Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/136

 in the morning and five in the afternoon, wearing nothing but loose and thin cotton trousers and a light straw hat, and could not be accommodated in Joaõ Aracú's house, as it was a small one and full of noisy children. One night we had a terrific storm. The heat in the afternoon had been greater than ever, and at sunset the sky had a brassy glare: the black patches of cloud which floated in it, being lighted up now and then by flashes of sheet lightning. The mosquitoes at night were more than usually troublesome, and I had just sunk exhausted into a doze towards the early hours of morning when the storm began; a complete deluge of rain with incessant lightning and rattling explosions of thunder. It lasted for eight hours; the grey dawn opening amidst the crash of the tempest. The rain trickled through the seams of the cabin roof on to my collections, the late hot weather having warped the boards, and it gave me immense trouble to secure them in the midst of the confusion. Altogether I had a bad night of it, but what with storms, heat, mosquitoes, hunger, and, towards the last, ill health, I seldom had a good night's rest on the Cuparí.

A small creek traversed the forest behind Joaõ Aracú's house, and entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place. I used to cross it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting ground. One day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. This phenomenon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the