Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/241

 yet published of the river is that given by Von Martius in the third volume of Spix and Martius' Travels. These most accomplished travellers were eleven months in the country—namely, from July, 1819, to June, 1820, and ascended the river to the frontiers of the Brazilian territory. Their accounts of the geography, ethnology, botany, history, and statistics of the Amazons region are the most complete that have ever been given to the world. Their narrative was not published until 1831, and was unfortunately inaccessible to me during the time I travelled in the same country.

Whilst preparing for my voyage it happened fortunatety that the half-brother of Dr. Angelo Custodio, a young mestizo named Joaō da Cunha Correia, was about starting for the Amazons on a trading expedition in his own vessel, a schooner of about forty tons burthen. A passage for me was soon arranged with him through the intervention of Dr. Angelo, and we started on the 5th of September, 1849. I intended to stop at some village on the northern shore of the Lower Amazons, where it would be interesting to make collections, in order to show the relations of the fauna to those of Pará and the coast region of Guiana. As I should have to hire a house or hut wherever I stayed, I took all the materials for housekeeping—cooking utensils, crockery, and so forth. To these were added a stock of such provisions as were difficult to obtain in the interior; also ammunition, chests, store boxes, a small library of natural history books, and a hundredweight of copper money. I engaged, after some trouble, a Mameluco