Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/192

 northern end of the Ilha das onças (Isle of Tigers), which faces the city. I bargained for a passage thither with the cabo of a small trading vessel, which was going past the place, and started on the 7th of December, 1848.

We were 13 persons aboard; the cabo, his pretty mulatto mistress, the pilot and five Indian canoemen, three young mamelucos, tailor-apprentices who were taking a holiday trip to Cametá, a runaway slave heavily chained, and myself The young mamelucos were pleasant, gentle fellows: they could read and write, and amused themselves on the voyage with a book containing descriptions and statistics of foreign countries, in which they seemed to take great interest; one reading whilst the others listened. At Uirapiranga, a small island behind the Ilha das onças, we had to stop a short time to embark several pipes of cashaça at a sugar estate. The cabo took the montaria and two men; the pipes were rolled into the water and floated to the canoe, the men passing cables round and towing them through a rough sea. Here we slept, and the following morning, continuing our voyage, entered a narrow channel which intersects the land of Carnapijó. At 2 p.m. we emerged from this channel, which is called the Aititúba, or Arrozal, into the broad Bahia, and then saw, two or three miles away to the left, the red-tiled mansion of Caripí, embosomed in woods on the shores of a charming little bay.

The water is very shallow near the shore, and when the wind blows there is a heavy ground swell. A few years previously an English gentleman, Mr. Graham, an