It is easily reached from the West Indies to Angostura, and thence up the Orinooko and Atabapo. A pound's worth of fish-hooks, and five pounds laid out in salt, beads, and calico, will pay all expenses there for six months. The traveller should arrive in September, and can then stay till March, and will have the full benefit of the whole of the dry season. The insects alone would well repay any one ; the fishes are also abundant, and very new and interesting ; and, as my collections were lost on the voyage home, they would have all the advantage of novelty.

On the 31st of March I left Javita, the Commissario having sent five or six Indians to carry my luggage, four of whom were to proceed with me to Tdmo. The Indians of Sao Carlos, Tdmo, and Marda had been repairing their part of the road, and were returning home, so some of them agreed to go with me in the place of the Javi'tanos. They had found in the forest a number of the harlequin beetles {Acrocinus longima- nus), which they offered me, carefully wrapped up in leaves ; I bought five for a few fish-hooks each. On arriving at Pimichin the little river presented a very different appearance from what it had when I last saw it. It was now brim-full, and the water almost reached up to our shed, which had before been forty yards off, up a steep rocky bank. Before my men ran away I had sent two of them to Tdmo to bring my canoe to Pimichin, the river having risen enough to allow it to come up, and I now found it here. They had taken a canoe belonging to Antonio Dias, who had passed Javita a few days before on his way to Sao Fernando, so that when he returned he had to borrow another to go home in.

We descended the little river rapidly, and now saw the extraordinary number of bends in it. I took the bearings of thirty with the compass, but then there came on a tremendous storm of wind and rain right in our faces, which rendered it quite impossible to see ahead. Before this had cleared off night came on, so that the remainder of the bends and doubles of the Pimichin river must still remain in obscurity. The