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We scrambled down in the dark through the thickets of cacao, orange, and coffee trees which clothed the high bank, and, after running great risk of being swamped by the heavy sea in the crowded montaria, got all aboard by nine o'clock.
The water is very shallow near the shore, and when the wind blows there is a heavy ground swell. A few years previously, an English gentleman, Mr. Graham, an amateur naturalist, was capsized here and drowned with his wife and child, while passing in a heavily- laden montaria to his large canoe.
As we progressed slowly, we took the montaria, and went ashore, from time to time, to the houses, which were numerous on the river banks as well as on the larger islands. In low situations they had a very unfinished appearance, being mere frameworks raised high on wooden piles, and thatched with the leaves of the Ubussu palm.
Our meals were cooked in the galley; but, where practicable, and during our numerous stoppages, the men went in the montaria to fish near the shore, so that our breakfasts and dinners of salt pirarucu were sometimes varied with fresh food.
As we were doubling the Point, the cable which held our montaria in tow astern, parted, and in endeavouring to recover the boat, without which we knew it would be difficult to get ashore on many parts of the coast, we were very near capsizing. We tried to tack down the river; a vain attempt with a strong breeze and no current.
We found a montaria with a paddle in it, drawn up on the bank, which I took leave to borrow of the unknown owner, and Luco paddled me amongst the noble plants to search for flowers meeting, however, with no success. I learned afterwards that the plant is common in nearly all the lakes of this neighbourhood.
We set out in a small montaria, at four o'clock in the morning, again leaving the encampment asleep, and travelled at a good pace up the northern channel of the Solimoens, or that lying between the island Catua and the left bank of the river. The northern shore of the island had a broad sandy beach reaching to its western extremity.
And the old sun-dried, and storm-battered, and time-shrivelled mulatto trader, in whose canoe they were embarked and whose servants they had become, found it pleasant, as he sat there perched in his little montaria, like an exceedingly ancient and overgrown monkey, guiding it safely down the waters of the great river of the Tocantins.
It was my turn to attend to it, and Arthur was sitting near me, when I felt the ground shake, as if some large object had pitched down on it at my side; and what was my horror, on turning my head, to see Arthur, in the claws of an enormous puma, being dragged over the ground. We had imprudently left our guns in the montaria. At the same time John awoke, and quickly sprang into the canoe.
The port was full of canoes, large and small, from the montaria, with its arched awning of woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the two-masted cuberta of the peddling trader, who had resorted to the place in the hope of trafficking with settlers coming from remote sitios to attend the festival.
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