Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/269

 Daniel could distinguish all kinds of animals in the dark by their footsteps. It now began to thunder, and our position was getting very uncomfortable. Daniel had not seen anything of the other Indians, and thought it was useless waiting any longer for Tracajás; we therefore sent him to call in the whole party, and made off, ourselves, as quickly as we could for the canoe. The rest of the night was passed most miserably; as indeed were very many of my nights on the Solimoens. A furious squall burst upon us; the wind blew away the cloths and mats we had fixed up at the ends of the arched awning of the canoe to shelter ourselves, and the rain beat right through our sleeping-place. There we lay, Cardozo and I, huddled together and wet through, waiting for the morning.

A cup of strong and hot coffee put us to rights at sunrise; but the rain was still coming down, having changed to a steady drizzle. Our men were all returned from the pool, having taken only four Tracajás. The business which had brought Cardozo hither being now finished, we set out to return to Ega, leaving the sentinels once more to their solitude on the sands. Our return route was by the rarely frequented north-easterly channel of the Solimoens, through which flows part of the waters of its great tributary stream, the Japurá. We travelled for five hours along the desolate, broken, timber-strewn shore of Bariá. The channel is of immense breadth, the opposite coast being visible only as a long, low line of forest. At three o'clock in the afternoon we doubled the upper end of the island, and then crossed towards the mouth of the Teffé by a broad transverse