Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/168

come to this country was to accustom myself to the ways of life of the humbler classes of the inhabitants. A traveller on the Amazons gains little by being furnished with letters of recommendation to persons of note, for in the great interior wildernesses of forest and river the canoe-men have pretty much their own way; the authorities cannot force them to grant passages or to hire themselves to travellers, and therefore a stranger is obliged to ingratiate himself with them in order to get conveyed from place to place. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey to Cametá; the weather was again beautiful in the extreme. We started from Pará at sunrise on the 8th of June, and on the 10th emerged from the narrow channels of the Anapú into the broad Tocantins. The vessel was so full of cargo, that there was no room to sleep in the cabin; so we passed the nights on deck. The captain or supercargo, called in Portuguese cabo, was a mameluco, named Manoel, a quiet, good-humoured person, who treated me with the most unaffected civility during the three days' journey. The pilot was also a mameluco, named John Mendez, a handsome young fellow, full of life and spirit. He had on board a wire guitar or viola, as it is here called; and in the bright moonlight nights, as we lay at anchor hour after hour waiting for the tide, he enlivened us all with songs and music. He was on the best of terms with the cabo, both sleeping in the same hammock slung between the masts. I passed the nights wrapped in an old sail outside the roof of the cabin. The crew, five in number, were Indians and half-breeds, all of whom