Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/167

CHAPTER III.

THE UPPER AMAZONS—VOYAGE TO EGA.

Departure from Barra—First day and night on the Upper Amazons—Desolate appearance of river in the flood season—Cucáma Indians—Mental condition of Indians—Squalls—Manatee—Forest—Floating pumice-stones from the Andes—Falling banks—Ega and its inhabitants—Daily life of a Naturalist at Ega—Customs, trade, &c.—The four seasons of the Upper Amazons.

I must now take the reader from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters, to the boundless, wooded plains and yellow, turbid current of the Upper Amazons or Solimoens. I will resume the narrative of my first voyage up the river, which was interrupted at the Barra of the Rio Negro in the seventh chapter to make way for the description of Santarem and its neighbourhood.

I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars. The owner, an old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra, attending