Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/237

 to navigate vessels. Formerly, when the Government wished to send any important functionary, such as a judge or a military commandant, into the interior, they equipped a swift-sailing galliota, manned with ten or a dozen Indians. These could travel, on the average, in one day further than the ordinary sailing craft could in three. Indian paddlers were now, however, almost impossible to be obtained, and Government officers were obliged to travel as passengers in trading vessels. The voyage made in this way was tedious in the extreme. When the regular east wind blew—the "vento geral," or trade wind, of the Amazons—sailing vessels could get along very well; but when this failed they were obliged to remain, sometimes many days together, anchored near the shore, or progress laboriously by means of the "espia." This latter mode of travelling was as follows. The montaria, with twenty or thirty fathoms of cable, one end of which was attached to the foremast, was sent ahead with a couple of hands, who secured the other end of the rope to some strong bough or tree trunk; the crew then hauled the vessel up to the point, after which the men in the boat re-embarked the cable, and paddled forwards to repeat the process. In the dry season, from August to December, when the trade-wind is strong and the currents slack, a schooner could reach the mouth of the Rio Negro, a thousand miles from Pará, in about forty days; but in the wet season, from January to July, when the east wind no longer blows and the Amazons pours forth its full volume of water, flooding the banks and producing a tearing current, it took three mouths to