Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/242

 210 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO, [July,

the young Brazilian before mentioned, who had returned from Jauarite before us, with upwards of a hundred alqueires of farinha. About midday a tremendous storm of wind and rain came on, and in the afternoon Senhor L. arrived with the canoe, thoroughly soaked ; and informed me that they had had a most dangerous passage, a portion of the path where the cargo had to be carried through the forest being breast-deep in water ; and at some of the points, the violence of the current was so great that they narrowly escaped being carried down to the great fall, and dashed to pieces on the rocks.

Here was a good house for travellers, (though without doors,) and we took possession and settled ourselves for a week or ten days' stay. We nearly filled the house with farinha, pitch, baskets, stools, earthen pots and pans, maqueiras, etc. ; we had also near a hundred fowls, which had been brought crammed into two huge square baskets, and were now much pleased to be set at liberty, — as well as a large collection of tame birds, parrots, macaws, paroquets, etc., which kept up a continual cawing and crying, not always very agreeable. All these birds were loose, flying about the village, but returning generally to be fed. The trumpeters and curassow-birds wandered about the houses of the Indians, and sometimes did not make their appearance for several days ; but being brought up from the nest, or even sometimes from the egg, there was little danger of their escaping to the forest. We had nine pretty little black-headed parrots, which every night would go of their own accord into a basket prepared for them to sleep in.

From what I had seen on this river, there is no place equal to it for procuring a fine collection of live birds and animals ; and this, together with the desire to see more of a country so interesting and so completely unknown, induced me, after mature deliberation, to give up for the present my intended journey to the Andes, and to substitute another voyage up the river Uaupes, at least to the Jurupari (Devil) cataract, the " ultima Thule " of most of the traders, and about a month's voyage up from its mouth. Several traders who had arrived at Sao Jeronymo on the way up, as well as the more intelligent Indians, assured me that in the upper districts there are many birds and animals not met with below. But what above all attracted me, was the information that a white species of the